Jumpstarting a Weekend of Motorcycles, Women and Fireworks... Part Three

For readers just joining this Twisted Roads saga of pure moto adventure and romance like broken glass, Part One can be found here, followed by Part Two here.

Synopsis:
Crashed Independence Day plans (1976) and a smut in the eye from a squeeze turned rogue were reversed by a chance meeting with a hot brunette, who ran aground in a canoe on the Delaware River. In the last episode, I ended up with a naked brunette in my arms, yet succumbed to a full day in the saddle, the summer’s heat, and a half-bottle of Jameson’s Irish Whiskey. The question before the gentle reader is “What happened in the morning?”

“The Fuse Burns Short...”

Most of my legendary hang-overs start with a low buzzing in my head. On this day, the buzzing was palpably lifting my hair. Opening my eyes, I realized it was the whirring of the electric fan aimed at the bed. It was Saturday morning, July 3, 1976. The first full day of the July 4th weekend, and I had just spend the night in bed with a naked beauty, who knew a million snappy comebacks, who was sophisticated enough to introduce to my mom, and hot enough to make my riding buddies jealous.

And still I awakened alone in bed...

I knew she hadn’t left as her jeans, hiking boots and purse were in a pile. And I knew no one carried her off as I hadn’t been awaked by anyone cursing and swearing while trying to start one of the English or Italian bikes in the driveway. But somewhere in that house, a sultry brunette was tiptoeing around without her pants and I found the idea fascinating. The antique knob on the bedroom door (that was already at retirement age in the Lincoln administration) turned loosely, prompting me to close my eyes, lest I do anything stupid like yield my position in bed.

I heard the door swing open, and close again, as the aroma of fresh coffee filled the room, accompanied by the scent of Lifebouy soap, like someone had just stepped out of the shower, holding a cup of java.

Then the box spring gave a metallic sigh as the mattress yielded to another presence.

“I know you’re awake,” she said. “You have a hard-on.”

There are times when continued posturing is pointless in the face of overwhelming evidence.

“I always have a hard-on,” I replied, opening my eyes. “It was very embarrassing for my mother the day I was born.”

“Why? Did some other kid have a bigger one?” she asked, leaning over to kiss me.

“Not for another 18 years, and he was Black.”

“Well the important thing is that you tried,” she muttered, nuzzling my neck. “And I have one word for you...”

“Then it’s hyphenated if it is the word I have in mind,” I said. “Otherwise, it’s two.”

“That word is ‘shower...’ Go take one.”

I sat upright and noticed the two chipped, mismatched coffee cups. One was your usual summer-house mug. The other was an oversized cup that was more like a small bowl with a handle on it. It bore the faded picture of a waterfall over the legend “Souvenir of Shohola Falls, Pa.

“What made you pick that one?” I asked. It was the cup I always used whenever I spent the night here.

“Stitches had the coffee ready when I came out of the bathroom. It’s really strong. He said to give the big one to ‘Sunshine.’”

“Your cup has an ounce of Kahlua in it,” I said. “This one has about three ounces in it. It’s how coffee is made around here.”

It would be like Stitches to get up first and have the coffee ready in the kitchen... It would be really like him to pour it in my cup. If you look hard, you can find the thumbprints of your real friends everywhere.

I got up to shower, grabbing her jeans and top under my arm.

“Where are you going with those?” she asked, with a quizzical smile.

“I’m taking these with me so you don’t get too far ahead of the program.”

Stitches had a weekend tradition... No sympathy for hangovers. It was barely 8am and the music began to throb. Twin 6-foot-tall speakers on the porch thundered Steppenwolf’s “Born To Be Wild.”

She was poised on the end of the bed like an early nude photograph taken by Gordon Ball, when I returned smelling of Lifebuoy myself. She’d brushed her dark hair back, yet it fell about my face like a damp curtain as she kissed my throat and mouth, working her way south. Her kisses had the sting of hot wax, as she led with her teeth, and then her tongue.

Steppenwolf crashed into "Magic Carpet Ride,” and I surrendered an inch at a time, like a fuse that had been smoldering for 20 years — before the explosion.

Our room was in the front of the house, with one window, with one thin screen, and one set of filmy curtains separating us from the porch.

“What the hell is going on in there,” yelled Louie.

“I found the kick starter on the Kawasaki rider,” she yelled back. And in a much lower voice she said to me, “Now I have to wash my hair again.”

I swaggered off to find another cup of coffee and was in the process of pouring it when the music suddenly cut out. A sheriff’s officer was on the porch, speaking in low but earnest tones with Stitches, his patrol car running in the driveway.

It seems someone passing on the road reported a dead, naked body on the lawn. Stitches was no stranger to the cops and he wore the appropriate look of shock and surprise. He and the officer took a walking tour of the premises, where they found a stupored Weasel hosing off a topless but pantied “Peaches,” behind the house.

“You can’t see her from the road,” said Stitches, “And she certainly isn’t dead.”

The cop agreed, tipped his hat and left.

“That asshole Fast Freddie got bombed out of his mind last night and rolled off the porch stark naked. He came to a stop in the center of the lawn,” said Stitches. “Louie and I dragged him into the chicken coop. He has been bitten by every bug in this county — twice. We should play it smart and ride out to breakfast. That cop will be back in a bit to look us over again. He’ll find nuthin’ and then it will be no big deal.”

I was not in favor of the group ride. Since it looked like we were going to be together for another night, I was just as happy to get lost with my new love interest. But that decision could be announced over breakfast. Then again, it would be presumptuous on my part to make any plans without asking her. There were no cell phones in 1976... I’m sure she wanted to ride back and check in with her friends.

The brunette stepped out in hiking boots, jeans, and a tee shirt. “Stitches had a clean tee laying around here that just happened to be a woman’s small,” she said, looking over at Smidgeon’s ample hooters.”

“A friend of a friend left it here.” smiled Stitches. “Her loss.”

“How do you feel about breakfast,” I asked the brunette.

“I’m all for it unless it means sticking up a gas station, in which case we should wear masks. ”

The July heat precluded anyone wearing from wearing a coat, and that included the one guy who had a leather jacket. (It was 1976.) The other guys and their pillion riders mounted, while I just sat on the porch steps and finished my coffee.

“Aren’t we going for breakfast, too?” she asked.

“We have time.”

The Triumph Trident wouldn’t start. Stitches searched out a can of starting ether, and they got it going about 15 minutes later. By that time, we were in the saddle with the engine running.

Some say breakfast is the most important part of the day. With a morning like this, who could think anything bad would come of breakfast? The day was perfectly clear, hot, and sunny. Yet I swore I heard thunder.

Part Four of the “Jumpstarting A Weekend of Motorcycles, Women and Fireworks...” will be presented on Monday, June 27th.

Author’s Note: Two special holiday editions of Twisted Roads, commemorating the start of the summer will run this weekend. Saturday will feature pictures sent in by Twisted Roads readers, plus long -gnored correspondence.

©Copyright Jack Riepe 2011
All rights reserved

Jumpstarting A Weekend Of Motorcycles, Women and Fireworks... Part Two

Synopsis:
My Independence Day plans had gone belly-up earlier in the week, when my steady squeeze announced she’d been boning one of my riding buddies. She said that we could be friends and have dinner out occasionally, to help get me through being suddenly dumped.

“Will I still be able to get an occasional trombone solo to get through being suddenly dumped?” I asked.

The blank look on her face explained the limited benefits of the “friends” program, and I realized I had to get out of town or go out of my mind. I took advantage of a standing invitation to visit my friend “Stitches,” at his place on the Upper Delaware, in Pennsylvania. In the first part of this story, I politely declined the opportunity to spend the weekend with a well-seasoned go-go dancer, and went off on my own.

I suggest newcomers please read the first part of this piece to make sense of this story. Please click here.

“The Fireworks..." My Fuse Is Lit

The light and noise of the bar leeched into the cool darkness of the parking lot, which was jammed with cars for the July Fourth weekend. The saloon adjoined a campground on the upper Delaware River, around Barryville, NY, where it was obvious the festivities were running rampant among the tents. It was the Bicentennial Year and the campgrounds had been taken over by college kids, who were celebrating as if they had just gone through the winter at Valley Forge with George Washington. And against all odds, I was leaving the gin mill with a pretty young thing (about my age at the time), whom I’d met earlier in the day.

