The Scales Are Shifting In My Favor... Finally

For the first time in recent memory, my weight has fallen below the recommended published maximum human tonnage that should be cradled in a Kermit Chair. I celebrated this fact by setting up my Kermit chair in the garage and by plopping my ponderous ass in it. In the interests of accurate reporting, it should be noted that the chair stoically supported my mass (as it has always done), but still did so under a measure of audible protest.

Riding buddy Dick Bregstein was present for this historic moment, and was even given the honor of sitting in the chair first. (The fact that the Kermit Chair looks like it’s made out of spindly sticks gave Bregstein the willies. He sat in it for two minutes and looked like he expected his ass to go crashing to the floor momentarily. This is hysterical as Dick weighs less than 50 percent of my body mass.) So I sat in it, and had the satisfaction of wiping that smug look off his face when absolutely nothing comical happened.

The Kermit Chair is the unofficial but de facto folding seat of BMW rallies. It resides in a cylindrical sack 22” long, and about 4”x”6 square. While no one will discuss the mystic engineering principles behind this great piece of motorcycle furniture, it is widely acknowledged it harnesses the same construction techniques found in the timeless Hagia Sophia.

But this column is not about the Kermit Chair... It is about my weight. Under the threats of a kindly cardiologist, who described me as “one of the fattest fucks he had ever seen,” I am shedding poundage. The effects of a 5-week regimen, during which I ate little more than the sort of shit fed to political prisoners in countries where 6-year-olds are given guns to fire off in the street, are becoming visible. For example, the local fire department no longer has to use the “jaws of life” to pull my motorcycle out of my ass at the end of the day.

There are some other hopeful signs as well. My Joe Rocket mesh riding jacket is starting to hang on me. Its Velcro adjusting tabs at the waist are slack at the half-way mark. Three years ago, I had to order the largest size they had (5X), and the damn thing was tight. I remembered feeling grateful that I was able to find anything in my size. In the handy 5X “aquatic mammal size,” this well-made, protective garment uses the same amount of netting as a Japanese tuna trawler working the Marianas Trench. You could build a tornado bunker with the armor that is sewn into this jacket.

Some weight is coming off my ass too, but that is bringing on other changes. I went for a ride on Saturday and nearly dropped the bike two blocks from the house. Various maneuvers executed while riding my K75 can sometimes push my wallet out the top of my back pocket, and I have since grown to love Harley-style billfolds that I can chain to my belt. Well my custom fat-man seat felt a little odd to me last weekend, giving my ass the distinct impression that I was sitting differently. The delightful Russell Day-Long Saddle requires the rider to slide forward in a stop to flatfoot the bike. (This is normal and is clearly stated in the promotional literature for the saddle.) I approached my first full stop at a busy corner and couldn’t move up on the seat. The edge of my fucking Harley chain wallet got caught under the fat man wings on this seat, pinning me in place. I pulled my shapeless ass free with a mighty heave just as the bike lost all forward momentum at the stop. I got both legs down without a nano second to spare. I barely had time to say, “fuck.” And I’m telling you, I couldn’t repeat this stunt if I tried.

This would have been one of those stupid drops that occasionally happens to everyone. I got the bike over to the side of the road, and counted to sixty in the shade. Then I took the wallet off my belt and zipped it into a coat pocket.

It has taken me six weeks to break free from the siren song of fast food, the false comfort of ice cream, and the urge to buy cupcakes in the 12-pack institutional size. No more will I sit down and eat a pound of pasta. There were times when I would find myself stalling at the keyboard, and headed out to McSwine Burgers for lunch, where I would eat two “Big Lard” burgers, plus fries, only to chase these down with a package (or two) of TastyKake chocolate cupcakes. Another tactic to tempt the muse would entail downing a pint of Hagen Daz ice cream, sometimes twice a week.

I encased my body in a slab-fat prison... And gradually destroyed my knees, hips, and back. If a normal man my size were to weigh 200 pounds (and that’s pushing the Teutonic ideal by at least 3 five-pounds bags of lard), he would be going through life carrying the equivalent of a no-frills kitchen stove on his back. Just imagine getting on the back of K75 — wearing a stove for a backpack. Or climbing every flight of stairs — with a kitchen stove on your back. Or sitting on the can, with a kitchen stove in your lap. There are very few daily functions that are improved by carrying a stove around.

