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Mindwebs and I during one of our sporatic email conversations came up with the idea of taking a weekend and going for a ride somewhere. This evolved into sending each other map ideas and such and gradually a plan of sorts grew up and became a reallity (but you have to remember that reallity is only an illusion brought about by an alcohol defficiency). Anyway, we picked a weekend and put her in gear and let her rip. I had warned Webs that even a small ride around me tends to turn into some sort of adventure that I had not anticipated but he said he was a big boy and not intimidated by such rumors. So late last summer we picked a weekend that the weather guessers said would be nice and had at it.
At some point previous to all this Webs had let slip that he was familiar with the twistys on the coulee area of south east Wisconsin and I had tucked that little bit of info into the back of my mind for further study and trotted it out at this point and informed him that he would be the ride leader for the first day and show us how much he knew.
So it came to be that we all (myself, Poppa Smurf, Webs and his wife Amy and her brother John) met at the parking lot of one of the local big box stores and started our adventure. Almost at once disaster reared its ugly head and endeavered to derail the whole train. (disasters all almost always ugly and this one was no different) We had only gone a few miles and had come to a stop light, when the light turned green Webs took off and while still in first gear did a phenominal 360 culminating in a spectacular zip/splat in the middle of the intersection. By the time I got the Dragon stopped and the stand down Webs was on his feet and we got the XS back up on her wheels. There were a bunch of bent and scratched parts but not too bad. I seem to remember that the bike had some damage too but it was minor. It turned out that some time in the very recent past some sort of tank truck or something like it had been cleaned and when leaving the stop light had slopped an amount of soapy water in the intersection. Webs, being a very conciensious ride leader had spotted the danger and laid down in the middle of it so that no one else would be endangered. At least that was his explanation. After determining that nothing was seriously broken or misaligned we checked out the bike and Webs pronounced it fit to ride and we continued on our way only slightly subdued.
We continued on for several more miles and then made a fuel stop, at this point Webs pulled out a carefully contrived map of the proposed route and attached it to his gas tank with about 30 pounds of magnets. Poppa Smurf wondered aloud at this point if the magnets were to hold the map down or the bike up? Webs would not elaborate so we were left to think about it for the rest of the day. It did turn out however that Webs was not exagerating about his knowledge of some VERY fine twistys and led us on an absolutely thrilling ride through some of the most beautiful country imagainable. We continued for a large portion of the day without any more incidents except for encountering a very dead possum in the middle of the lane right at the top of a steep incline and also right in the blind spot in a tight curve. The sudden appearence of the hapless animal caused Amy to spit out a thirteen sylabble word that no one even supposed that she knew!
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Here you can see out little band of intrepid adventurers at a brief rest stop, left to right are Poppa Smurf, Webs (note the map on the tank with all the magnets. To my thoughts reading that map while riding must be like texting while driving a Toyota with a stuck accelerator), Amy (finally able to get her hands off the bars after her encounter with the possum) and John.
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Same spot, but you can see some of the road that comes twisting down off of the ridge in the background. This shot is of the ONLY straight part of that road!
We continued down many miles of more twistys and made a stop at the Seven Hawks winery for a few samples and to allow Poppa Smurf to fill his tour pack with about half a case of bottles. Like he says "I never did learn to travel light". Then we traveled on to a place that we had heard of that served good grub and was friendly to riders- -
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You can see here the kick stand pads covering the parking lot, there were just short of a hundred bikes there and they were constantly coming and going the whole time we were there. Superb view of the coulee region and very good food, we will be going back there some time soon.
Webs had planned on a route from here running north along the Mississipi river from this point but we had only made about a mile or two from here when we ran into heavy rain (damn weather guessers)! Not being quite as insane as we supposed he was, he made an immediate U turn and got us the heck out of there and onto an alternate route that he made up on the spot. The new route headed us towards the northern part of the state as was our general intention at this point.
We had gotten about two thirds of the way to northern Wisconsin by late afternoon when Webs took us on a very interesting and twisty little road that had only one drawback to it, after forty-five minutes or so it came right back to where we started out. Turns out that we were some miles futher north than what Webs map showed and although we were not really lost we were some confused as to where to go next.
It was about this point that we noticed that the headlight on Johns Suzuki was getting dimmer and dimmer, also Amy was voicing concern about the condition of the back of her behind where it was attached to her Ninja (this I hear is a side effect of sitting on a Ninja for any lenght of time. Webs has located her a very nice XJ650 and this may cure the condition in the near future). We determined that this would be a good time to abreviate the touring and find a direct route north to see my son (the Iceman) and invade his place for the night. Upon arrival Webs and I located and repaired a faulty wiring splice or two in Johns bike and got the charging system back in operation, then we checked out the Ninja which had not been running just the best in the last few miles. This is the only bike I have ever worked on that had to have both wheels, the seat, gas tank, handle bars, and several other things removed just to locate the spark plugs!!