I opened the ruck sack on the sissy bar and pulled out a beat up army fatigue jacket. The coat was over 30 years old, and had been worn by my dad in the Second World War. “Put this on," I said. "It’ll be cold along the river tonight." Then I handed her the brain bucket.

She slipped her head into the helmet — a barely adequate open-faced affair, common in the mid-seventies — without sniffing it. I regarded this as a really good sign. Women who start sniffing things around bikers are almost always going to be disappointed. But in this case, that helmet still carried the perfumed scent of the hair of the last pillion rider. Life is usually better with fewer explanations. The helmet’s “D” rings threw her, as they do most first-time riders, and she tried to tie the webbed strap to the little metal rings.

“This isn’t right, is it?” she asked.

“Allow me,” I said. “The strap goes through both rings then passes back through the first one again. Is that too tight?”

Her response was a smile and a half-shake of her head.

I mounted the 1975 Kawasaki H2, kicked it into life, and snapped down the passenger’s pegs. She climbed onto the pillion and pushed back against the sissy bar.

“This is real easy," I explained. "Lean with the bike. Hang on tight if I tap your knee once, and ease up if I tap twice.”

I took it easy coming out of the parking lot, and brought it up through the gears without threading the tach needle. Some guys think women are impressed by the sound of an engine in torment and death-defying maneuvers. Not me. Whenever I sincerely conned a woman onto the pillion, I wanted her to experience the sensation of flight just above the ground, without a thought to sliding on it. I wanted to immerse the lady in sight, sound, and smell — which makes riding a motorcycle one of life’s great pleasures. On a motorcycle, foreplay starts with the ride. The woman leans forward, puts her arms, around the rider’s waist, and the action begins. My thought was always to prolong this action, to extend this sensation, to get the woman used to holding onto me as her heart began to race, and then to win that race.

There was no thought given to auxiliary riding lights in 1975. My headlight pierced the darkness with a solitary beam that shuddered with each imperfection in the road, with every vibration, with every surge in amperage as the rpm climbed and fell. While this effect was not quite a flicker, it was more of a high-speed luminescent stutter. But it added to the illusion of speed that night, when I barely broke 50 miles per hour.

We were about to take a sweeping curve above the river at Narrowsburg, NY, so I reached down and tapped her knee. (This was far from the kind of turn that would require extra hanging-on, but she wouldn’t know that, especially in the dark.) The response was a tightening of her arms around my waist. I leaned the bike into a long right turn — that seemed to go on forever at 45 miles per hour. The road straightened out to parallel the river, which had been dyed silver by the moon.

I reached down and slowly tapped her leg three times.

There was a second’s hesitation, and she yelled, “What does three taps mean?”

“It means I like your leg,” I yelled back.

Her response was a brief tightening of her arms around my waist.

“Watch this,” I yelled.

And in that instant, I switched off the headlight.

It was utter darkness for a second, and then the full power of the moon became obvious. Every detail of the road, the trees alongside, and the banks of the river acquired a crystal clarity in soft white light. The road began to drop down to the level of the water, and that feeling of descending, coupled with the sound of the motor, plus the sudden coolness of the air coming off the river, all in the surrounding moonlight, was positively surreal. I was almost carried away myself. Yet I was the maestro, spinning all of these things into one setting for a great line. And if I played it right, no line would be necessary. The motorcycle would do the talking.

Flicking the light back on revealed the turnoff for the bridge to Damascus, Pa. We crossed the river in a spiderweb of shadow, created by the bridge work in the moonlight. The first left brought us to a narrow road that flirted with the river in little curves and dips. It became a roller coaster ride in not-quite-slow motion. As brilliant as the river was in the moonlight, this road was black as pitch due to the overhang of the trees and a steep ridge on the right. Yet there was a point with an open field on each side. We had no sooner hit this clear spot, than a skyrocket shot up over the trees and burst.

“That’s our party,” I said.

The driveway up to the house was semi-paved by large pieces of round stone pushed deep into the dirt. It was like an old Roman road, constructed on a day when the old Roman’s didn’t give much of a damn.

There were three other bikes parked next to “Stitche’s" Ducati, and there were the silhouettes of men and women sitting by a campfire and drinking. They may have been talking, but if they were, their voices were drowned out by the strains of The Doors, pouring from two six-foot tall banks of speakers. Another rocket shot straight up, leaving a trail of sparks, before bursting with a loud bang.

Stitches was firing off the rockets, and “Smidgeon,” (the exotic dancer we snatched from the bar earlier), was again dancing, and again wearing nothing but really tiny shorts and suspenders. “Christie,” Smidgeon’s friend (whom I had decided was too hard-boiled for me) was paired up with another guy, who’d ridden in on a Norton. The other two ladies were genuine pillion candy. One was wearing chaps to protect her legs and a leather halter top to protect her hooters (in the event of a crash). She was with a guy on a Triumph Trident. The remaining woman had her hair in two long braids... She was in jeans and wearing a leather vest, that did little to conceal a huge rack. She was rolling a joint as big as my forefinger, while sitting in the lap of the remaining rider, who had a brand new Moto Guzzi,

I knew the other guys well enough to drink their liquor, and well enough to know they’d finish mine. They were “Louie, Weasel,” and “Fast Freddie.” (It was said that “Fast Freddie” could steal a Jarvic 7 Mechanical Heart without missing a beat.) The other two girls were “Peaches” and “Sindy.”

I introduced my friend, who looked a bit like a Korean War orphan in the oversize army jacket. But she had a much softer way about her than the other women, and a keener sense of humor.

“Do you want me to come back with bigger tits?” she whispered to me.

She fit in easily with this crowd... Without asking questions nor giving too much information. At one point, she did comment (to me), “So this is a biker party?”

“No,” I said. “This is a Fellini movie without a plot.”

She eventually noticed a sinister undercurrent, and asked about my motorcycle. “All of these guys seem to be your friends, yet they feel your bike is a piece of shit. What makes yours different?”

“It is the wolf pack syndrome in reverse,” I replied. “It is a case of the weakest minds attempting to overpower the alpha dog. I have the only Japanese bike here. And not only is it the fastest, but mine is the only one that will start in the morning without fifteen minutes of swearing. It emasculates them.”

The guys were fairly free with the pot and after taking a few hits, my companion asked me if there was any coke thereabouts. “You want me to see if these guys have any blow,” I said, registering mild surprise.

“No, just Coke... To mix with this,” she answered, pulling a pint of rum from her purse. “I didn’t want to put my mouth on the same bottle that Christie was passing around. Fast Freddie said he had to relieve himself and I think she did it for him.”

The last of the sky rockets had been shot off into space and the campfire had burned to embers by 3am. Christie and Fast Freddie were wrapped up in a blanket on the porch, while Stitches and Smidgeon had disappeared inside. The other two couples were headed up to a communal loft.

“Want me to take you back now?” I asked.

“Only if we have to share a room with these guys.”

Stitches had a first come, first reserved policy, and I’d been there in daylight. We had the only other bedroom on the first floor. The bed was a 40-year-old metal-framed antique, and slightly concave in the center. The sheets were clean and crisp, but the only light in the room was a blue lava lamp from the ’60’s.

“Where’s the bathroom and can I use your toothbrush?” she asked.

It was at the end of the hall, and while the door was functional, it didn’t lock. “I want you to hold it shut,” she said. “From inside.”

The house was originally built in the early 1800’s. The bathroom was added to the inside sometime after World War I. It’s designer may have been the same person who built the clown car for the circus, or a midget. It was about the size of a bathroom on a commercial jet, with a shower. I expected to watch a brunette brush her teeth. First, she put her arms around my neck and kissed me, tracing my lower lip with her tongue. Then she dropped her jeans and sat to pee. With her hands modestly folded in her bare lap, she leaned forward and said, “Guys get themselves all worked up over the first kiss, and whether or not they are going to see some snatch. This pretty much takes care of it, don’t cha think?”

