Every major city in America possesses a particular inertia-a force that keeps you from getting out of town and regaining your sanity even when the high, buzzing whine of tension in your ear tells you, clearly, that you need it. In New York it's the pace of the city, the feeling that if you leave for a day your whole life will fall apart in a heap of unreturned phone calls, missed opportunities, and botched obligations. In San Francisco it's the line over the bridge, the very certain knowledge that to access one of the world's most beautiful landscapes, you have to pay up front with two hours of stop and go, fume-inhaling traffic. In Chicago it is just the raw size of the megalopolis. It feels like you can't get out of Chicago no matter what direction you try. It takes four hours, corner to corner, to get across it on a Friday...

Most urban motorcycle riders ride to keep hold of a sense of freedom. When you're on the bike, you don't worry as much about travel time. Travel is fun. Because your riding. But city traffic can get even the toughest biker down. In the summer, all you want is access to the open road, to the blue highways and county bi-ways, so you can ride curves with the smell of cut hay in your nose. Well, motorcycle friends, what if I told you, you could leave Chicago and be riding your bike through Switzerland in two hours?

Last week I took a three-day motorcycle vacation that made me realize, even in Chicago, the summer countryside is within my reach whenever I want it. I left at 10am and rode out the NW Tollway (I-90/94 W), through Rockford, and exited on WI 81W in Beloit, WI. Then I headed west on WI 81 through the town of Beloit, over the river there, before continuing west towards Monroe, WI. At Monroe I turned north on WI 69N and arrived in New Glarus in time for lunch.

New Glarus, officially known as America's Little Switzerland or Swisstown, USA, was founded in the 1845 by settlers from Glarus, Switzerland, under the auspices of the Glarus Emigration Society. A delegation arrived in Southern Wisconsin, probably by way of Chicago, to search for a piece of land on which to build a new town. It was only thirteen years after the conclusion of Black Hawk's War and Southwest Wisconsin was still a frontier of sorts. The decision to settle was made, the land acquired, and a group of Swiss families came over, and cleared land for farms. By 1853 the town had been established.

Today, New Glarus is the center of the Wisconsin Swiss Country, a rural set of communities stretching between Green and Grant Counties with local economies centered on farming, cheese making, beer brewing, and tourism. There's no official relationship between the towns in Swiss Country, but there is a shared heritage. The area is no secret to the Midwestern tourism industry, and New Glarus is the precious centerpiece. But the town offers visitors more than the surface kitsch charm that makes it famous-and perhaps the town's best offering is that New Glarus sits right in the midst of some of the finest motorcycle roads in the Midwest.

If you love riding motorcycles, you want to get out of the city, and you also appreciate some of the finer things in life, then you have no excuse not to take my advice. Pack your saddle bags or boxes, check your oil, grab your partner, hop on back of your bike and ride to New Glarus.

Getting There:

There are two schools of thought about how to get there. You can find your way out of Chicago by staying on the smaller roads. The best way to do that is to take IL 14N out of the city and follow it all the way to the Wisconsin border, at which point you grab WI 67W. That ride is slow going until you get past Crystal Lake, but you won't have to deal with I-90/94 or its potentially crippling Friday commuter traffic.

My advice, though, is to take an extra day off of work, leave Thursday at lunch, and bomb out I-90/94 as fast as you can. It's not really a pleasant motorcycle ride, especially if the wind is blowing, but in two hours flat you can be in beautiful country, and, believe me, the memory won't interfere with the present. Once you get to Beloit, weasel your way around on to WI 213N to Orfordville, where you pick up WI 11W, a good motorcycle road. WI 81W is the quicker route, but the road is not in great shape past Beloit. You can't lose either way, though, both are pretty rides and both will lead you to Monroe, where you can pick up WI 69N and take beautiful 15-mile ride to New Glarus. Arriving in the little hidden prairie valley that holds the town is a great feeling.

Where to Stay:

New Glarus has a number of quaint and cute B & B's, and you can look them up on the Chamber of Commerce website at swisstown.com , which is quiet good. But if you're like me, when you are out riding your bike, you want a clean, comfortable place to crash that offers no hassles. New Glarus has two good options that meet those conditions. The Swiss Aire Motel is a motor lodge right on WI 69. It's clean, affordable, and convenient.

If you have a few extra bucks to spend you'll want to stay at the Chalet Landhaus Hotel . The building is built in Swiss chalet style, complete with beautiful custom wood eaves and lovely details like flowerboxes and hand-painted ceramic cows. The Chalet Landhaus has an exercise room, a spa, a bar, and a restaurant with an outside patio. You don't ever have to leave, if you don't want to. The best part about the Landhaus is that you can also just walk into town on the bike path. When you're bone tired and sunburned from riding all day, it's nice to know you can strap on your sandals, walk into town for a wonderful dinner and drink untold quantities of local beer, before you walk back to bed.

Where to Eat:

Part of what makes New Glarus such a gem of a place is that underneath its kitschy European façade is a real European attention to aesthetic detail. This fact is most evident in the food and drink the town offers, but can also be witnessed in the shops and local businesses. There are two first class restaurants in New Glarus.

