Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Dispatches From The Front... June 2011

Once a month, Twisted Roads will present "Dispatches From The Front," a collection of letters from our readers, many of whom are writing from the road, the halls of government, pool halls, the Witness Protection Program, and fully accredited mental institutions. Whenever possible, the Twisted Roads Editorial staff will attempt to answer readers' questions or provide some measure of resolution.


Dear Dispatches From The Front:

Can you kindly help us get this message out to your Canadian Readers? While the Canadian Post Office strike has all of us by the short hairs, rest assured your government feels your pain. We have just published a booklet titled, “How To Make The Most Of An Endless Postal Strike In The Workers’ Paradise.” This 64-page booklet — written in both French and the lesser English — is filled with lots of great ideas like:

• How to form a neighborhood mail collective
• 16 things to do each day instead of reading your mail
• How to prevent canine despondency in animals used to attacking the postman.
• When yelling across the street is more effective than not saying, “I love you, too.”
• Why you can't have health care and a postal network too
• Plus more

This beautiful book is printed on high-quality paper, recycled from Asian School Lunch menus, leather- bound (from the hides of commercially-bred zoo animals), and fully illustrated by Native Canadian artists (First Settlers, without a grant from the Crown), who were only fed 100% natural food (fish and migrating egrets, that died of 100% natural causes, while listening to the Canadian equivalent of National Public Radio).

Your book will arrive in the mail soon.
(Merde! We forgot. It may take longer.)

Sincerely,
Charles Longdyke
Minister
Government Publications About Everything
Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA 2C4 FU2

En Francais
Charlie Longuedeek
Ministér
Government Livres Sur Toute Pour
Ottawa, Ontario CANADA 2C4 FU2

Dispatches From The Front Responds:
Mange mois.




Dear Dispatches From The Front:

I went to my local BMW dealer and ordered a spare clutch cable for a 1994 K75. Like most BMW dealers, he was able to produce this part for a 17-year-old motorcycle in less than 30 seconds, and he did so with a smile.

“How much,” I asked, getting ready to spread my butt cheeks with a smear of Honda Moly.

“Twenty-one, fifty,” the dealer replied.

“Two thousand, one hundred and fifty dollars?” I screamed. “I’ll eat broken glass first.”

“No... No.” he stuttered. “You misunderstand. Its only $21.50.”

“But I wanted a genuine O.E.M. part, touched by the elves in Bavaria.”

“This is a genuine, O.E.M. BMW part from the elves in Bavaria.”

“You’re not shitting me?” I asked.

“No sir...” He said. “This cable has all the real Black Forest elven magic.”

“For $21.50.”

“Yes sir... For $21.50.”

“Then give me 100 of them.”

“You want 100 spare clutch cables for a 1994 BMW K75?” the dealer asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Right now.”

“But that will only leave us with 250 in immediate inventory,” he said.

“That is not my concern,” I snapped.

He counted out 100 cables, and charged me $2,150.00. I then took the 100 cables to a local tailor shop and had them woven into a stainless steel jock strap. Now whenever I go for a ride, I slip on my armored Bavarian “scrotum-saver.” It is to remind me of the day when I bought a BMW O.E.M. part with a pricetag didn’t break my balls. Do you think there would be a market for this level of rider protection?

Sincerely,
Martin “The Beeve” Sullivan

Dispatches From The Front Responds:
Riders of the Harley Davidson persuasion have been wearing something like these for for years... Except is it woven from barbed wire and installed by their woman, who use only their teeth in the weaving and in the installation. Once the barbed scrotum “tickler” is tightly interwoven around the rider’s balls, it is sent out to be chromed.




Dear Dispatches From The Front:
I belong to a group of Harley riders that adheres to the ancient rituals of our order. Each of us is an expert on road survival, metallurgy, basic and advanced mechanics, electrical theory, long-distance riding, the martial arts, and one or more major religions (plus a meditative discipline). We are also gourmet cooks. Yesterday, a new guy (from San Francisco) tried to buffalo me into adding caraway seeds to the rough batter for traditional Irish Soda Bread. I bitched slapped him out of the kitchen with a set of tire chains in a pillowcase. Was I right?

Sincerely,
The Squid Sucker
Key West, Pa

Dispatches From The Front Responds:
That depends. Was it a clean pillowcase? Or was it one headed for the wash after a six-month tour of road humping duty? A purist would tell you there are no caraway seeds in the most traditional versions of Irish Soda Bread. Let me guess... This guy rode in on a Sporster, didn’t he?