She stood and tugged a pair of pale blue panties up to her tee shirt, then stepped out of her jeans. She washed her face and hands, and brushed her teeth with my toothbrush. The late great poet, Richard Brautigan, once wrote that there was nothing quite like having a woman padding around in the kitchen, bare-assed, making you breakfast for the first time.

This was close.

When I brushed my teeth, it was like getting kissed again.

The bed sounded like an accordion of springs when we climbed into it, but what followed was pleasantly anticlimactic. Instead of the frenetic coupling that was going on all over the place, we delighted in a deepening of kisses. Her mouth tasted of mint toothpaste and a trace of rum. She was game, but I was beat, and there was the promise of a great morning.

I awakened some time before dawn and found her sprawled across my shoulder. I could feel her breathing on my neck, while the last of the moonlight fell across her naked form. She had the body of a swimmer, and perfect, little athletic breasts.

Just a day before, I’d been miserable... Left by a woman who’d been screwing one of my riding buddies... Facing the best weekend of the summer without a place to go. Now I was having a great time... Out on my bike... Carousing with friends... In bed with a hot brunette... And there were still three full days left to this holiday weekend. I couldn’t help but think this woman could be the lover of a lifetime.

There is one great lesson that should always be remembered, however... The motorcycle gods giveth... And the motorcycle gods taketh away.

To be concluded on Thursday, May 26th.

Author's note:
I missed last Thursday's blog and was late with Monday's. The reason was that I needed to clear my head... And to come clean with a story that should have been told years ago. If you don't mind, please take the new opinion poll at the top of the blog page.

©Copyright Jack Riepe 2011.

The K75 Whisperer...

My significant other — Leslie (whom I call “Stiffie” just because I like the way it sounds) — is a good-natured, beauty of a woman who can see the humor in most anything (like the time the dog grabbed the hose from her hand and ran around soaking everything and everybody). Stiffie and I have been together a long time (twice as long as any of my previous marriages) despite the fact that we are not married. I ask her to marry me every Thursday at 4pm and she just smiles, then shakes her head “no.” She once philosophized, “Why would I buy a hog just to occasionally have a foot of sausage? My response, “To keep others from running off with that sausage,” caused her to raise an eyebrow, and spawned the riposte “Since when did marriage ever stop you from doing anything?”

There is no point in arguing with this woman when she insists on confronting heartfelt emotion with cold, hard fact.

I have explained in previous stories that I now ride a motorcycle because Stiffie insisted we get them. As the hardened, but dedicated Twisted Roads reader will recall, Stiffie had gotten caught in the moto-melee of Sturgis, South Dakota during the height of the summer’s Harley Rally, while driving home from concluding some business in the Pacific Northwest. Her call from the epic-center of leather, chrome, and thundering noise was brief. “Jack,” she said, “I’m getting a motorcycle as soon as I get home. You should get one too.”

Now guys... When was the last time the woman in your life insisted you get a motorcycle? I danced around in the kitchen, wearing nothing but war paint, for 24 hours. Then I sacrificed a quart of rum to the motorcycle gods, by passing it through my kidneys.

Stiffie was like a women possessed. She looked at Triumph’s, Suzuki’s and finally Harley’s. The Harley dealer had the most savvy approach, insisting she sit on the bikes in the showroom — while starting them up. She got the full benefit of the sight, the sound, and the vibration of the legendary Motor Company Machine. But she didn’t see in reality what she had envisioned in her mind... Until she stopped by the local Honda dealer. There on the showroom floor was a white and silver pearlescent Honda Aero Shadow (750cc). She sat on it, and checked the machine’s balance. When she glanced at me, her eyes had that same look that “Mina” had, after she’d danced with Dracula for a bit (Winona Ryder in the 2009 version of Dracula).

It wasn’t long before that bike was in the garage, complete with auxiliary lighting, a windshield, an aftermarket Mustang saddle, saddle bags, a Steeble/Nautilus compact air horn, and special tail-lighting. It was the perfect machine for an Elvis impersonator. And she looked great on it. Shortly thereafter, I acquired a 1986 BMW K75. I bought this bike because friends of mine Shanghaied me into it. Compared to the “Shadow,” the K75 was the most peculiar-looking motorcycle I had ever seen. The bike transcended ugly... It was “fugly.” My BMW-riding friends insisted this was the motorcycle for me to get... And I only got it because the owner at the time insisted he wouldn’t take a cent less than $5000 dollars (for a 19-year-old fugly BMW). So I offered him $4600, and this bunko artist said “yes” faster than I could blink.

Above: Leslie's Honda Aero Shadow — Fully tricked out and ready to roll. Photo by Leslie Marsh.

Leslie and I began with the compulsory rides around the neighborhood, and slowly added the byways and farm roads of Amish Lancaster to our repertoire. Sometimes Stiffie would take the lead, and every Harley rider that passed would give her a big wave. I’d wave too. It is easy to mistake a fully farkled Honda Aero Shadow for a Harley in a split second, and once the mistake is realized most guys are thrilled to get a warm smile and a wave from a chic on a bike. Not so with a BMW K75. To the uninitiated, the K75 looks like it’s constipated, or gives the impression of an honor student who’s just been kicked in the balls by a varsity football player. The waves quickly became extended fingers, sometimes followed by a loogie in flight. I got hit with lit cigarettes on several occasions. One rider u-turned and caught up to us to make sure the guy on the constipated giraffe wasn’t bothering the nice lady.

Above: Leslie and some guy on the back of her 2005 Honda Aero Shadow at Christmas. The "Santa" figure is a handmade doll and part of "Stiffie's" holiday decorations. Photo by the author.

Above: My 1986 BMW K75 was the farthest thing from the classic lines of Stiffie's Honda Aero Shadow, and peculiar-looking too... In the beginning. Now I know better. Photo by Leslie Marsh.

On the occasions when I led, the image of Stiffie following behind me — in her pink leathers or her silver mesh jacket — became a kind of visual foreplay. I liked the way she looked, framed in my Napoleon bar mirrors. The rides with Stiffie were a lot more interesting than the runs I took by myself. She’d feel compelled to pull over and snap a picture of something cool; or stop to admire an old barn, or even a scene unfolding between people. One of these was of an aged Amish farmer, trudging along behind a single mule, guiding a plow that turned over one furrow at a time. Leading the mule was a young Amish woman, her face hidden by a bonnet. She held the animal by its halter and seemed to keep it from moving too fast for the elderly man.

We were a hundred yards or better away from this field, with the bikes parked beneath a clump of trees. And even though we were not readily visible, Stiffie refused to take a picture. She felt it was an intrusion that we were even watching this moment straight out of American Gothic.

“He is probably her grandfather, and this one-acre plot is what they rely on for vegetables in the summer, and for some extra money raised through a little produce stand by the side of the road,” said Stiffie. “He might be a furniture-maker by day, starting at dawn, working the wood with hundred-year-old tools, with handles worn smooth from three generations of men, yet with edges that are razor sharp. And she thinks of an Amish man who might be courting her, but she helps her grandfather, in this little field, in the last hours of daylight.”

“I think she is his wife through some sort of marriage arranged at midnight, for which her destitute parents were cut a break on a crushing mortgage," I said. "She is forty-five years his junior and he never lets her out of his sight. When he goes to the outhouse, he makes her stand outside the door and sing. Under that bonnet is a face stained by the tracks of a thousand tears and the only other living thing she has to talk to is that mule."

Stiffie simply looked at me and said nothing for a bit. “You probably do think that,” she said, “which is indicative of how far your mental state has deteriorated. Some people see a glass as half full. You not only see it as being half empty, but undoubtedly containing something foul."

The woman left the mule and returned with a pitcher and glass, which she filled and handed to the old man.

“See,” said Stiffie. “She brought her grandfather a cool glass of lemonade.”

“Is the glass half empty?" I asked. "I bet she poisoned him."

We rode off together, passing this unique couple.

“It’s poison,” I yelled to the old guy, knowing that Stiffie couldn’t hear me over the Shadow’s growl.

Our ride took us deeper into one of the largest Amish settlements in the United States. This is a broad valley that encompasses a number of communities, some of which are quite large. Others are famous tourist attractions, like Bird in Hand, Paradise, and Intercourse. The road through Intercourse leads to Paradise, but I wonder how many of these bearded guys end up in Bird in Hand.

