Bustin' Loose and Waving My Tool Around

Some things are the embodiment of summer.

Jersey tomatoes and sweet Jersey corn are prime examples of rare and incredibly delicious produce available only in July and August. The “Beefsteak” Tomato commonly reaches the weight of one pound apiece. They are juicy to the point where they crack and burst. Their pure tomato taste defies description. Once you eat one or two of these — nestled in a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich (where the bacon is the thick sliced, hickory-smoked variety and each tomato slice is nearly larger than the slice of bread — you will easily forego tomatoes throughout the rest of year. Largely because you will remember how these taste, and all others will taste like shit. (And this includes the bright red, fancy, virtually tasteless, still-on-the-vine, hot-house variety flown in from Holland and Israel.)

Jersey corn is a sweet culinary treat that surpasses the most elegant chocolate.

Dropped into pure boiling water — to which absolutely nothing has been added — and roiled in the bubbles for exactly 2 minutes, before being smeared with French-quality baking butter and sprinkled with a little sea salt, renders this farm staple the food of the Gods. While “Silver Queen” is the most common name attached to white corn sold at roadside stands, “Argent” and “White Magic” are now more commonly grown. (They are far sweeter varieties than Silver Queen.) Even more traditional New Jersey yellow corn is still at the zenith of the corn-grower’s art. But this corn is available only in late July and August, when the heat oppresses the Garden State like Congress aggravates the voting public. And with real estate in New Jersey sold by the teaspoon, a staggering number of farms have been converted into sterile real estate developments with names like, “Bird Shit Run At Pheasant Woods.” That means less corn and fewer Beefsteak tomatoes year after year.

Now the average Twisted Roads gentle reader will undoubtedly be puzzled, thinking, “Can Jack be writing pleasant things about New Jersey, the state where he grew up and fled as soon as he was able?” The answer is “Yes.” Credit must be given where credit is due. Nothing says “summer” like Jersey tomatoes and sweet corn. (And at some point in the future, I will write about New Jersey diners, pizza and hot dogs too. In no other state are these complex elements elevated to an art form as they are in New Jersey. And God bless the Garden Apartment State for these small but significant cultural wonders.)

It is hard to believe that the most densely populated state in the Union, where traffic routinely ties itself in endless knots, where the chemical industry, the oil industry, and others blot the landscape, where garbage dumps and landfills tower over roadways, produces the best tasting produce in the United States. (And I have eaten corn grown in Nebraska, Iowa, and Kansas. I have tasted tomatoes in California, Mexico, and the south. New Jersey has them all beat.)

The third embodiment of summer is the steamed Maryland blue crab. Chesapeake Bay has been famous for these for generations, though they can be found in other places. “Crab Houses” are traditional shack-like restaurants where the Maryland Blue crab is dusted with Old Bay seasoning, and steamed to perfection. Low on amenities and big on taste, local crab house fortunes have been built on secret spice combinations and having the best-tasting, freshest, sweetest blue crabs to be had. Most also offer shrimp too.

Above: The Blue Claw crab is one of the most delightful culinary experiences of the summer. Illustration from the internet.

The blue crab is served without fanfare. The table is covered with brown paper — or even old newspaper — and the crabs, usually a dozen, bright red with seasoning and steaming hot, are either dumped loose or presented in a discarded cardboard box. Patrons are presented with nut crackers (for effect) and little wooden mallets (for effectiveness). Then the madness begins. Claws and legs are pulled off and sucked clean. A pull tab on the bottom of each shell (the apron) is yanked, which makes it easy to separate the top shell (discarded) from the bottom, which contains the sweetest white meat. In minutes, patron’s lips are coated with pungent Old Bay.

Above: The underside of the Blue Claw crab, clearly showing the "pull tab" that releases the shell halves. What other food comes with its own opener? Picture from the internet.

While there are a dozen “crab houses” within 100 miles of here (West Chester, Pa), the majority of them are bullshit, low-quality seafood restaurants, offering the ambiance of bus station dining, while skating on fading local fame. And some of the better ones are not on the water. My objective last Saturday was to put together a little ride, within a 70-mile radius, to a decent crab shack. With summer officially ending on September 23rd, I only had a few of these weekend rides left. I had wanted to do at least two a month in July and August, but the stagnant column of heat (well into the mid to high 90’s) towering over this part of the country took the fun out of riding with body armor.

Above: The Blue Claw crab is served with prolaterian elegance. Photo from the internet.

I was to meet four riders at the local Starbucks, for a 60-mile run down to the Tap Room at Chesapeake City. This is a charming little town on the Chesapeake Canal. The Tap Room was rumored to have great steamed crabs, though there were mixed reviews on other aspects of the menu. Crabs were priced at $56 a dozen (average). This run met my immediate criteria of being fairly close, offering very pretty scenery (though the salt marshes of Delaware), and ending in a neat little community with steamed crabs in a somewhat nautical setting. James Sterling, Gerry Cavanaugh, Matt Piechota, and Dick Brgstein were all seasoned riders with a taste for crab, and the best company anyone could ask for.

