I finished my traditional first-day-of-the-new-season SS1K at 12:30am this morning. (This was my seventh!)
Even in Southern California, the first day of Winter can be damn cold. My route was from the Pasadena area down to San Diego, then east past Glamis to Blythe and up to Needles, then across to Santa Maria on I-40/SR-58/SR-166, and home via US-101.
The early morning run through the mountains near Alpine was very cold, and I had intermittent problems with my heated gear which caused a lot of cold miles, but it was manageable until the high-desert run from Needles to Barstow. WIth the daylight coming quickly to an end, I stopped at a rest stop east of Barstow to pull Panel D off, and found the loose connection on my Powerlet port -- which turned out to be a wise choice since it got down into the upper-20s on the way from Mojave past Tehachapi. (I put on my rain gear in Mojave to help with wind protection, but thankfully there was no rain all day...)
All the fiddling with the heated gear slowed me down, but I was just west of Needles when the Winter Solstice passed at 3:12pm, and made it home in 18 hours total. When I got home, I shared some soup and a grilled cheese sandwich with my wife. A nice day on the FJR!