The road took us past farm after farm. In one field an Amish farmer, as thin as rail and wearing a straw hat, stood ramrod straight, balanced on the yolk of a plow, pulled by five enormous draft horses. These animals can weigh 1500 pounds each. Stiffie and I pulled off the pavement to watch, and it was there I pondered the question: if a draft horse is larger than one of these buggie horses, is it possible that a draft horse can be more than one horsepower? I made the mistake of pondering this out loud.

Stiffie has a sweet expression that suggests she is occasionally required to work extra hard at humoring me. Other women do this with their husbands too. We went to Paris some years ago and spend a few days touring museums and cathedrals. In the Musée de la Armée, I was explaining how French troops went to the front in cabs during WWI, and was showing one of these vehicles to Stiffie, when we passed a Frenchman and a woman, presumably his wife. He was explaining to her the innovations of the first French tank... Stiffie and the other woman, perfect strangers, caught in the perfect moment, rolled their eyes at each other in perfect understanding.

Stopped again with our bikes on the side of the road, I couldn’t help but notice that most of the Amish dairy cows seemed like storybook cattle, clean to the point where they looked groomed and contented, with their teats pulled twice a day by rosy-cheeked Pennsylvania Dutch milkmaids, who could be posing for Hummel figurines. Yet some of the other farms, undoubtedly run by Englanders, had cows that looked scruffy, unkempt, and generally disheveled. It was here I suggested to Stiffie that someone ought to be looking after these bovine charges.

Stiffie gazed at me with an especially deep level of understanding, and said, “You could do it. You could become the ‘cow whisperer.’”

“What do mean?” I asked, touched that she thought I had this ability.

“Well, horses are lean, and muscular, and sensual, as was the Robert Redford, when he played the role of the ‘Horse Whisperer. Cows are sort of docile, and lumpy, and slow moving...” Stiffie couldn’t finish her statement as she was laughing very hard. (For the record, I was laughing too.)

Back at the garage, I delayed entering the house. The bike was making that ticking, clicking sound, as the headers and block cooled off. Running my hand over the K75, which by now had revealed her true self to me as a mechanical marvel, years ahead of her time, and capable of delivering one hell of a good ride (much faster and more responsive than the bovine Aero Shadow), I found myself whispering to the bike. “Tell me your story."

I thought I heard the motorcycle communicate with me, on a level known only to BMW riders. It was more of a sensation than an expression... Though words were clearly understood. In a dream voice with a German accent (like Marlene Dietrich), the bike said to me, “Unless you slim down, what does my precise weight to horsepower ratio really matter?”

I looked to see if Leslie was hiding in the garage, and wondered if she had secretly trained as a ventriloquist. The bike and I were alone. Despite this first level of contact, I had become the K75 Whisperer. The cows could go to hell.

I had plans to ride through Maryland and upstate New York with Stiffie. Alas, they were not to be. Leslie developed a vicious case of vertigo that precluded taking banked curves on a bike. In fact, she gave up driving a car for any distance that year too. She held onto the Aero Shadow for an additional two years anyway, then reluctantly sold it. While I have had some of my best adventures driving around with Stiffie (like the week we toured Ireland in a rental car), I do miss the limited time we had on motorcycles. If it wasn’t for Leslie’s insistence, I would never have gotten another bike in my middle age, nor would I have written any of these stories. Please send your complaints to her directly. Leslie is an accomplished photographer and mixed media artist, Her work can be viewed by clicking here.

Author’s note: This blog episode was a day late in posting. This was because I opted to spend the afternoon in the garage fooling around with my K75, taking a couple of hours to wipe some polish into the paint. Towards the end of the day, I put my hand on the gas tank and whispered, “What would you say to me now?”

“This garage is some shithouse,” said my K75. "Do you plan on cleaning it any time soon?"

©Copyright Jack Riepe 2011

Two For The Road...

I was on a run with a bunch of guys down to Lewes, Delaware (several years ago), when we got caught up in a Polar Bear Run. There had to be close to 300 bikes assembled in the parking lot of a local watering hole, with more arriving every few minutes. I had no sooner gotten my feet down and my helmet off, when the atmosphere was assaulted by an endless clap of thunder that seemed to roll within itself, as close to 50 regal Harley-Davidsons arrived enmasse, jazzing their engines as they cleared a rise (steel-plated lift bridge), slowed for the turn, and pulled into the lot. I marveled at this impressive presentation of iron, chrome, and noise.

It was nothing less than a multi-sensual celebration of the ride... A combination of sight, sound, and rider solidarity expressed in two unbroken lines of Milwaukee Iron.

“Wouldn’t it be cool to do this with a long line of BMW riders,” I thought to myself. I have expressed this idea to BMW-riding pals of mine, who have invariably shrugged the concept off, preferring to ride in groups that seldom exceed four. Yet the occasion presented itself a year later, when no less than 30 riders of the Mac-Pac decided to take a lunch run to the battlefield at Gettysburg, Pa. There was no conscious decision to do this in a group, it’s just that 30 riders showed up, and managed to leave at the same time.

In deference to my arthritis, the guys agreed to take the slab west (Pennsylvania Turnpike) to Route 15 south to the historic battlefield. Gerry Cavanaugh (astride a mighty GS) followed by Horst Oberst (on another “R” bike) led the assembly in the standard staggered formation, setting the pace between 65 and 70 miles per hour. I would finally get my wish, to be part of a long line of BMW riders, bound by style, machine, philosophy, and friendship.

This was unbelievably exciting... For the first twenty minutes.

I was careful to maintain a 25-foot gap between my front tire and the back wheel of the bike that was in front of me, and to my left. My usual riding partner, Dick Bregstein, did the same, about 25-feet behind me, and to my left. Though it is a super-slab and traffic can be heavy, this stretch of the Pennsylvania Turnpike runs through farmland, which is soothing to the eyes. I know this from other rides. But on this trip, I primarily concentrated on maintaining a precise position from the machine in front of me, occasionally looking up to make sure that there were no problems in front of him. Several of the bikes in the lead were equipped with cruise control, and held a precise speed of 70 mph. I found myself giving “Fireballs” (my 1995 BMW K75) the gas to pull up a bit, and then twisting off the speed when I started to gain.

This was about as much fun as laying brick.

We were all in the right lane when a truck decided to pass us at about 71 miles per hour. That means the driver took 15 minutes to pass the entire line of bikes, boxing us in 10 at a time. Glancing in my mirror, I could see several other trucks getting left to do the same thing. It was then I gave Bregstein our special signal. I raised the middle finger on my left hand and slowly waved it. That means, “Fuck this.”

I hit my flashers for a second, signaled for a left, and broke the line with Bregstein hot on my tail. I could see Dick laughing in my mirror. The line of BMW’s fractured in an instant, with riders teaming up in groups of three or four.

Suddenly the fun was back in the ride. We were moving at speeds that were far more comfortable to each rider, or smaller groups of riders, and maneuvering like eagles instead of ducks. There were times when I was doing 70mph, and times when I was not. And none of us had the claustrophobic feeling that comes from getting boxed in by truck traffic.

Our destination for lunch was the Dobbins House, adjacent to the battlefield at Gettysburg. This is a “period-type” restaurant in which the serving staff dress up like they would have in 1864. The food was good, the service was adequate, and the company was superb. On the way back, the riders started out is smaller groups to explore various back roads on the way home.

But I had gotten the answer to my question. The reason you don’t see large assemblies of BMW riders together is that there is much more fun to be had in smaller groups. Simply stated, privateers have more options than the Armada. It could be argued that there are a lot fewer BMWs than there are other marques... But the truth is that even when larger numbers of Beemers are available, they seem to prefer each other’s company at the beginning and and of each trip. Now I know why.

©Copyright Jack Riepe 2011

All rights reserved

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A five-day ride through West Virginia was coming to an end. Though there would be a few hundred miles to cover before each of us would dismount in our respective garage, it was generally acknowledged that the adventures were over. We pointed our bikes north after the traditional farewell breakfast, and took a series of back-roads as long as these were an option. The time would come for the slab soon enough.