Above: The author digging into a dozen steamed crabs at Captain Bob's Crab Shack four years ago. I was much fatter then. The crabs were $62 a dozen. Photo by Dick Bregstein

My 1995 BMW K75 motorcycle fired up and went into gear as it has done countless times before. It’s reassuring whine rose and fell like a Gregorian chant, as its tires traced the familiar route down to Exton. Less than a mile from the house, however, my eyes were glued to a warning light glowing like a hot rivet. The only light of the five on this dash to ever have come on, other then during the computerized system self-test, was the gas light. And now the alternator failure light was as bright as neon.

I didn’t know what to think.

Nothing ever goes wrong on this machine. Even with a bad cooling fan modulator (relay), the bike never came close to overheating. I glanced over to the voltmeter: it was dark. No reading. And then the engine quit. Naturally, this happened on a curve, on a busy country thoroughfare (Boot Road), with no shoulder and uneven pavement ending on grassy lawns. My emergency training took over in a second.

“Fuck this,” I whispered into my helmet.

I waved traffic around me as the machine came to a halt. Less than 40 seconds had passed since the light came on, and there were now 270 cars behind me. The dashboard was as dead as Kelsey’s nuts. In a simple stall, the idiot lights would have come on. I pulled in the clutch and hit the starter. Nothing happened. Although I was less than a mile from home, it was all uphill. “How am I gonna push this bitch back to the garage,” I thought. “Especially with my arthritis.”

Above: On the way to a crab run with Dick Bregstein in 2006, the author is astride his beloved "Blueballs," a 1986 BMW K75 (with the rare Sprint Fairing). Photo by Dick Bregstein.

The sudden death of the engine, coupled with the scant warning of the alternator light told me the problem was electrical. This most likely meant something stupid... Like a fuse or a loose wire. I checked the “kill” switch. It was centered in the “run” position. I switched off the ignition, and let the poor dead bike sit a minute. Then I switched the ignition back on.

All systems came up normally."WTF," I thought gratefully.

I hit the little green button and the bike restarted instantly. The gear shift indicator showed I was in 4th. I got back down into first and pulled out into traffic. There was no question of the next step: I headed back to the garage. The best place to deal with an issue like this would be in the shade, close to a cooler full of cold drinks, where I had access to my tools.

Safe in the driveway, I called the boys.

Above: This shocking scene greated Dick Bregstein, Gerry Cavanaugh, Matt Piechota, and Jim Sterling when they arrived at the garage — the author has his tool out and was attempting to provide emergency service to his own bike. Note the author is still really fat and grotesque, but not like he was seven weeks ago. Twisted Roads reader Monica McDowell summed it by saying, "You can really see a difference. Your head is not quite as fat as it was." Photo by Matt Piechota, who may never be the same.

One is a former electrical engineer for Boeing. Another has a degree in electrical engineering. The third one has a K75, though he rides a GS. And Bregstein stayed in a Holiday Inn Express once, and felt qualified in many respects. To a man, they were coming. Now all of these guys know me well. They know my riding limitations and they are authorities on my mechanical inability. But with the issue as simple as a loose connection, I had to step up the plate and start running through the possibilities myself. When the troops arrived, I had the bike apart, the Clymer book in one hand, and my tool in the other.

Checking the battery connections is easy.

All you have to do is remove the seat lock mechanism and extract the Motronic brain. The later is the device that costs $23,000,000 and regulates the orbits of the planets (when it is not monitoring the ignition, the fuel pump, and the fuel injectors). Jim Sterling watched me remove a tiny little nut with a needle-nose pliers and said, “Step aside. You’re hurting that bike.”

Naturally, the battery connections were tight. So was the Motronic brain plug. (At least it was before I pulled it out to get to the battery.) So were the wires going into the dual fuse boxes. So were the connections on the alternator. No fuses were loose or popped. A multi-meter (carried by Gerry Cavanaugh on his GS) measured the battery output at 12.8 volts. Whenever something craps out on a motorcycle, some guy always asks, “Did you put a meter on it?” This question is usually posed when there are other guys standing around, looking at you, even though they already know the answer by the amount of sweat pooling on your forehead. And saying, “I don’t have a meter,” is like admitting you have a small dick. So when this episode was over, I went out and bought two cheap multi-meters at Radio Shack ($10 each). One will stay on the bike while the other is consigned to the garage tool chest (the red one on wheels, with 10 drawers of tools, like the kind favored by guys with big dicks).

The boys bestowed on me the kind of sympathetic expressions they would share with an unsuspecting dope, rich in the unspoken recognition that I might be dealing with a partially broken strand of copper hair in the 108-miles of buried K75 wiring.