Dear Dispatches From The Front:

What is the difference between me sending out pictures of my erect penis on Twitter and you choking the chicken of cyberspace with candid shots of yourself astride a dated BMW K-75? “Not much,” according to 51% of my constituency, many of who are Twitter subscribers and do not hold my throbbing, athletic Johnson in contempt. Yet where are the former porn queens demanding your resignation? I don’t see any bloated Republican dork diddlers claiming Twisted Roads is a major moto-industry distraction when it clearly represents a radical departure from established standards of motorcycle writing. Am I the only one who realizes that the simple phrase “©Copyright Jack Riepe 2011” is nothing less than literary penis-waving on a vast cyber-scale?

Sincerely,
Tony “The Hand-Held Baloney Of Capitol Hill”
(Last name held upon request in the event someone has not yet heard it)

Dispatches From The From Front Responds:
Apparently.




Dear Dispatches from the Front:
Not only was I passed up for promotion at work — again— but I was forced to take a cut in pay. So I stood on a chair, announced I was quitting the shit job that has imprisoned my soul for 22 years, and took a long, satisfying piss on the desk of my boss. This douche is the largest uncharted black hole of managerial incompetence and corporate disingenuousness in the history of fucking business. Then I went home early and caught the “Bitch of the Baskervilles” nailing the pizza delivery guy. I had married her in a parody of emotional suicide two decades earlier. She took two vows that day: 1) to make my life an endless hell on earth; and 2) to never again give me another blow job, even if the last remaining oxygen on earth was condensed in my balls. She has never broken either vow.

I wiped the garage dust off my blue V-Strom DL1000, holding one of her toy poodles in each hand. One was “Wax on,” while the other was “Wax off.” (Go watch the original “Karate Kid,” with Pat Norita, to get the full impact of this image.) I threw enough gear for three weeks on the back of the bike, and headed for Alaska. It has been my dream to ride through Alaska until the pavement yields to gravel, and until the gravel yields to whale blubber and Eskimo farts. I raced across Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, and Washington. I crossed into British Columbia, where the Department of Homeland Security is waging a war against British Columbian Cheap Prescription Drug Cartels. I then got to “Shove-It-Up-Your-Ass-Pass” in Dawson, and saw the most horrible thing in my life: an endless stream of BMW GS motorcycles, stretching all the way from Dawson to Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic Circle.

I had arrived in Dawson for the annual migration of BMW GS motorcycles.

Every year, millions of GS riders sprint north for the 36-hour window between the great thaw and the hatching of billions upon billions of mosquitoes. The thaw signifies a 98-degree (F) rise in surface temperature (at which point gasoline becomes a liquid again), allowing BMW engines to run flawlessly for yet another season. Yet at 33 degrees Kelvin, the mosquitoes wake up. Each is capable of sucking a quart of blood, per day, through the hardened antlers of a moose. The GS riders have 36 hours to ride from Dawson to Prudhoe Bay, staying in all three of the same shitty hotel/trailers built to accommodate 46,000 pipeline workers in 1968, to hump the same three hookers that have been romancing the pipeline workers since 1968, and to have their pictures taken in from of the same three signs that read “You are now crossing the Arctic Circle... Don’t steal the sign,” erected in 1968.

I just can’t catch a break. When does the BMW GS motorcycle migration to Tierra Del Fuego (via the Road of Death, in Bolivia) start?

Sincerely,
Horst “Elvis” Sashimi
Ogunquit, Maine

Dispatches From The Front Responds:
When the starter fires his pistol into the air, the last day of the BMW MOA Rally, in Bloomsburg, Pa. July 24, 2011.




Dear Dispatches from The Front:

On behalf of flat-chested brunettes who are routinely ignored by motorcycle publications and blog sites (that always emphasize silicon-bazoomed blond bike fraus, straddling gleaming choppers), I would like to thank you for the elegant detail in which Twisted Roads continually portrays our end of the feminine spectrum. Your literary endeavors probe far beneath the micron-thin realm of blond-dom to explore the silky, sultry, darkness of brunette petite body poetry. Your last five blog episodes were nothing less than love stories to modestly endowed women like Kate Moss, Milla Jovovich, and Kate Beckinsale. (I’m told I look a lot like Kate Moss, while my friend DeeDee is the spitting image of Milla Jovovich, and her cousin, Crystal, could pass for Kate Beckinsale in a police line-up.)