There is always the thought that we would pull off the road, then pull off our gloves and helmets, to properly say good-bye as each of us left formation for a home that might be 20 or 30 miles off the common ride. But it seldom works out that way. Pete Buchheit bailed first. Yet we were on one one superslab as he signaled for a right, and exited onto another. The good-bye was a cavalier wave, and a blast of horns.

The traffic on I-95 north of Baltimore that day was as thick and hot as magma. Clyde Jacobs and I cut through it, dashing from one clear spot to another, like frogs jumping on moving lilly pads, in a game of certain death. At one point, Clyde was three lanes to my right, boxed in as was I, perfectly parallel to me, doing about 75 miles per hour. I could have stepped across the hoods of cars to ask him a question.

This type of riding is hardly fun and I watched Clyde move ahead, then wave me behind him. We left the slab someplace around Bel Air, Maryland. I followed Clyde onto the shoulder of a side-road, and took a swig of cold water from a bottle he offered.

“Let’s take the back way into Pennsylvania,” said Clyde.

I was ready to give him an argument. The pain in my knees was phenomenal and now that the ride was at an end, I wanted to get home, and off this bike, as quickly as possible. But that’s not how a ride always ends. Clyde and Pete had been especially solicitous of me and my quirks on this run. It was my turn now.

“I’ll follow you,” I said.

Yet I couldn’t help noticing that the skies were darkening perceptibly, and that the wind was starting to pick up. We were riding right into a thunderstorm. Local traffic was much lighter, but we were also moving much slower. The storm broke like my last wedding vows, with a fury to match the temper of the enraged bride. It was the kind of rain that lashed down in vicious waves. Riding in mesh, I was thoroughly soaked in about 5 seconds, as was Clyde. The rain fell so furiously that it obscured visibility with its velocity, with its bombardment effect from bouncing up off the road and everything around us, and with the humid mist that rose from the heated pavement.

Clyde and I triggered the four-way flashers on our bikes at the same time. There was no real shoulder on this road and the possibility of getting whacked by a car attempting to pull over was very real. We plowed ahead through water that began to pile up against the wheels. The thought occurred to me that we might have missed this storm entirely had we stayed on the slab, and then, we might also have found ourselves in melee of traffic doing 80 miles per hour in a sudden deluge.

The storm passed in less than ten minutes and the sun came out with a vengeance. I started to steam in my rain-soaked tee shirt (under the mesh riding jacket). I was wearing crash-resistant Defender Jeans® by Diamond Gusset, and they were soaked clear through. Wearing a mesh jacket saves your dignity, in that it disguises the fact you look like drowned rat.

At that point Clyde and I ran into a huge Harley-Davidson event, with hundreds of riders along the side of the road. Many of these guys were in nothing but tee shirts and “do” rags. And so were their girlfriends. A staggering number of these fine ladies were wearing white tee shirts or tank tops — with absolutely nothing on underneath. It was the world’s largest wet tee shirt contest, in which very little was left to the imagination.

“Doesn’t this almost make you want to plink down a third of year’s wages on a Fat boy or a Wide Glide?” asked Clyde.

“Only if one of these women comes with the bike and will take that shirt off to polish the chrome,” I said. “Keep moving... These guys are bound to realize we’re wolves in Teutonic clothing.”

We hit US-1 a few minutes later, and I waved Clyde to the shoulder for the last time. There was plenty of opportunity to pull over and I wanted to thank him for a great ride. We shook hands on the Mason-Dixon Line, which at that point is the border between Maryland and Pennsylvania. Cyde and I had the pleasure of each other’s company for another ten miles, when he pulled off for home. I had the option of a back road, and I should have taken it. But I was too hot and in too much of a hurry. I followed US-1 to the junction of US-202 and ended a great ride in the exhaust stink of traffic stuck at red lights. Less than a mile from the house, on a road that is little more than a glorified city street, I gave “Fireballs” a burst of gas in third gear, turning into my community. It was my salute to five days of sheer fun.

I killed the engine in the garage, and just sat on the bike for a few moments. This had been a great trip... And while I would be delighted to see Leslie (Stiffie) again... I’d be ready to ride with Clyde, Pete, and Dick, in less than a week.

Author's note: Blogger has been down for the better part of a day here and I had the devil of a time posting Thursday's blog on Friday afternoon. I regret the delay. Some pictures may be posted to this blog episode latter on this evening.

©Copyright Jack Riepe 2011

All rights reserved

Jumpstarting A Weekend Of Motorcycles, Women, And Fireworks... With An Electric Eel

Fourth of July weekend... The height of the summer... There is nothing worse than a three-day weekend with no place to go and no woman to go there with — especially when you’re nineteen-years-old. To add insult to injury, I’d been working and had a pocketful of dough, and nothing to spend it on. My occasional partner in motorcycle crime, “Cretin,” was on the west coast, hopelessly in love with some woman he’d met in a commune in Oregon. (She would eventually bear him a son.) My other pals were scattered to the wind, each trailing some pursuit which would eventually set the course for the rest of their lives.

From the time I was a little kid, and used to watch the fireworks at the Fireman’s Fair (Denville, NJ), the Fourth of July held a mystical significance. My family held a big barbecue at a tiny bungalow my Aunt had on Indian Lake (also Denville, NJ). We’d walk down to the field on the edge of town, where a chintzy carnival had sprung up like neon and canvas weeds. Most of the rides back then where powered by diesel or gas engines, and I vividly remember the smell of exhaust fumes competing with the aroma of french fries and fried dough balls, also known as zeppoles.

The fireman held the fireworks on the night before the Fourth. I stood mesmerized by the skyrockets, which mushroomed into millions of streamers and falling sparkles; but loved the finale, an inevitable fusillade of explosions, high above the crowd. Yet the Independence Day ritual I remember most was the celebration on the lake. All of the lakefront houses set highway flares along the water’s edge, and at 9:30pm, they were simultaneously ignited. Various organizations within the community sponsored floats, with dancers or historical characters, that were pulled by motorboats around the shoreline.

My family was of Irish descent, and this party was the culmination of three days of preparation, which translated into two days of drinking, eating, and the telling of legendary stories that only got better with age. The last of these parties occurred when I was 12-years-old. For some reason, my folks couldn’t stay for the whole weekend, and left before the flares were lit. We’d walked out on a raging party and arrived home to a ringing telephone. My cousin’s young wife had choked to death on something. Never again would my Aunt put the flares on the lake.

But the mystical significance of the Fourth of July lingered in me year after year. It was almost as if having a great and riotous Fourth guaranteed the rest of the summer would be an equal success. And here I was, with cash, and a motorcycle — and no place to go. Somehow, fate was conspiring to curse the best weekend of the year, and the rest of the year to follow. And then I thought of “Stitches."

“Stitches” was one of the few people I knew who had several motorcycles. And they were never Harley’s, but exotic marques like Ducatis, Moto Guzzis, and Nortons. (Stitches owned a Ducati when most of the country thought spaghetti was something exotic.) At 19, his family gave him his own house on the far end of their country property (rural Pennsylnania, on the Delaware) and he was getting away with legendary murder. I jammed my gear into a backpack, along with a quart of Irish whiskey, lashed it to my Kawasaki H2’s sissy bar, and headed northwest.

The ride to his place on the Upper Delaware River was roughly divided into two halves. The first half was largely in New Jersey, and rivaled the Bataan Death March for sheer enjoyment. Traffic either crawled or surged like an endless steel centipede. But passing through High Point State Park, Route 23 swooped down to the corner where New Jersey met both New York and Pennsylvania. There I picked up Route 97, in New York, a terrific ride along the banks of the Delaware River. This stretch of road has the occasional twisty bits, runs through Norman Rockwell towns perpetually trapped in 1950, and has two traffic lights in a 60-mile length. (Or at least it did 30 years ago.) It gets real woodsy just beyond Port Jervis, NY.

The introduction to the ride begins with a series of "S" curves, 400 feet above the Delaware River, and the base of cliffs that shed rocks in heavy downpours.

Route 97 in Hawks Nest, NY — Note the roadway snaking along the cliffs, about 400 feet above the Upper Delaware River. Pennsylvania is to the left of the river, New York is to the right. Photo from Wikipedia.

