In the summer of 98, my girlfriend and I towed our bikes home to Elkhart Lake, WI for a little R&R. She grew up there, I sorta did. Elkhart Lake is in the heart of Wisconsin's Kettle Moraine, in fact my childhood home is on one end of the Kettle Moraine Scenic Drive.

On Saturday, we got up, planning to ride to a nearby dealership for a new front tire for her bike. Her folks live in a subdivision near the edge of town, so it wasn't but two minutes into the drive that we were heading East on a two laner, accelerating to 55 mph. Before I even reached highway speeds, the sound of my bike made a rapid change for the worst - the normal 'rumble' became a wild howl; looking down, I see that one of my headers pulled right out of the cylinder head! I couldn't do much, but pull over, Melinda riding off ahead of me.

She eventually turned around, so we took the bikes back to her folks to remove her front tire and drive it to the shop. Her father generously offered to take my pipe into work, where a friend would weld it up for me. Being a Saturday, it took us a while to find a dealer willing to both sell us a tire and install it on the rim. Must be nice to have enough business that you can turn people away. In other words, don't bother with the Yamaha shop in Howards Grove or the Harley dealer in Sheboygan Falls (snobbish bastards won't work on non-Harleys, not even to install a tire). We finally got lucky at the Sheboygan Honda dealer.

On Sunday, we tried again.

The main drag in Elkhart is Rhine Street, aka Cty Hwy J. Taking that West through town, you'd cross the RR tracks and pass a feed mill as it bends to the North West. When leaving town, the left fork in the road is Cty Hwy JP, on which is my childhood home. This road is the Northern end of the Kettle Moraine Scenic Drive. Its also a part of what used to be the Road America race track. Just after the fork, the road rises with a turn to the left. Another 1/4 mile and there's a sharp right, with the apex halfway down the hill. Taking this turn in a car as a kid, its pretty easy to lift a wheel, so you can imagine what a blast it is on a motorcycle.

Not too many miles from Elkhart, the Drive meanders up, down, around and over hills and kettles in the Kettle Moraine State Forest. The trees tend to hang over the road, at times creating a tunnel effect as you ride them. Sometimes the dappled shadows on the road get distracting, but any way you slice it, its a beautiful ride. The Drive leaves the forest at times, to take you through rural areas where the biggest road hazard is a little 'residue' from manure wagons on the roads.

After 20 or 30 miles of this, we left the drive, to loop back towards home. Heading West, we happened into the town of Dundee, on Long Lake. From here, we turned North again, on Hwy 67. Along and just north of the lake, this is also a fun road. At the next stop sign, we continue straight, on Cty Hwy G, instead of following 67 to the right. After more miles, we turned again, this time in St Anne, back to the East. Upon reaching J again we turned South to close our loop around the Sheboygan Marsh.

At the marsh, we stopped for some liquid refreshments. At this point, we had completed 80 miles, the most for Melinda ever, and her first miles at highway speeds. She had just learned to ride a month or two prior, and only bought her scoot a couple weeks ago.

Instead of heading straight home, we 'needed' to stop for an awesome burger at the Plymouth A&W. This place is still run drive-in style: there're car-hops that serve you and they close in the Winter. No seating inside, though there are a couple picnic tables, which we used. I highly recommend their burgers & fried cheese curds. I don't know what they do, but no other A&W does it like they do.

By the time we reached home again, we'd covered over 100 miles, not bad for a couple beginners.