The New Glarus Hotel is the most visible building in town. It's not a working hotel anymore, because it's owned by the people who own the Landhaus. The building dates from the 1850s and is an architectural gem, the real Swiss Chalet on the hill that the Landhaus emulates. The restaurant serves German Swiss food at reasonable prices and in large amounts. The staff people wear traditional Swiss Alpine attire and treat you with a combination of Swiss politeness and good old-fashioned Midwestern hospitality. There is live music at the New Glarus Hotel every Friday and Saturday nights. If you're in the mood for something lighter, the hotel runs an Italian Swiss pizza kitchen called Ticino's in the basement.

I would rather sit at a bar, eat good food, and listen to the local chatter than do most anything else when I'm on vacation. The trouble is a lot of times you can't find a place where the food is good, the beer is good, and the vibe is good enough for you to want to stay there a while.

If you arrive in New Glarus on a weeknight, the Glarner Stube is the place you can do all those things while eating dinner at the bar. They make you take your food in the dining room on weekends, which isn't so bad unless your alone. The Glarner Stube serves three beers on draft from the local New Glarus Brewing Company . The Totally Naked is a clean, European style lager that goes well with food. The Spotted Cow is a light, farmhouse malt with a fruity, herbal aroma. And the Fat Squirrel is a nut brown ale, stronger and sweeter than the other two. There's also a full bar. You can have Pernod for all I care.

The food at the Glarner Stube is top notch, well-priced, and served in large quantities. All of the entrees come with soup or salad, and a choice of potato. If you have a salad, upgrade to a wedge salad with blue cheese crumbles. If they offer beer-cheese soup, get that. No matter what you order, your choice of potato is roesti, the traditional Swiss hashed brown potato pancake infused with local aged Swiss cheese. I could eat that stuff everyday. The Glarner Stube also offers such specialties as fondue, fried cheese curds, a something called a "Gary's bowl of beef," which is really a beef fondue with horseradish sauce. If you stay still closing, the weekday bartender Steve might ring your bell. Or you might meet some of the cooler locals.

What To Do:

Since you're on a motorcycle ride, then you should probably just ride your motorcycle until you are burnt brown. But some people need a destination to get them motivated. If you want to hang around New Glarus for a day, or if you run into rain, you can go to the New Glarus Brewing Company for a tour, visit the Primrose Winery, check your email and get a latte at the Hill Café, and browse the shops. Don't miss Ruef's Meat Market. Or you can just go straight to the Glarner Stube and drink.

If you want a destination ride, there are some great antiquing barns in the Amish country along WI 78 and WI 92 and there's trout fishing at many local streams. House on the Rock and Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin are only ten miles apart from one another along WI 23. Each of those places is worth a visit on its own. The fact that they both sit on a fantastically beautiful motorcycle road is a bonus. Mineral Point is an historic mining town about 30 miles to the west. The town has a great second hand store and houses a thriving art community along a road called Shake Rag Alley. There is also an original Cornish homestead there, The Pendarvis Site , which offers historic tours. The Mississippi River is only about sixty miles away, depending on where you ride. Galena, IL, a charming historic town and the boyhood home of U.S. Grant, and Dubuque, Iowa, are about 180 miles away. Make sure you get to see the Mississippi River somewhere along the Great River Road. It's wide, clean, and beautiful. The Mighty Water.

Where to Ride:

The Wisconsin "alphabet roads"-the country roads are lettered-are famous riding roads in the Midwest because of the variety of terrain they offer. Southwest Wisconsin is a topographically unique hill country that contains limestone bluffs, lush river bottoms, and hills full of mineral ore. The topographical variety means the roads wind, rise, and fall. You might not get the aggressive riding you could in Arkansas or North Carolina, but for scenic, calm, and curvy, you can't do better.

From New Glarus, if you only had one day to ride, I would ride a big loop. Start out by heading west to Mineral Point on WI 39W. Then take WI 151S to Platteville. Pick up Grant County Road O heading west out of Platteville. The road runs from Platteville to the twin towns of Tennyson and Potoski, and it's a beautiful road. From Potoski pick up WI 133N to Cassville. The Great River Road, a National Scenic Byway, is a set of roads that hugs the bottomland of the Mississippi. Follow The Great River Road all the way up close to Prairie Du Chien where you can pick up WI 60E, a beautiful road that follows the north bank of the Wisconsin River. The ride along the river is magnificent in the summer. Stop and have a swim. Continue east on WI 60E to Lone Rock, or detour to the right bank and ride WI 133. Either way, you want to turn south at the Tower Hill so you can pick up WI 23S past Taliesin and House on the Rock. At Dodgeville pick up WI 18E to Mt. Horeb, and then grab WI 92S back to New Glarus.

You can't go wrong on the alphabet roads of Southwestern Wisconsin. They are all beautiful. Some allow for more aggressive riding, others better curves, others road quality, and still others rolling hills. Some roads have it all. Ride safe, because you can never be sure if there's gravel at the top of the hill or a combine around the corner.

Check out the following roads:

WI 39 from N. Glarus to Mineral Point.

Grant County O from Platteville to Tennyson.

Great River Road between Cassville and Prairie Du Chien

WI 61N from Boscobel to Soldier's Grove

Grant County Road G from Muscoda to Preston

WI 23 from Spring Green to Dodgeville

WI 78 between Blanchardville and Prairie Du Sac