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MG MGA - Polar Bear Run, Just for Fun

Each year I organize our local British car Club Annual Polar Bear Run. This year was the eighth. We are in South Carolina and members are encouraged to make the drive sans top. Many did.

We left my place in Gowensville (almost North Carolina in Upstate South Carolina) with a caravan of thirty (30) cars and headed up the back roads to Flat Rock, NC. From there we took some nore back mountain roads over to Brevard to a really great BBQ restaurant for lunch. from there back over the mountain to my place for a cold one.

A cloudless, 57 degree F day although in the higher elevations the temps dropped to around 40. I didn't need my electrically heated gloves on the way up but they sure were nice later in the afternoon on the way back.

All told, we drove about 125 miles across roads that make the tail of the dragon look pretty straight and flat. A great time had by all.

I just love driving my red MkII.

Jud



J K Chapin

It's a little bit cooler over here Jud,
we are currently at 2 degrees F below freezing, so its frostbite weather if you drive your MGA with the top down.
Then there's the fact that we would be fined $270 if we are caught further than 5 miles away from home in the current Covid lockdown.

So, the best we can do at the moment is to put the garage heater on, sit in the MGA and make brmm brmm noises :^)

Colyn



Colyn Firth

Snow down here near Stonehenge too. I was hoping to take the MGA our for a run on Tuesday, when I go for my jab but it will probably be horribly slushy.
Shanerj

At 14°F here in Connecticut,a 127 mile run would result in a couple of icicles sitting in the seats. I'm not even sure that the heater would be able to warm the interior even with the hood & side curtains in place! But, glad to know that someone is able to enjoy their cars....another 2 months or so before I come out of hibernation.
Nick Kopernik

Our Aussie take on your run is our Chilly Willie Run in late winter where all entrants go topless (cars only). A bit warmer down here and only koala bears!
Mike
Mike Ellsmore

Australia is on my bucket list but, sadly, way down in the bottom. The closest I'll probably get is seeing a koala bear in the zoo. So much world, so little time.

Jud
J K Chapin

Expecting 40C (about 104F ?) here today before a cool change.
Marvellous Melbourne! Barry.
Barry Gannon

I live just outside London and each year, on the first Sunday in the new year, the midget club organise a bridges run, that they allow all classics to attend.
It’s really great good fun. We meet in the east end in the morning and the procession works it’s way along the River Thames, crossing each bridge in turn, until we arrive in the Richmond area for lunch.
Obviously not many opportunities to put your foot down, but some fabulous views of the London sights.
Roof up or down? Well I always prefer down, but SHMBO can sometimes insist otherwise.
Graham V

We are about 240 miles from you Jud, so a reasonable trip to join your Polar Bear Run next year (post-coved).

We've done the Tail of the Dragon in our A (me one direction, Melon the other), so I'm intrigued to do a route with more curves
KR Doris

For those of us outside of the USA, we "did" the Tail of the Dragon in a hire car a few years ago. Brilliant..some details...over 300 bends, a Harley Davidson dealership at each end, road sweepers operate 365 days a year to keep leaves off the road for the bikers, hundreds of bikers (all with Go-Pro's...evidenced by thousands of Youtube videos) etc.etc. I can't remember the distance, but well worth the trip in any sort of vehicle.
Gary Lock

KR, we'd love to have you (along with anybody else who may be in the area) on the next PBR or any of our yet to be scheduled up coming drives. We take a "planned" drive to somewhere in the mountains at least once a month and impromptu (24 hour or less notice) frequently. The problem is communicating upcoming drives to people who are not members of our club (Foothills British Car Club $30/yr.). We have a mass (Google) email system for members but it is closed to non-members. I'll try to remember to email you directly when a drive is coming up but this noggin is not getting any younger.

J K Chapin

Gary Lock - 318 curves in 11 miles. Up/down 1000 ft many times. Melon wrote an article about our adventure on it that appeared in MGA! in 2006.

JK - I have an MGA friend in Aiken SC who will probably join us plus another in Murphy NC who may also tag along.

- Ken
KR Doris

Here's the draft of the article Melon submitted to MGA!. I'll try to find the pictures that went with it.

- Ken
KR Doris

Ken and Mary - Absolutely beautiful. Hope you can join us for some of our Spring rides.