The absurdity of the image is such that one is compelled to ask the question, what took so fucking long to wake up? The hard part was in acknowledging that I have an addiction... And that my addiction is tantalized by commercials on television, images on billboards, pages in magazines, and the char-broiled aroma of meat on a grill that is in the air everywhere. This last one is usually accompanied by the scent of hot french fry oil, that one occasionally rides through, especially in seaside resort areas. These torments are surmounted by my own horrible fears — that I cannot write without having a bag of cookies alongside my computer.

Well the spell is broken. I have decided to drop the stove.

It took three weeks of withdrawal headaches to turn my back on McDonalds and Burger King. The urge to just drive in one of these places at lunchtime, in the late afternoon, and or any time I went past one was damn-near overwhelming. But I started asking myself, “would you rather eat that cheeseburger and fries, or ride your bike farther and faster next year? Would you rather bite into a piglet-sized, pork-flavored chipolte blob, or fit into pants where the belt loops aren’t fashioned from steel-belted radial tires? Would you prefer to savor the shitty thousand island dressing dripping over two cow-flops of fat-ladden Angus beef, or fuck like a jackhammer?

The answers to these questions seem obvious. But fatties hopelessly lost in miasma of grease, salt, and corn syrup usually opt for short-term gratification over the long-term investment. I did. But the best thing about the past, is that it is in the past.

My addiction has always included a mad craving for Chinese food. There are no commercials for Chinese food on television. It is a kind of morphine-comestible that needs no advertising. Authentically prepared Chinese food, which is served with great elán, delights the senses like a 22-year-old runway model, wearing naught but perfume.

I finally managed to turn my back on it, but not by going cold turkey.

There is a very chummy neighborhood Chinese restaurant within a few blocks of my home — The Oriental Pearl. They serve a lot of dishes that are the preferred staples of an aging US clientele. But not to me. The kitchen staff of four highly-motivated chefs has taken to inviting me to their lunches. I would eat whatever they ate, and what they eat is an epicurean’s delight. (I am very chummy by nature and a chummy neighborhood restaurant is my second home. I do not speak Mandarin, but a wide-eyed smile or a laugh needs no translation.)

Sadly, I had to ring down the curtain on this delightful and rare mark of respect. Now, if I were inclined to order the fried dumplings, a chef would stick his head out of the kitchen door and say, "No can do, Jack. You too fucking fat."

Above — "John" the extremely talented sushi chef at the "Oriental Pearl" in West Chester, Pa takes the time to execute a work of art in raw fish. Fish oil is allegedly good for my joints and I prefer it in the original containers.

Now the sushi chef — an extremely talented individual with the unlikely name of “John” — prepares my lunch three times a week. It is “Konne Salad,” a delightful blend of lettuce, cabbage, and raw fish, garnished with salmon roe and bonita flakes. There is a kind of dressing, but it barely moistens the other ingredients. This is accompanied by six pieces of sashimi (raw tuna, yellow tail, octopus, and cooked eel). There is no rice and I drink water with this meal. The liberal use of wasabe guarantees a fiery finish to each bite of fish. This has become my main meal of the day. I seldom eat more than four or five ounces of meat per day anymore, and have replaced cookies, cupcakes, pie, and York Peppermint Patties with peaches, plums, and slices of melon.

Above — "Konne Salad" incorporates the rawest and freshest ingredients available on a daily basis. This is a fish , lettuce, and cabbage salad, garnished with salmon row and bonita flakes. It is barely moistened with an Asian-style dressing and presents a nice change from the lettuce and tomato salads I make at home.

The net result is that I have been losing something less than a half-pound every other day. This doesn’t sound like much but it assumes a different perspective when you consider my arthritis prevents me from exercising, and that the scales has been climbing the other way for 20 years. I cannot be the first person to find himself in this situation, and I won’t be the last. But I am determined to help other fatties like myself, who are no longer content to be regarded as big, sweaty, shapeless bags of shit, who can barely mount their motorcycles.

Above — "Today's Plate, Tomorrow's Bait," this "diet plate" features the finest cuts of raw tuna, yelow tail, salmon, octopus, and eel (cooked). With the salad, this has become my main meal of the day, three days out of the week. It has started to become over-filling, which means I will eliminate the salmon in the weeks to come.