It was motorcycle heaven. (Now it is part of a National Park Service grid of oppression, and speeding is a federal offense, punishable by 30 years in Guantanamo Bay.) The Delaware River is the border between New York and Pennsylvania at this point, and it has two speeds: flood and barely navigable by canoe. My only interest in the river was the barely-clad women paddling canoes to campsites and outrageous Fourth of July parties of their own. I pulled up for a cigar break at a place where the river ran close to the road, and watched one canoe grind ashore in a real half-assed manner. The lady in the bow was laughing and squealing, which got louder as the current continued to swing the stern downstream. The woman in the stern was blond, tanned, and wearing half of a tank top. I can still remember the crunch of my boots in the gravel, as I walked over, grabbed the bow, and pulled the canoe up on the shore.

“I’ll steady it while you get out,” I said, mouthing the words around the four-inch length of maduro cigar in my mouth.

“Thanks,” said the brunette in the bow. “She has to pee.” This announcement set the two of them to laughing again.

“Why didn’t you just jump in the river,” I asked.

“She’s afraid of eels,” said the Brunette.

“Only the electric kind are dangerous,” I replied.

“Do they have those in here,” asked the Blond.

“Only in this stretch.”

“Want a beer?” asked the Brunette.

I smiled and she tossed me a frigid can of suds.

“You camping around here?” asked the Brunette.

“Sort of. A buddy of mine’s got a farmhouse close by,” I said. “Where are you guys headed?”

She mentioned a commercial campground down by a bar — the Pine Cone — I had passed some miles back.

“Do the electric eels ever come up on shore?” asked the Blond, from the shelter of some brush, where she was squatting to piss.

“Sometimes. They’re attracted to blond squirrels. So am I,” I said, turning to see if she had a blond squirrel.


“I guess I’m pretty safe then,” said the brunette, turning my face back with her hand.

“Maybe,” I replied. “Who knows what goes through an eel’s mind?”

I drained the beer, tossed the empty can in the canoe, and kicked the Kawasaki into life. I had since learned (from “Cretin”) that it never hurts to leave with an air of mystery. Unfortunately, my exit was highlighted by hint of blue smoke and that “Ying... Ying... Yinggggggg...” of the Kawasaki’s engine.

The Roebling Bridge on Route 97. This suspension bridge, built by John Roebling around 1847, initially carried the Delaware Hudson Canal across the Delaware River. Located in Minisink Ford, NY, it was restored by the National Park Service. Photo by Wikipedia.

Route 97 turns dead north at Narrowsburg, NY, on a curve that follows the shoulder of a steep rise, about 60 feet above the water. But I went straight, crossing into Pennsylvania, and made the first right on a road that was about a lane and a half-wide. This bit was covered by hundred-year-old shade trees, whose branches co-mingled far above the pavement. The beginning of this road was a curve so blind the caution signs were in braille. This was the part of Pennsylvania that wouldn’t support a farm, and the tourist trade associated with the river took a century in developing. So at the time, it was fairly unspoiled.

I was looking for a four-room farmhouse with a porch overlooking the river.

Stitches never required much in the way of advance notice. He was usually home in the morning, and if not, you could just wait on the porch, taking a beer from a huge tub of ice and water. I found him working under the shade of a tree on a 1976 Ducati 860, that would bust his balls relentlessly.

“I could hear that rice-burning piece of shit coming up the river ten minutes ago,” said Stitches, with a laugh.

“Speaking of pieces of shit, what’s wrong with that one?” I asked, nodding at the Ducati.

“Nothin’,” he said. “They all do this.”

Stitches flipped me a cold one and I sat on a porch step while he cursed his way thorough whatever the hell he was doing on the Ducati.

“I’ve had this bike for three months and it smokes like the shit-box you’re riding,” he said. “How come you’re alone?”

I didn’t have the stomach to tell him that my steady girlfriend had disappeared with a good friend of mine... So I simply told him she’d been ripped apart by hyenas at a family reunion.

“Really,” he said. “I always thought she was screwing that other guy you ride with... What’s his name... Jiggs.”

“She’s probably doing him right now,” I said, wondering, “How the hell did he figure this one out? I was totally surprised.”

Stitches looked at me and said, “I saw them yesterday, drinking at a joint down in Port Jervis. I barely gave them a glance.” He punctuated the conversation with ratcheting of a socket wrench, tightening a bolt. “Forget ‘em. He’s a douche and she’s a douche's bag. Now you know his true colors and she's damaged goods.”

We spent the afternoon shooting the shit on the porch, then headed out to a bar across the river on the New York side. The object was to find me a woman for the weekend. Stitches was expecting some guys from the city, and at least two were coming with their squeezes. The bar was actually a bit of a poke, about 15 miles distant, toward Monticello. This gin mill was a run-down joint that aspired to being condemned, with trailers out back where “exotic dancers” lived during their on-stage tours in this shit-hole.

Stitches knew a firecracker performing here with the unlikely stage name of “Smidgeon.” She was on stage, polishing a brass pole with her ass when we walked in. The dancer lit up like a Christmas tree when she saw him. Smidgeon was wearing lederhosen (that really brought out the subtle curves of her ass) and nothing but suspenders on top, which pressed flat against her nipples. She started swinging her bodacious tah-tahs in a manner of a suggestion, while thrusting her hips in a kind of demand.

“Show us whatcha got,” said Stitches. And with that, she held the suspenders aside.

“Does she have a twin sister?” I asked.

I never understood the thrill Stitches got out of this... Watching his girlfriend dance half-naked in a room full of guys. It is one of life's experiences that I have yet to savor. And I get the distinct impression the moment has passed me.

Smidgeon came and sat with us when her set was over. There was no doubt she was hot and it took everything I had not to just sit there, staring at her suspenders. I almost asked if she wouldn't prefer a belt.

“Do you have a friend for my friend here?” asked Stitches.

“There’s Christie,” said Smidgeon. “She’s already done for the night.”

“Christie” joined us in the garb of a “French Maid,” which was her signature act. Up close, her make-up looked like she’d applied it from a spackle bucket. She had a Jersey City accent that made me sound like James Bond. Neither one of these attributes was a deal-breaker in itself, but she had an innate hardness in her eyes that implied her embrace might leave one between a rock and a razor blade. I bought her a couple of drinks, and put my arm around her waist, prompting her to kiss me. This was the final shot in the horse’s head, as her lips had the taste of old cigarettes and fresh onions. I had no idea what her life story was, but I suspected it was written by Edgar Allen Poe... And I decided not to add to it.

“You’re the first women I’ve kissed since I got out of the mental hospital,” I whispered, through a return kiss on her ear.

She left 30 seconds later.

“What did you say to her?” asked Stitches.

“I told her I used to be a better hump when I was a woman,” I said. “I’ll meet you back at the house.”

I mounted the Kawasaki and headed south on Route 97. It was the perfect summer night with a moon hanging in the sky, leaving a trail of silver in the river. The headlight beam danced in that jerky way common to bikes with primitive suspensions, as I scanned the road ahead for the reflection of certain death in the eyes of deer. During the day, you can see everything... Yet at night, the rider only gets to see what the motorcycle wants to show him. There is a kind of defiant freedom in the high-beam. It shows up as a blue-light on the cluster, but splits the darkness in a demand to claim everything as the domain of the rider. During the day, there is nothing quite like finding the pockets of cool air in the glens along the road, but the riding is all cool at night.

The light and noise of the Pine Cone seemed almost anti-climatic after the exhilarating ride along the river. The joint was jammed with people, and a band struggled to sound like Frampton, unaware that only Frampton could sound like Frampton. I bellied up to the bar and ordered a “Negroni,” which caused the bartender — who was accustomed to slamming beers, pouring shots, and mixing the usual rum and cokes — to do a double-take.

“Compari, gin, and sweet vermouth,” I said. “Shaken with ice and served straight up.” When the drink came, I tipped the guy five bucks. That was a fortune back then and young crowds are notoriously cheap. I did this because having an attentive bartender could come in handy. My grandfather used to say, “The bartender is the best ally to have in a saloon full of strangers.” (It should be noted that even shitty bars carried Compari and sweet vermouth in those days. Today, the average bartender is fourteen-years-old, has his/her head up his/her ass, and will reach for Captain Morgan's Spiced Rum when mixing a rum and Coke. This is the primary reason Congress is against an armed populace.)

