Hello from Milan ... Illinois, not (darn it) Italy!
Am here for a year because my job moved. Plan to return to Atlanta next year and retire, but current event$ are making me a bit uneasy about that. We shall see.
Anyway, it is giving me an opportunity to ride on roads I've not seen before. In fact, I've seen little of the midwest except from 33K feet!
So, here are some pix of my trip this past weekend – 5 -7 August – to the Wisconsin Moto Guzzi rally.
The rally was at the Lake Joy Campground, near Belmont, in the SW corner of the state.
Lake Joy is located in the heart of Wisconsin's "driftless" region, i.e., the area not flattened by glaciers. Here it is on the map:
http://tinyurl.com/Wisconsin-Guzzi-rally
Open that, pan out, and select "terrain" to see topo relief. You'll then understand why it is, albeit not quite north Georgia or that kind of place, still fine riding country.
Kathi and I put 750 miles on the Norge up that way a few weekends ago for the national rally and a little B&B getaway – yes, I’ll post those pix sometime, too! – and found some VERY good roads (and food and beer and sights) in NE Iowa and SW Wisconsin. And, unlike so many here in Illinois and nearby Iowa, the roads in that part of Wisconsin do not seem to have been an MSR for an armored division without HET's, with resulting terrible pavement. Rare to find silky smooth roads where temperature variations are so extreme, but these are not bad at all.
So, this past Friday, with Kathi back in Virginia squeezing grandbabies, I left the office at about 1 p.m., and rode to Platteville for a pretty cheap stay at the Super 8 there.
I visited the rally that evening, and a few times during the day on Saturday and Sunday, where I did obligatory grunting, scratching, and spitting.
I then set out with a friend, Ben, a serious sport bike (non-Guzzi) rider who rode up from Davenport on Saturday a.m., to ride as many of these, red, blue, and green roads (in that order) on this map as I could:
http://www.motorcycleroads.us/regions/wi_west.html
We did pretty well in doing those and more, but still left many unridden. Ben went home after his 500-miler day trip, but I did an additional 360 or so on Sunday, in an attempt to add more great-road notches to my pistol. I succeeded, but eventually had to leave some for next trip, as reality required return to Milan.
After all of that intro, here are the pix: http://tinyurl.com/Wisc-Guzzi-Rally-and-Ride
Bill
Am here for a year because my job moved. Plan to return to Atlanta next year and retire, but current event$ are making me a bit uneasy about that. We shall see.
Anyway, it is giving me an opportunity to ride on roads I've not seen before. In fact, I've seen little of the midwest except from 33K feet!
So, here are some pix of my trip this past weekend – 5 -7 August – to the Wisconsin Moto Guzzi rally.
The rally was at the Lake Joy Campground, near Belmont, in the SW corner of the state.
Lake Joy is located in the heart of Wisconsin's "driftless" region, i.e., the area not flattened by glaciers. Here it is on the map:
http://tinyurl.com/Wisconsin-Guzzi-rally
Open that, pan out, and select "terrain" to see topo relief. You'll then understand why it is, albeit not quite north Georgia or that kind of place, still fine riding country.
Kathi and I put 750 miles on the Norge up that way a few weekends ago for the national rally and a little B&B getaway – yes, I’ll post those pix sometime, too! – and found some VERY good roads (and food and beer and sights) in NE Iowa and SW Wisconsin. And, unlike so many here in Illinois and nearby Iowa, the roads in that part of Wisconsin do not seem to have been an MSR for an armored division without HET's, with resulting terrible pavement. Rare to find silky smooth roads where temperature variations are so extreme, but these are not bad at all.
So, this past Friday, with Kathi back in Virginia squeezing grandbabies, I left the office at about 1 p.m., and rode to Platteville for a pretty cheap stay at the Super 8 there.
I visited the rally that evening, and a few times during the day on Saturday and Sunday, where I did obligatory grunting, scratching, and spitting.
I then set out with a friend, Ben, a serious sport bike (non-Guzzi) rider who rode up from Davenport on Saturday a.m., to ride as many of these, red, blue, and green roads (in that order) on this map as I could:
http://www.motorcycleroads.us/regions/wi_west.html
We did pretty well in doing those and more, but still left many unridden. Ben went home after his 500-miler day trip, but I did an additional 360 or so on Sunday, in an attempt to add more great-road notches to my pistol. I succeeded, but eventually had to leave some for next trip, as reality required return to Milan.
After all of that intro, here are the pix: http://tinyurl.com/Wisc-Guzzi-Rally-and-Ride
Bill