The repair work finished we found that the Iceman and his wife had prepared a fine meal for us and after that we did some extensive beer and wine tasting before retiring for the night. Morning found us with new ideas and a new ride leader (myself, even though I warned them about my past track record). Now joined by the Iceman we continued on a northerly course enjoying the fall colors and some interesting roads. Most of the roads in far northern Wisconsin are not real twistys but more like fast sweepers, one curve followed by another, not quite as nice as Webs route of the day before but still interesting enough. I had heard of one very nice road that cuts through the Chequamegon National Forest and terminates by Lake Superior and we wanted to try it. Mostly because Poppa Smurf had not seen the big lake for some time and was some concerned that someone might have moved it in his absence.
This plan was thwarted before we got to the road due to another bad mistake by the weather liars. After having continued north for a couple of hours we took a break and I unlimbered my handy dandy PDA phone and checked the local radar, this showed that we were headed right into some interesting green and red stuff (and I am not talking about the fall colors here) so using Webs method of rapid route changing I led us off in another direction. We spent the next few hours attacking a bunch of rapid sweeper roads in and around the Lac Courte Oreilles (pronounced la-coud-er-ray, go figure) Indian Reservation. Then our scoundrel of a leader (yup, still the same idiot) led us smack into some seriously bad road destruction (no, I did not mispell that, up here they tend to tear up and fix the good parts of the road and leave the rest of it the way it was) and we were off on yet another unplanned detour. During a short rest break Poppa Smurf detected some of what he thought was mold growing on the Icemans rear tire. He was some mistaken on his diagnoses and it turned out to be a couple of spots where the tire was worn down almost to the air. This caused all of us to do some investigation and we then found large crack in the rear tire of Poppa Smurfs bike. We continued on but at a much reduced rate of speed to where we had planned on splitting up and heading toward our respective homes. When we reached the location another look at the radar screen showed several VERY red spots, a couple of them headed right for us. It was decided that the group headed west could get between two of them to safety which they did, only getting a little wet in the process. John and I, who were to head to the south east had figured out that we could get in front of the biggest red spot and out run it.
We were in the process of doing so when we got on a very twisty road that runs along the Flambeau River. Here we encountered a small herd of cagers mosying along at a very reduced speed and no good way to get around them for an extended period of time. This allowed the storm to catch up with us. By the time we got around the irritating animals we were already wet and then it started to hail. Now running down a very twisty road full of tar snakes and cagers is one thing, doing it during a hail storm is a whole different thing. One, we were trying to do it at a rate of speed that would get us in front of the storm and two, we were trying to do it a rate of speed that would keep us upright. On a road that is being rapidly covered by pea size white ball bearings that is one fine and crooked little line between the two.
We finally did get in front of the storm and stayed there for the rest of the ride home, Poppa Smurf and the Iceman both went and got new tires the next day, I took the day off and consulted the contents of a bottle of single malt scotch to repair my frazzled nerves. Still, we are all talking about when we are going to do it again,,,,,,,,,,,,,and we will!!
At some point previous to all this Webs had let slip that he was familiar with the twistys on the coulee area of south east Wisconsin and I had tucked that little bit of info into the back of my mind for further study and trotted it out at this point and informed him that he would be the ride leader for the first day and show us how much he knew.
So it came to be that we all (myself, Poppa Smurf, Webs and his wife Amy and her brother John) met at the parking lot of one of the local big box stores and started our adventure. Almost at once disaster reared its ugly head and endeavered to derail the whole train. (disasters all almost always ugly and this one was no different) We had only gone a few miles and had come to a stop light, when the light turned green Webs took off and while still in first gear did a phenominal 360 culminating in a spectacular zip/splat in the middle of the intersection. By the time I got the Dragon stopped and the stand down Webs was on his feet and we got the XS back up on her wheels. There were a bunch of bent and scratched parts but not too bad. I seem to remember that the bike had some damage too but it was minor. It turned out that some time in the very recent past some sort of tank truck or something like it had been cleaned and when leaving the stop light had slopped an amount of soapy water in the intersection. Webs, being a very conciensious ride leader had spotted the danger and laid down in the middle of it so that no one else would be endangered. At least that was his explanation. After determining that nothing was seriously broken or misaligned we checked out the bike and Webs pronounced it fit to ride and we continued on our way only slightly subdued.
We continued on for several more miles and then made a fuel stop, at this point Webs pulled out a carefully contrived map of the proposed route and attached it to his gas tank with about 30 pounds of magnets. Poppa Smurf wondered aloud at this point if the magnets were to hold the map down or the bike up? Webs would not elaborate so we were left to think about it for the rest of the day. It did turn out however that Webs was not exagerating about his knowledge of some VERY fine twistys and led us on an absolutely thrilling ride through some of the most beautiful country imagainable. We continued for a large portion of the day without any more incidents except for encountering a very dead possum in the middle of the lane right at the top of a steep incline and also right in the blind spot in a tight curve. The sudden appearence of the hapless animal caused Amy to spit out a thirteen sylabble word that no one even supposed that she knew!
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[/IMG]Here you can see out little band of intrepid adventurers at a brief rest stop, left to right are Poppa Smurf, Webs (note the map on the tank with all the magnets. To my thoughts reading that map while riding must be like texting while driving a Toyota with a stuck accelerator), Amy (finally able to get her hands off the bars after her encounter with the possum) and John.