I have devised the Jack Riepe “Special K-75 Lifestyle Regimen.” It is not a diet, nor is it a concentrated exercise program. It is a radical new philosophy that uses the basic elements of mental persuasion that is so effective in the North Korean political penal system.

Step #1:Take Accurate Stock of Yourself!

How can you tell if you are a fatty?

If you are a man and resemble the Capitol Building when you lay on your back, than you are a fatty. If you are a woman of average height, and your profile is dramatically different from that of Courtney Cox on “Cougar Town,” then you’re getting there. Male fatties come in three sizes:

Overt Slabatiousness — You are too fat to participate in social events in which animal magnetism is a driver for conversation or reproduction;
• Symptoms: you’re more interested in the free lunch at the BMW dealer’s open house then in looking at the hottest women’s asses in leather pants waiting to mount the S100RR.

Obvious Bloatosis — You're so fat that everyone concludes you are also stupid, disgusting to be near in a warm crowded room, and least likely to have any insight about anything other than food; if you have a job, they hide you in the back;
• Symptoms: you sit on an office chair on rollers, and push yourself back 300 feet, using binoculars to check the oil level in your K-75 sight window, as opposed to getting down on your knees to do it.

Fat Shitbagitis — This where you are so fucking fat that without the physical constraints of your clothing (something no one ever wants to think about), you take on the parameters of the universe; the tides are affected by your proximity; and without a line of bullshit as long as the Great Wall of China, you become invisible to members of the opposite sex. In fact, you have almost no social standing whatsoever, especially in a species that was meant to be lean. People wonder what you would have been like if you had lived.
• Symptoms: Advanced Shapelessness and Purposelessness — You’d rather sneak out to the House of Pancakes than try and knock off a piece first thing Saturday morning, because the double ham steak and grease-soaked potatoes can’t escape by waking up. Your arms become useless for most things, like the arms on a tyranasaurus rex. All they can do is feebly direct lard-covered shit into your maw. In fact, it is easier for you to eat by shoving your head into the pots, and wiping your mouth on the stained potholders. Fatties in this phase dream of the days when they were more athletic, at 300 pounds, and could still fit up against the drive-up window at Dunkin Donuts.

Now this isn’t to say that all fatties really are stupid, evil smelling, sweat-soaked, shit-heads, incapable of rational thought and engaging conversation — but they might as well be. Society (the thin club) rationalizes that if we know all this and are still fat, then something must be wrong with us. They are correct in that regard. There may be a thousand different reasons why fatties are the way they are. None of them are good. I may succeed at losing weight this time. I cannot get up in the morning without thinking of all the years I wasted, almost 30 of them, as each meal added another layer of prison to my body. I used to think of all the really pretty women I managed to lay as a fat man... It never occurred to me that they were as magnanimous as they were romantic — and hopeful.

The truth is that eating provides a baseline level of gratification that is easily within reach, offers no challenge, threatens no refusal, and does not come with an immediate sense of failure. That sense of failure comes later, like when you have to put on last year’s suit for a wedding or a funeral, and you are forced to conclude they are someone else’s clothes... Or when you go to sit in a booth at a restaurant, and it is too tight... Or worse, when a friend pulls up in a car that is smaller than your pants.


Step #2: Stop Eating Anything That Made You Think You Felt Better Yesterday!

Before I put something in my mouth, I now check to see if it has: chocolate, butter, salt, fat, trans-fat, oxidants, bread crumbs, flour, oil, mayonnaise, corn syrup, sugar, beer batter, beer, shredded coconut, heavy cream, sour cream, coconut milk, vanilla fluff or peanut butter on it.

If so, I remind myself:

1) This is why I can’t ride my bike like the other kids.
2) This is why I look like an over-flowing toilet on hot days.
3) This is why I’m wearing those stupid jeans that say “Wide Load” on them as opposed to Aerostitch stuff.
4) This is why I feel 40 years older than I am.
5) This is why I’m going to be breathless at the top of the stairs.
6) This is why I can’t own a motorcycle that has to be kick started.
7) This is why whatever it is I have on the end of my fork is going to taste just like the dick of defeat.

