Finally!

Kankakee River near Aroma Park, IL

Finally put the first serious mileage of 2013 on my Mustang.  On April 30!  Normally it has done some miles by mid-March.  Took a light jacket but it warmed up to shirtsleeve weather.  Looked for some twisties east of Kankakee, IL.  The map was promising: a 6-7 mile stretch of riverfront.  But the houses on the non-river side of the road were too close to each other and the road to boogie.  And it was a long way to go for a short stretch of riverfront.  Last summer, I crossed off a segment of the Fox River for the same reasons.  After a few years of exploration with hardcopies of Google Map, it looks like I've found all the good twisties in Greater-Greater Chicagoland.  Sigh...  Maybe a day-trip to Galena is in order.  West of Freeport, the terrain gets hilly.

Still fresh in my mind was the width, feel, and placeability of my Civic Si on the Dragon.  The Mustang is just too big.  It would mostly fill a lane, and the lack of steering feel combined with the car's mass make for handling too sloppy to attack the road.  The notion of "one and done, just to see what it would be like" has been in the back of my mind.  Really, I already know: taking it to the Dragon would be like taking a broadsword to a knife fight (as I've joked before).  But on a sunny day on County Roads hereabouts, a Mustang convertible is in its element: drop the top, and drop the hammer where you can.