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[/IMG]Same spot, but you can see some of the road that comes twisting down off of the ridge in the background. This shot is of the ONLY straight part of that road!
We continued down many miles of more twistys and made a stop at the Seven Hawks winery for a few samples and to allow Poppa Smurf to fill his tour pack with about half a case of bottles. Like he says "I never did learn to travel light". Then we traveled on to a place that we had heard of that served good grub and was friendly to riders- -
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[/IMG]You can see here the kick stand pads covering the parking lot, there were just short of a hundred bikes there and they were constantly coming and going the whole time we were there. Superb view of the coulee region and very good food, we will be going back there some time soon.
Webs had planned on a route from here running north along the Mississipi river from this point but we had only made about a mile or two from here when we ran into heavy rain (damn weather guessers)! Not being quite as insane as we supposed he was, he made an immediate U turn and got us the heck out of there and onto an alternate route that he made up on the spot. The new route headed us towards the northern part of the state as was our general intention at this point.
We had gotten about two thirds of the way to northern Wisconsin by late afternoon when Webs took us on a very interesting and twisty little road that had only one drawback to it, after forty-five minutes or so it came right back to where we started out. Turns out that we were some miles futher north than what Webs map showed and although we were not really lost we were some confused as to where to go next.
It was about this point that we noticed that the headlight on Johns Suzuki was getting dimmer and dimmer, also Amy was voicing concern about the condition of the back of her behind where it was attached to her Ninja (this I hear is a side effect of sitting on a Ninja for any lenght of time. Webs has located her a very nice XJ650 and this may cure the condition in the near future). We determined that this would be a good time to abreviate the touring and find a direct route north to see my son (the Iceman) and invade his place for the night. Upon arrival Webs and I located and repaired a faulty wiring splice or two in Johns bike and got the charging system back in operation, then we checked out the Ninja which had not been running just the best in the last few miles. This is the only bike I have ever worked on that had to have both wheels, the seat, gas tank, handle bars, and several other things removed just to locate the spark plugs!!
The repair work finished we found that the Iceman and his wife had prepared a fine meal for us and after that we did some extensive beer and wine tasting before retiring for the night. Morning found us with new ideas and a new ride leader (myself, even though I warned them about my past track record). Now joined by the Iceman we continued on a northerly course enjoying the fall colors and some interesting roads. Most of the roads in far northern Wisconsin are not real twistys but more like fast sweepers, one curve followed by another, not quite as nice as Webs route of the day before but still interesting enough. I had heard of one very nice road that cuts through the Chequamegon National Forest and terminates by Lake Superior and we wanted to try it. Mostly because Poppa Smurf had not seen the big lake for some time and was some concerned that someone might have moved it in his absence.
This plan was thwarted before we got to the road due to another bad mistake by the weather liars. After having continued north for a couple of hours we took a break and I unlimbered my handy dandy PDA phone and checked the local radar, this showed that we were headed right into some interesting green and red stuff (and I am not talking about the fall colors here) so using Webs method of rapid route changing I led us off in another direction. We spent the next few hours attacking a bunch of rapid sweeper roads in and around the Lac Courte Oreilles (pronounced la-coud-er-ray, go figure) Indian Reservation. Then our scoundrel of a leader (yup, still the same idiot) led us smack into some seriously bad road destruction (no, I did not mispell that, up here they tend to tear up and fix the good parts of the road and leave the rest of it the way it was) and we were off on yet another unplanned detour. During a short rest break Poppa Smurf detected some of what he thought was mold growing on the Icemans rear tire. He was some mistaken on his diagnoses and it turned out to be a couple of spots where the tire was worn down almost to the air. This caused all of us to do some investigation and we then found large crack in the rear tire of Poppa Smurfs bike. We continued on but at a much reduced rate of speed to where we had planned on splitting up and heading toward our respective homes. When we reached the location another look at the radar screen showed several VERY red spots, a couple of them headed right for us. It was decided that the group headed west could get between two of them to safety which they did, only getting a little wet in the process. John and I, who were to head to the south east had figured out that we could get in front of the biggest red spot and out run it.
We were in the process of doing so when we got on a very twisty road that runs along the Flambeau River. Here we encountered a small herd of cagers mosying along at a very reduced speed and no good way to get around them for an extended period of time. This allowed the storm to catch up with us. By the time we got around the irritating animals we were already wet and then it started to hail. Now running down a very twisty road full of tar snakes and cagers is one thing, doing it during a hail storm is a whole different thing. One, we were trying to do it at a rate of speed that would get us in front of the storm and two, we were trying to do it a rate of speed that would keep us upright. On a road that is being rapidly covered by pea size white ball bearings that is one fine and crooked little line between the two.
We finally did get in front of the storm and stayed there for the rest of the ride home, Poppa Smurf and the Iceman both went and got new tires the next day, I took the day off and consulted the contents of a bottle of single malt scotch to repair my frazzled nerves. Still, we are all talking about when we are going to do it again,,,,,,,,,,,,,and we will!!
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