Jud
J K Chapin

Now you have done it Jud, you have let the cat out of the bag!
I don't think that Melon knew anything about Kens new other wife called Mary! :^)

This reminds me of a YouTube clip I saw the other day of James Stewart telling his favorite joke, brilliant.
This is the link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IiICcSH8iY

(PS I know Melon is really Mary Ellen, but I bet she only gets called that when she is in trouble ! :^)

Cheers
Colyn
Colyn Firth

Oops!!
J K Chapin

Found the picture of us on the Tail - chasing Jeff Rose in the red Twin Cam and Wolfgang Fischer and his wife Gudi in the MGB-GT.

The picture gives a pretty good idea of the length of straightaways, most connected by hairpin 180 turns.

- Ken


KR Doris

I like the look of those bends Ken, just the kind of roads I love to drive my car on.

I have found that my car corners just so well if you accelerate through them, my problem is I forget to slow down after the bend and so I can be going a bit too quick when I arrive at the next one! :^) It tends to get a bit exciting!

I have attached a picture of us following Stuart Mumby on a spirited drive down the 8000 ft Timmeljoch Pass in Austria in 2017.

Got my first Covid vaccination the other day and, for the first time in a couple of years, it feels like we are beginning to see a way out of this horrible crisis.

Cheers
Colyn





Colyn Firth

Looks like Stuart is not sure which side of the road he should be on!
Mike
Mike Ellsmore

Mike,
fortunately, Stuart decided to turn Right at that point and not go straight on!😄
He is a pretty good driver and enjoys driving his MGA as quick as he can, I must admit that he was fun to follow through the Alps and the Dolomites.
Cheers
Colyn
Colyn Firth

Great photo by the way. Don’t tell him I criticised his driving style.
Cheers
Mike
Mike Ellsmore

Great photo Colyn!

Did you and Stuart have to richen up your carbs for the altitude?

Also great to hear you got your first vaccination shot - Melon and I did as well and will get our second in the next two weeks.

Hopefully we'll all be able to do some MG events this year :)

- Ken
KR Doris

Hi Ken,
No, I didn't have to adjust the mixture at high altitude, (I'm pretty sure you would have to weaken the mixture at altitude as you get less air being drawn into the carbs.)

When I first ordered this 1950 cc engine with its Weber 45 DCOE carb, I was a little bit worried that it would run over-rich at higher altitudes (I had read about this in Steven Stranges incredible book (which is known as "The Book") about tuning the MGB engine).

In the event, the 140 bhp engine ran perfectly at every altitude, was absolutely brilliant and really bossed the Alps.

If you liked the pictures I can put you on to another adventure that we did back in 2014 when we drove from the Mediterranean Sea across to the Atlantic Ocean and took on every Pyrenean Mountain Pass along the way.

I wrote a blog about it which has a lot of pictures and YouTube links. It is called MGA Challenge. (apologies if I have already sent you this)

The thing to remember is that blogs are posted in reverse order, so you have scroll down to the bottom of the page to see the earlier posts.

This is the link
https://mgachallenge.wordpress.com/

Great to hear that you and Melon have got your first vaccine Ken, over here in the UK, we were lead to believe that your previous president hadn't done much to get your vaccination programme under way.

I had mine on Friday and the next day, I felt like I was coming down with the flu, but after 24 hours, I was fine. Chris gets her 1st vaccine tomorrow.

Cheers
Colyn








Colyn Firth

Colyn,

I don't know why I said richen the mixture - I have to blame it on my continual climb of the aging ladder! I had even read up on it in preparation for our trip to Colorado Springs for GT-45 last summer.

Of course that trip was cancelled due to Covid, but has been rescheduled for 2022 so I'll get first hand experience. The highest the A has been before is 6600 ft at Mt. Mitchell in NC - the highest point east of the Mississippi. That was during an earlier NAMGAR GT in Asheville, NC

Glad to hear Chris is getting her first shot today!

As for the vaccine rollout here in the states, before our new president took office we were already vaccinating over 1M people per day.

You did send tha link before and i found it to be brilliant. I'll dive back into it again today.

Now to get back to this thread - Jud - can you post some pictures of the Polar Bear Run?

Best,

- Ken
KR Doris

Ken and friends, here's a link to our Club monthly newsletter which has a brief article about the Polar Bear Run.
http://fbccsc.org/category/current-newsletter/

I was too busy driving and leading the pack to take pictures. Other drivers took pictures and I'm trying to gather them. I'll try to post some at a later date.

Thanks for the interest and I'll try to let you know when the next drive comes up.

Jud
J K Chapin

This thread was discussed between 24/01/2021 and 03/02/2021

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