Spring Green Twisties

After reading that Peter Egan from Cycle World recommended the alphabet soutp roads around Spring Green, WI as one of his top 5 areas to ride in the country, I had to give it a try and boy was he right. We discovered a gold mine of twisties, not too far from Chicago. I went up there maybe 4 times last season.

You can read the trip report from one of the times that we went up there here.

Below are pictures from various outings to the alphabet soup. It's called that because all the county roads in Wisconsin are lettered as opposed to numbered. So directions would go like this, "Take H all the way to S, then turn on ZZ till you come across K, then zip over to LL, etc."


My first time out there with Alex, Brad and Chris. We became good friends soon. Brad left us all shortly in a terrible accident.


Myra and Chris' 95 Ducati 900SS


Alex's Blue BMW K1200GT and Brad's Yamaha R6


Second time with a bigger group. Meeting at the Starbucks before heading out.


Good posture I say. On Deac's BMWK1200LT, basically a couch with a motor, that still handles really good.


Gas stop, notice the high gas prices.


Third time out with Chris's Ducati Monster, Alex's K12GT, Brian's CBR1000RR and my Gix.


Tyring out all my luggage for the first time, before heading to Arkansas.


Beautiful shot


Chicken strips, what chicken strips.

For you non-riders, chicken strips show other riders how much you've leaned your bike on the road through a corner. The part that doesn't come in touch with the road is in a lighter shade. The more you lean (getting your center of gravity lower to the ground), the faster you can go through a corner. But there's something else you should know - leaning only the bike way over can easily result in a "high side." That's why it's better for the ride to actually lean off the bike while keeping the bike as straight up as possible. Physics will tell you that for the same thorttle input, you will go slower if the bike is leaned over as opposed to it being straight up. So the trick is to keep the bike as straight up as possible, while lowering your cg to rail through a corner.

Riding Rock River in the Wet

I came back from a wedding over the weekend in Indy and had been itching to ride for a while, well since the Flat 4 Tour in June. Monday, the 4th, looked gloomly as hell with this crazy storm system moving in from the west. Oh well, I packed the rain gear and headed out.

I didn't want to do Southern WI as I'm always there, so thought North Central IL around Rockford would offer some change. Decided to head over to Rock River and ride up and down the river and then back.

Got about 50 miles out before the heavens opened. There was no where to pull over under some cover to put on the rain gear. Im telling you, it's not fun putting on rain gear when it's raining hard all around you . I was taking IL-64 out to US-2, but forgot that 64 was closed, so found my way north to IL-72 and headed over to Byron. Had some lunch and went down the river almost to Dixon and then headed north to Rockford. Took a loop around the Rockford airport and headed south. Im quite the aviation enthusiast and was hoping to see something take-off, but with a cop sitting around, didnt want him to get suspicious .

Stopped at a picnic area to take some shots...











Was coming back on IL-72 and saw a cop pass me and turn on his lights; I was only going like 70 in a 55. Well, he didnt turn around, but I decided to cool it anyway and duck into some of the country roads, well that only lasted until the pavement ran out. Took a break by some corn fields...

I swear it really does get twisty, far down the road... like all the way in Arkansas-far.


Nice big fat stock exhaust (nice framing, huh)

Was pretty bored on the ride back (too much straight road in one day), figured next time, Wisconsin it is. Mileage was only 250, but still fun to be out there and riding in the rain is acutally quite enjoyable. Myra (my gsx-r) performed just fine.