Oddly enough, after running through this little realization list (especially point #7) I find I am no longer interested in eating whatever it was I thought I wanted. In fact, I now give something the pass if I have to think about it longer than 40 seconds.


Step #3: Understand why you eat!

Through thousands of years of socialization, eating has evolved into a kind of ritual. It is the forum of family gathering... It is a source of personal peace at the end of the day... It is the artistic expression of the kitchen... It breaks up the work day... It is a communion of friends... It is the foreplay of foreplay. It is all of those things, but ultimately, it is just the prelude to taking a shit. You are eating to stay awake, to fuel the body to perform a number of functions, and to accomplish specific tasks either as work or recreation. Anything else goes straight to your ass, and stays there. (An x-ray revealed 12 intact slices of my last wedding cake dead center on my left butt cheek.) I am now learning to estimate what it will take to fuel my fallen temple of a body, operating at a slight caloric loss at the end of the day.

In theory, I only need a small glass of water, and three prunes a day to survive for the next decade. The perma-fat on my body is as dense as a neutron star. Core samples of my fat, retrieved by the Wilmington Institute of Holistic Dry Cleaning, indicate there is enough energy stored in a quarter inch by 22-foot strip of my gut to air condition the Capitol building for the most productive time both Houses of Congress met last year -- about 11 minutes. But this fat is toxic and must be dissolved in something pure and green, like a slurry of celery, tomatoes, and vinegar.

Not long ago, I wrote a piece titled, “R.I.P. My Youth,” in which I described how I would like to go out, if I knew I only had three days left to live. That piece was horse shit in one major perspective, and I have changed my mind after thinking about it. I have decided that I would rather not die that way — but would like to live that way instead. Instead of dying like a biker/rock star, I’d prefer to live like Attila the Hun. All I have to do is get thin, write a book on how I did it, cash the checks, ride my bike, and get laid twice a day. I defy anyone to find the flaw in this plan.

Addendum:

Twisted Roads is again rewarding its readers with prizes! Two great prizes will be offered for the month of August: A Progressive Suspension & Tire Plugging Kit, and an EZ Tire Pressure Gauge.

1) To compete for the Progressive Suspension & Tire plugging kit, please answer this three question survey:
Do you carry a first aid kit? (Yes, Or No)
Have you ever had cause to use your first aid kit? (Yes or No)
If the answer to the above question was “yes,” did you find it adequate? (Yes or No)

Copy, cut and paste your response to jpriepe@aol.com. Mark the subject line "Tire Plugging Kit." Include your first name and email address. Winners will be selected at random and notified by e-mail.

2) To compete for the EZ Tire Pressure Gauge, just leave a comment at the end of the blog. You can even say, “This blog sucks,” but then I’ll know you were either Chris Wolfe, Scott Royer, or Michael Beattie.

To leave a comment, read through to the blog’s end (sheer torture). For those who see the comments posted, just click on the option “leave a comment.” If you click the “anonymous” option, be sure you leave a readily identifiable name so you can be announced as a winner.
If comments are not automatically listed, read through to the end of the blog. At the end you will see something like “15 comments.” Click on the word “comment”. Type in your comment in the space provided. If you click the “anonymous” option, be sure you leave a readily identifiable name so you can be announced as a winner.

• Winners for both contests will be announced on the “Twisted Roads Blog,” on Monday, August 16, 2010.
• Winners will be chosen at random.
• Relatives and former wives of the editorial staff of Twisted Roads are not eligible for prizes.
• No substitutions
• Void where prohibited
• Prizes are awarded new as they are shipped in their original packaging from the manufacturer. Twisted Roads is not responsible for any defects in awarded prizes, nor for any incidents, accidents, injuries, damages or death perceived to be caused by defective prizes. Riding a motorcycle is a dangerous activity with special risks. We all ride at our own pleasure and peril.
• Unclaimed prizes will be held a year. It is up to all contestants to read the Twisted Roads Blog dated August 16th, 2010 to see if they are winners.
• Any additional taxes or fees due on prizes are the responsibility of the winners. Twisted Roads is happy to pay for shipping and handling.
• Topless contestants who send pictures of themselves usually do a lot better at winning prizes. My email address is posted on my blog. (I dare you.)

©Copyright Jack Riepe 2010
AKA The Lindbergh Baby (Mac Pac)
AKA Vindak8r (Motorcycle Views)