Some ideas seem to be electric in themselves. Five guys were all looking at the same motorcycle, and all of us focused on the same thing, at the same time: the clock. "If the bike lost electrical power," asked Bregstein, "then why is the clock still reading the correct time?" Since the clock had't crapped out, that meant the problem was between the relays and the engine.

“I had a cooling fan module replaced last week,” I said, “But that wouldn’t have anything to do with the engine.” The engineers looked at me like shit was leaking from my head.

With the efficiency of assembly-line welding robots, they popped up the K75’s gas tank and exposed the closed relay box underneath. Every electrical circuit in the world works better with a relay. The brand new gray cooling fan module looked perfectly innocuous and sat as tightly as a cork in a champagne bottle. Then Jim Sterling, the electrical wizard lately from Boeing Helicopter, began probing the other 34 relays. (I wrote that to be funny. There really aren’t 34 relays on a BMW K75. There are 63.)

“Ooooh,” said Jim. “That one slid down down into the connector significantly.”

“Which one was it,” asked Gerry Cavanaugh. He had the Clymer book open to an illustration of the relay box. “Was it relay number 4 or relay number 32?”

“What’s the difference,” I asked.

“Relay number 4 controls the lights on the Christmas tree of the White House lawn, and number 32 is secret, carrying the seal of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,” said Cavanaugh.

We were an hour dicking around with my bike in the garage. The boys held a hurried conference, speaking in muffled tones.

“What’s the verdict,” I asked.

“We’re hungry and want to go eat, yet feel marginally badly about leaving you here,” said Matt Piechota. “But we’ll get over it.”

“Ride the bike,” intoned Sterling.

Once again, the K75 started flawlessly. The truth is that this machine may never have this problem again, because it could have been a loose connection in the relay box. Or, it could have been a loose wire on the keyed ignition... Or it could have been dirt or crap at work in the kill switch; in which case, the clock is ticking.

We decided not to head to Chesapeake City (65 miles distant), but to Crab Crazy, a little steaming Blue Claw shit house on RT. 662 (22 miles away). Dick Bregstein and I have had crabs here before, and will again. The crabs have been good, and so has the shrimp. Pretty girls occasionally wait tables there too. The place has all the appeal of an ice cream stand because it is that as well. The ride up was quick and hot, with temperatures in the low 90’s. The K75 ran fine. We met Ron Yee, the Mac Pac’s newest member and his “R” bike waiting for us in the parking lot.

Ron just bought this bike a couple of months ago. Riding it back from the guy he purchased it from, Yee discovered a mouse nest buried under the fairing. He discovered it when it burst into flames. His flawless “R 1200RT” now needs a new fairing, as the other one is toast. He laughs about this now in the best of humor. But replacing that fairing will be ten bucks more than the cost to the nation for the new healthcare program.

“Crab Krazy” will not make it into the steamed crab hall of fame.

For some reason, it took us an hour and 15 minutes to get served. (“Subpoenas are served faster than this,” said Bregstein.” ) The crabs were okay... Just okay. The shrimp was good, but our noses were already out of joint. Three of the guys ordered crab cake. Now crab cake is also a regional, Maryland thing. But even there, most places make it poorly. Crab cake should only be ordered from a restaurant where ten out of ten Supreme Court Justices swear each patty is less than 3 percent filler. That makes the average price of crab cake about $22 apiece. These crab cake sandwiches ran $8 each and were approximately 87 percent filler. The guys put a good face on it.

My ride home was feloniously fast, and the 15-year-old K75 ran flawlessly. Do the boys think it was that loose relay? Probably not. Would they tell me otherwise? Nope. They may have even staged a loose relay so I’d ride the machine with confidence. But as Brian Curry later told me, “There’s no way to tell what it was unless it happens again... And stays broke.”

I only thought writers stayed broke.

Addendum

Five days before this event, I found myself cruising the Pennsylvania Turnpike, keeping up with traffic in the left lane. It had been raining earlier, and I simply wanted to get home. Keeping up with the traffic is another way of saying “I was going like the hammers of hell.” Daydreaming a bit, I did not see a huge bump in the road and took a jolt that damn-near loosened my fillings. The bike took it real hard and caught a little air. I thought I had bent the front rim. That’s how I think that relay module got loosened. I remembered thinking, “I wonder what that shook loose.” Now I know, sort of.

I still have that yearning for crab. (Steamed crab is eaten right out of the shell plain, unlike lobster, which gets immersed in melted butter, which I cannot have.) So I am planning to visit a friend in Cape May this weekend, and sample Jersey Shore Blue Claws. As it stands, this could be some high adventure. I want to take the 17-mile long cruise on the Cape May, NJ — Lewes, DE ferry, and in will be in the wake of a passing hurricane. Rough seas could lead to a interesting time ferrying a bike.

© Copyright Jack Riepe 2010
AKA The Lindbergh Baby (Mac Pac)
AKA Vindak8r (Motorcycle Views)
AKA The Chamberlain — PS (With A Shrug)