Polish Moon Ride Registration Open

Kicking off the Polish Moon Ride with the National Anthem. I will try to get four accordion players this year. You can never have too many accordions!

Registration for this year’s Polish Moon Ride is now open. We have kept the same pricing as last year, but added a new early-bird discounted rate good until April 30th. All frugal, coupon-clipping Milwaukeeans will want to take advantage of the reduced rate pricing. Of course we put on all our rides for Bike Fed members, so members get an additional discount. But don’t worry if you are not a member, non-members get a deal too, and an annual membership is included with the registration fee. Once again, we are also offering a super reduced rate to residents of the neighborhood around the ride and to employees who work in the neighborhood.

2016 Polish Moon Ride

• When: 5 p.m to 11:30 p.m., Saturday, August 6th, 2016.
• Where: Wayward Kitchen, 1407 S. 1st St., Milwaukee, WI 53204, right under the Polish Moon in Milwaukee’s hip Walker’s Point Neighborhood.
• How far: 8 miles of slow, easy pedaling with plenty of rest stops to regroup
• How long: The ride typically takes 1 1/2 to 2 hours from roll-out to finish.
• Register Now
• Facebook Event

New for this year, we moved the date to Saturday, August 6th so as not to conflict with the Riverwest 24, which is July 29th this year. We also moved the start location down the street to Wayward Kitchen, which is closer to the Polish Moon. We loved our location at Anodyne Coffee, but they are booked up a year in advance with bands. Good to see Matt and those guys doing so well!

You don’t have to like czarnina to love this shirt!

Also new this year is our cool “Got Czarnina?” Polish Moon t-shirt. For those who didn’t grow up blessed with a name beginning with a double consonant featuring a “z” or a “ski” at the end of your name, czarnina is traditional Polish soup made with duck blood. At this point, I don’t think we will be serving czarnina on the ride, just tacos and sausages like last year, but you really should be brave and try it sometime. You don’t have to love it as much as I do to wear the fun shirt, though.

Other than that, all the rest will be the same. You can listen to awesome Nortena music while you stuff yourself with great Mexican and Polish food and ice cream from Purple Door Creamery before the ride. The police-led, family friendly 8-mile ride will again feature live accordion players pumping out polkas from the backs of cargo bikes. We will finish back where we started for more food and drink specials while you are entertained by the world famous Polish Moon Polka Trio.

Last year we had more than 700 people on our ride. This year we are capping registration at 1,000 to keep our growth manageable.

If you have never done the ride, please come join us for the casual, slow, mostly flat, family-friendly ride. Be sure to bring your kids (we have special family rates), as young folks love the chance to ride at night on urban streets. We hire the Milwaukee Police Department to surround us with officers on motorcycles to keep everyone safe and motor vehicle traffic out of the ride.

A beautiful night for a ride ends under a blue moon.

We also have a couple of nice videos of previous rides to help give you a better feel for what the ride is like. The first was done by Richard Beauchamp at the inaugural Polish Moon Ride on a warm but foggy night. Richard is a friend and a professional photographer who has had a studio in the Walkers Point neighborhood for about 20 years.

The second video was done by Lori Nickel, a reporter from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel who came on the ride last year. Read this blog post about the great Polish Moon Ride we had in 2015.

Not familiar with Milwaukee’s Walker’s Point neighborhood? Watch this awesome new video from our sponsor 88Nine Radio Milwaukee. John Gurda gives a great overview of the ‘hood.

Check out our fun Polish Moon Ride Facebook Event Page, which has interesting quizzes about the history of the area and updates on the ride.

The route will remain the same from last year, but the start will move to Wayward Kitchen.