Big cool factor: Motorcyclists get chills, thrills racing on ice
NORTHVILLE, N.Y. — They kick-start their bikes during cold snaps, hit highway speeds on ice and take tight turns on studded tires, leaving crystalline clouds in their wake.
Call them freezy riders, motorcycle racers who seem to defy physics — and maybe common sense — by buzzing around slick tracks plowed out atop frozen lakes and rivers each winter.
“The adrenaline of going 70 mph and dragging across the ice is something you can’t find anywhere else,” Mike Parodi said after another run around Great Sacandaga Lake in the Adirondacks during a bitter cold weekend this month.
The riders on upstate New York ice this winter are butchers, contractors, maintenance workers, fathers and sons.
Some compete for money, with first-prize purses of up to $500 on a recent race day. But most are amateurs, who put thrills and bravado above the ever-present risk of spinning out and slipping sideways across the ice.
“It’s a lot easier on your body when you fall. You just kind of slide out. On dirt, you tumble, cartwheel. You can really get hurt,” said Johnny Gocha, among the more than 90 racers who competed recently on an oval track plowed atop the 14-inch-thick ice on Warner Lake near Albany.
Ice tracks might be gentler than dirt, but they’re temperamental.
Warm spells the last two winters sidelined racers.
This winter’s big chill across the Northeast was great for ice formation — about 15 inches thick on Sacandaga on a recent weekend.
But those same frigid temps seemed to discourage riders on a day organizers had to cancel races.
“We got where it was negative 15 or something,” Alex Quarterley said after taking some laps for fun.
“It’s really all in the face. You got to watch for frostbite.”