I sipped my drink, and surveyed the crowd. Finding a pretty girl I’d met during the afternoon would be hard. Finding a pretty girl by herself in a mob like this would be impossible. Still, I had nothing else to do, and the Fourth of July weekend was getting away from me.

Luck was with me and the two ladies were at the very end of the bar, surrounded by wall-to-wall sperm donors.

There were three guys sniffing around the tanned blond, buying her drinks, laughing too hard at her stories, and each trying to get her attention. They reminded me of drone moths flitting around a sparkler. There was one guy hitting on the brunette, who in my opinion had much nicer eyes, and a much smaller endowment. I have always liked little tits.

I maneuvered into a spot at the bar barely a foot away from her, took the last sip from my glass, and asked the bartender (in a very loud voice), “Can you make me a drink called an Electric Eel?”

He looked at me quizzically, and I said, “Compari, gin, and vermouth.”

"Right," he said.

“Hey,” said the Brunette.

“Hey yourself,” I said. “How’s the canoe trip going.”

“We ran aground in this bar,” she said. “I can’t believe you’re here and drinking something called an “electric eel.”

“The world is full of eels... There’s no avoiding them.”

“I know,” she said, rolling her eyes at the guy over her shoulder. This poor dope had no idea what the hell had just happened, but suddenly the topic was electric eels. His name was Tony, and he was probably the world’s nicest guy. I have no doubt he’s a millionaire today working for Halliburton, but he didn’t know shit about eels, on what could have been the most important night in his life.

"Is that a fruity-sort of drink," Tony asked.

"Take a sip," I said to him, while pushing the drink toward the lady.

She grabbed it and swigged a gulp. The "Negroni" is not for amateurs. She gasped for air.

Tony started to reach for it next, but I took it from her hand.

"I don't like the idea of a guy's mouth on my stuff," I said with a smile. "Let me buy you one."

He hesitated, and I don't think he fancied the idea of having to drink a whole one, and then having to buy another back for me. Tony declined.

"But it's okay if a woman puts her mouth on your stuff?" asked the Brunette.

"I live for that moment."

After twenty minutes of beating a dead horse, Tony went to drain his lizard.

“Are you here on your motorcycle?” she asked.

I nodded.

“I’ve never ridden on a motorcycle,” she said.

“Want to go to a party on the river,” I said.

“Will you bring me back?”

“Sure...” Just in time for breakfast, I thought.

I still think its important to have a great Fourth of July weekend. There is no substitute in life for fireworks, independence, and a little romance — courtesy of a motorcycle.

To be continued on Tuesday, May 24, 2010.

©Copyright Jack Riepe 2011

How High Do Blueballs Bounce?

Written on Day Four Without Sleep...

Conditions have to be perfect to drop a bouncing motorcycle and not sustain any damage to the bike or rider. On this day, the temperature was a moderate 58º and the sun was making a cameo appearance on what would have been the first really good riding weather of the 2006 season. I had stolen odd hours during the week to wipe the garage dust and the odd spiderweb guy line off my 1986 BMW K75, known as “Blueballs,” and it was almost ready to go. Last minute flailing at the body work with a rag soaked in polishing liquid, I buffed the paint into a surrealistic dimension of deep blue. It was hard to imagine the paint was 18-years-old.

The bike had received its winter service two months prior (in February) and started on the lightest touch of the button. This was prior to my days as a member of the Mac-Pac (southeastern Pennsylvania’s chartered BMW riding club) and I headed out strictly solo. I tried a few tentative swerves and stops, which the machine executed with as much precision as my stiff, rusted-over joints would allow, then struck out to explore a handful of Amish farm roads. Those accustomed to neck-snapping acceleration would be disappointed with the K75. It’s performance can best be described as “predictably reliable.” Keeping the speedometer between 55 and 60 mph, I shakily began to take in the sights. The first ride of the season is a highly tentative occasion for me.

The roads around Lancaster were initially designed for horses and buggies, which could leisurely pass each other at a brisk 15 mile-per-hour clip, with the wave of a hat and a smile. Coming around a tight rural turn, I was confronted with an Amish buggy, whose horse was rearing up and dancing. The guy at the reins looked like a 25-year-old wearing a false beard. I don’t know how to say, “This fucking horse,” in ancient high-German, but this kid was muttering something to that effect. I dropped down a gear and went around this guy on the right, as the horse kept dragging the hack into the opposing left lane — and oncoming traffic.

“So far, so good,” I thought.

The next curve lay between two fields under cultivation. A gate pierced each fence not far from the apex of the turn, through which a team of six Clydesdales (pulling a plow) had recently traversed the road, depositing a layer of muddy dirt and and horse-shit on the pavement. While the exact proportion of mud and horse-shit required to create the adhesion potential of wet glass has yet to be published, these Clydesdales were pretty much on the mark. I felt the rear wheel slide to the right and rode it out with my heart in my mouth. The rear tire found its bite a milli-second (20 feet) later and the curve was executed with nothing more than a pleasant drop in blood pressure.

A friend of mine, Chris Jaccarino, once said, “If you ain’t slidin’ then you ain’t ridin’.”

Approaching a traffic light, I made a classic beginner’s mistake and brought the bike to a halt on the crown of the road (in the center), between two furrows in the pavement, worn deep by thousands of daily milk tankers grinding to a stop at that intersection. My saddle was over 30-inches tall and I could just about flat-foot the machine on a level surface. But with a furrowed pavement under each foot, the bike would lean another two inches, just enough to precipitate a drop. I felt it starting to go over on the right in the same instant I realized I was about to stand in a hole. Yet the light changed at that moment, and letting out the clutch in first kept the bike upright.

Now I had about reached the point where numerous heart-pounding distractions were growing somewhat monotonous, and noticed there was something odd about the windshield. It appeared to have a line running across the top of it. I had never noticed this before, and this took a second or two to study as I was pushing along at 45 miles-per-hour. In total horror, I realized I was looking at the top edge of the plexiglas, as it was sliding downward in its frame. I commenced a very gradual braking, and had almost stopped when the windscreen popped out, and hit the ground.

There are times in a man’s life when yelling, “Oh Fuck,” is not only appropriate, but soothing. The bike was equipped with a unique “Sprint” fairing, and the windscreen, which had a slight tint, trimmed with black paint, resembled the bubble on a Bell Helicopter in the 1950’s. This fairly sizable concave piece of plexiglas landed on its backside, sliding along on its edges.

There was no place to decently stop on the side of the road. The pavement had a pitch like an aluminum siding salesman, that ended in loose gravel and raked-over horse shit. I held the bike on a right tip-toe, while I got the side-stand down, then went to collect my windscreen. There was not a crack nor a scratch on it. On one hand, I was elated. Yet on the other, what was I going to do now? My mechanical abilities are well-know in my current riding circles and openly discussed as a case study for men who should never be given tools. Necessity may be the mother of invention, but desperation is the illegitimate child.

The windscreen was held in place solely by the friction of a channelled *gasket — like that of a 1965 Volkswagen Beetle. Unbeknown to me, that gasket was wearing out, and the flexing of the fairing could pop that windscreen right out (which it just had). I acted the part of a BMW rider by flicking on the flashers (standard), popping up the seat, and whipping out the 65-piece tool kit (standard), by which a man of normal skills can rebuild the entire machine. Grasping the appropriate screwdriver (one of three), I opened the channel in the gasket and started jammed the windscreen back into it. I had less than three inches to go when I observed the “roving gap” phenomena. I chased that gap all around the entire windscreen. Twenty-five minutes later, I used about six inches of duct tape to compensate as a “roving gap arrestor” and reseated the windscreen. It would fall out again (and get run over by a car) but not today.

The run back was fun, even spiritual in that way that the first ride of the season can be. Each mile brought that rare combination of banked curves, the growl of the engine, and that electrifying sensation of power that surges through the handgrips. There are three traffic lights in the last two miles between the highway and the house, and I zipped through them all. The driveway is on a slope that curves to the left, then the right. I pulled in the clutch and chopped the power to bump over the lip. My response time may have been off by a hair... Or I may have cut the power a bit too dramatically... Or the polarity of the earth’s gravity may be stronger in the driveway here than any other place else...

The engine lugged like a Congressional subcommittee and I missed the split second to knock it into a lower gear. So I locked it up with both feet flat to sort things out. The sudden absence of all forward momentum caused “Blueballs” to dive on the forks, and to bounce back, with the front wheel coming off the ground. This sudden development caught me by surprise and the K75 rolled over on its left side, making a perfect impression on the flower bed. The garden yielded to the mirrors and the turn signals, but had muscle enough to knock the wind out of me. Fortunately the street was deserted. Leslie (Stiffie) came to the door, smiled, and said, “So that’s what the bottom of a K75 looks like.”

Then she helped me pick it up. She’s quite a woman.

©Copyright Jack Riepe 2010

* I bought a new gasket and a replacement windscreen from Sprint the following summer. With new rubber, it would take bat to knock that windscreen free.... Or a mini van.

The Sexual Pheromone Of My First Motorcycle...

I was twelve years old when I got into my last fist-fight and that girl beat the shit out of me so badly it would be years before I’d ever ask another one to be my girlfriend. Her name was Angela, though everyone called her “Chicky.” She was the personification of a Tomboy, with the scrawniest of butts, the boniest knees, and a smattering of freckles across a smudge of a nose. Her hair was a mousey brunette, but my mom said you couldn’t go by that unless you saw it washed. She was the first girl I ever heard use the word “fuck,” and she preceded it with the modifiers “that stupid” when describing a bully who lived on her street.

I thought she was beautiful. We’d pal-ed around as kids for a couple of years, before I started to notice she was a girl. I got the shit beaten out of me for my growing awareness.

Her family moved away shortly thereafter and I asked another girl to the movies three years later. She said, “Yes,” and I was amazed at how painless the process actually was. This is nature’s way of bamboozling the male of the human species into thinking life actually works like this. I would ask many women many things over the course of the next five years (sometimes on the verge of pleading) and there was never a rhyme nor a reason as to why some said “yes” and why others would spit on my shirt and laugh. But it got to the point where I had an outfit made of teflon, so their venom and spittle would run to the floor without sticking.

I thought that riding a motorcycle would recast my image into that of a biker... The kind of guy who rode from place to place, acquiring honeys like bugs on a windshield; yet always moving on solely to prevent them from experiencing the pangs of a broken heart. My friend “Cretin,” who was once married for two weeks, explained to me how women would hate a guy who just left after a couple months, while still wanting him; but would truly despise some simpering wimp who was always trying to kiss their ass in a painfully enduring relationship.

“What is the difference between being hated momentarily and despised in the long run?” I asked.

“Being hated momentarily might give you another shot at it a few months later, if you meet her at a party or something” said Cretin. “Otherwise it’s about the same. But if you’re not there, what do you give a shit?” Cretin could run rings around Plato, Aristotle, and the planet Saturn when it came to irrefutable moto-man logic.

I was going through one of my occasional romantic dry spells (which I used to think could be fatal) and that damn 1975 Kawasaki H2 (which I bought new, earlier that year) was useless in remedying the situation. Real biker chicks scorned it and the only Jap bike that was getting any notice that year was the new Honda 750, which even sounded like real quality. I decided to get out of “Dodge” on the evening in question, and loaded the bike down with the usual camping crap for a couple of nights in the woods. On my way north, I stopped by my college campus, where a raging quad party was in progress. It was the first party of the year and there was a lot of new talent standing around. But my eyes were riveted to a couple hot-dancing to the strains of Led Zeppelin.

Actually, my eyes were riveted to the gyrating ass on the woman.

Her every movement accented denim lines executed in perfect curves. Her hips swung in delicate balance, like a sexual pendulum, offset by long hair that moved from one shoulder to the next. She was modestly endowed, but what she had was flawless. She was wearing a flannel shirt, rolled at the sleeves, and loosely buttoned at the top. She had grabbed a cowboy hat from some asshole, and it just made her look great. Today, I can’t look at Jessica Alba in “Sin City” without thinking of her.

She was dancing with a guy off page three of the Rob Lowe eugenics handbook. The guy was rail thin, tanned, and dressed like he bought his clothes from “Joe Cool.” I couldn’t help thinking, “What must it be like to undress a woman like that?” And, “what must it be like to see her move around like that naked?” While some guys would have been uplifted just to see her dance, the performance left me in the clutches of an acute desire with a jagged edge. In fact, I could feel it pressing against my jugular.

I went over to the keg to grab a fast beer, where a mob of the newer kids were filling cups with foam.

“Not like that,” I snapped. “Do it like this...” I grabbed a cup from the kid’s hand and managed to fill it two-thirds full of amber liquid, with one-third head.

“Thanks,” said the kid, reaching out for the beer.

“No problem,” I smiled. Then I drank it and handed him the empty cup.

To me, beer tastes like liquid bread... And man does not live by bread alone. I had a bottle of Irish whiskey on the bike and I wanted a taste in the worse way. I wanted to feel the bite of the whiskey in my mouth and its burn in my soul. But I knew if I went back to the bike I’d ride off without unpacking it. Two guys on the edge of the crowd were passing a bottle of Scotch and a joint. It was “Fast Eddie” and “Little Joey,” two social lampreys that had the low-down on everything low. One sold really shitty pot and the other sold anything he could get his hands on.

“Yo, Reep,” said Fast Eddie, offering me the joint.

“I’ll take the bottle,” I said.

I love whiskey, but not Scotch. The difference between Irish whiskey and Scotch is that the barley is malted in distilling the latter. And then the fine Scotch single malt is run through fire-blacked oak casks into which three dozen, unwashed jock straps are thrown. To my refined taste, Scotch is the closest thing to unrefined piss. But this was the whiskey of the moment, in my hand. I took a swallow for effect, and another for penance.

“I got some other action on campus,” said Little Joey. “Wanna come with us?”

“The only other action you ever had was with your left hand,” I said, with a laugh. “I’m gonna ride.”

I wanted one more look at the hottie in the jeans. She was gone. Presumably with the eugenic cyborg. I turned to go, and walked right into her.

She looked at me with a half-smile and a half scowl, and said, “The last time you tried this, I beat the shit out of you.”

I was momentarily stunned. Up close, she was far from beautiful. But she was desirable.

“I’m tougher now,” I said.

“I’m looking for something to drink,” she said. “You got anything?”

“I got whiskey on my bike.”

“Jack Daniels?”

“Better than Jack Daniels...”

“What’s better than Jack Daniels?” she asked.

“Jack O’Daniels.”

We settled into the shrubbery about 50 feet from the bike and passed the bottle back and forth for about an hour. She filled me in on the last seven years. She’d met the cyborg in a bar someplace, and he’d brought her here. She was surprised to see me. I was surprised at the dent we’d put in the whiskey.

She put her head up against my shoulder, and I breathed in the scent of her hair. I swear a woman’s hair is the source of the pheromone that helps men find them in the dark, or on foggy nights. Sometimes it becomes the combined elusive scent of their perfume, their conditioner, abnd the natural fragrance that is as unique to a woman as her fingerprints. I had my arm around her and felt the gentle curve of her slight breast. I told her that in my next life, I wanted to be her flannel shirt.

And then I closed my eyes, just for a minute.

The first songbird of the day was just warming up when I opened them again, around 5am. The slightly damp ground was leaching the heat from my body and some part of me ached. I was alone. Both the girl and the whiskey was gone. I stood up and pissed in the bushes that had hidden me from the street all night, and went over to the bike. The rucksack on the sissy bar was slightly askew. When I opened it, her flannel shirt was on top (and one of my tees was missing). I covered my face with it and took a deep breath. The scent of her was strong, but it would fade soon. She hadn’t laid a finger on me this time... And yet I still felt bruised. I imagined her peeling that shirt off in the middle of the dark street, and felt that jagged longing again.

There is something to be said about careening into someone’s life and then leaving while they still want you. But it’s much better to be on the careening end. I fired up the bike and roared out of Rutherford, NJ at first light. The late summer air is almost cold in the morning, and I shivered as I headed to a diner about 30 miles away for coffee. I would never see her again... But I carried her shirt on that bike for a year. I always thought I’d get the chance to re-install it.

©Copyright Jack Riepe 2011