I would love to meet you.

I was thinking it might be cool to get together over something spicy, in a place where the mystique of the far east blends with the austere reality of German motorcycles. There is a nice Indian restaurant — the Himalayan — in the sad little mall where Route 401 runs into US-30, in Malvern, Pa. Can you meet me, DeeDee, and Crystal there at 1pm on Friday, June 24th? Would it be an imposition to ask you to bring a couple of other guys for my friends?

The bad news is that we might have to bring DeeDee’s blond sister Margot “Melons” with us. She’s graduating pole dancer’s school on the previous Thursday, and DeeDee promised her a rode trip and a ride on a hot motorcycle as a graduation present. Margot’s really sweet, but she drinks straight gin whenever she eats Indian food, and then she goes right into one of her pole dancing numbers.I can’t guarantee that she won’t get half looped and start juggled her tanned melons. Would that be a problem?

And could I have a ride on your K-75? I won’t take up much room. In fact, I’ll sit astride the gas tank... Facing you... With my mesh jacket zipped halfway down... So you, and only you, can see inside.

Sincerely,
Valleri “Steamy” Vapor

Dispatches From The Front Responds:
I’ll be there, but it might be hard to find a few guys to come with me — especially on short notice. Look for my red K75 parked out front.


Author’s note:
I regret having missed the past two blog deadlines, but I was recovering from something that peaked yesterday, leaving me exhausted and drained in a chair for over 24 hours. Please look in again tomorrow. Twisted Roads is celebrating the BMW MOA’s rally in Bloomsburg, PA — now only a month away — with bonus blog listings every week! Right up until the Rally!

©Copyright Jack Riepe
All Rights Reserved!





23 comments:

Anonymous said...

The Letter from the Brunette strikes me as so unfair... Can I showup for lunch on Friday too? I'm brunette, flat, and hot too! If I sashay in the door, will there be a face for me to sit on? (I can't believe I wrote this to a BMW rider!)

Chessi "Wildfire" Burns
Amish Curse, Pa

Cantwell said...

Dear Jack,
Had a wonderful time this past weekend. I look forward to riding with you again. Sometime within the next five years will work.
Give Leslie my love...she'll tell you how.
Sincerely,
Michael

Jack Riepe said...

Dear Cantwell (Mike):
Does that it entail a trapeze? You and I get to do it again in a month — with Chris Wolfe.

Fondest regards,
Jack • Reep

Jack Riepe said...

Dear Anonymous:

I'll keep my face aimed at the door.

Fondest regards,
Jack/reep

Nikos said...

Jack

I have been thinking about you recently.

Nikos the antithesis of Sokin

Jack Riepe said...

Dear Nikos:

I took a day or two off from my keyboard, and spent another couple of days on my book. Working on a book always channels my thoughts into a peculiar direction, if you can believe I have a meaasure of peculiar. Then I had a bike event I had to attend to, and then I got sick. This variety of sickness is a new thing for me, and I don't do well with it. I've had very little sleep in the last 5 days — almost none in 48. It seems to be a reaction to pain control, and the disadvantages clearly outweigh the benefits. I would suck as a drug addict.

Look for a note from me later this evening.

Fondest regards,
Jack/Reep

Conchscooter said...

Exhausted and drained. I hope she's okay.

Ken said...

Jack, I can help you with the lunch date with "Steamy" and friends. I'm from Utah - trust me I can handle Margot's melons!

Steve Williams said...

I never realized how much work Twisted Roads is for you, having to answer all the mail with thoughtful responses, play therapist and advisor to a throng of misguided riders and groupies, and still find the energy and intellect to create your mythic tomes on what it's like to fly through the world with the confidence, prowess, and pure animal magnetism only possessed by riders of K75s.

My hat's off to you.

Good luck with Kate, Kate and Milla.

Steve Williams
Scooter in the Sticks
Follow me on Twitter

redlegsrides said...

Jack:

"I had arrived in Dawson for the annual migration of BMW GS motorcycles." That cracks me up....

And yet, I hope to do that one day, but probably on the V-Strom Rig, and outside the 36hr window....

dom


Redleg's Rides

Colorado Motorcycle Travel Examiner

I'm off, Ihor said...

,to the ADKs on Monday morning until after the fourth. Hope you recuperate, and do check to see which exotic cheese is incubating the bacteria that has afflicted you so severely. Don't forget the rule of most likely,
'When one is old and fat, ... ..... .... ....!' FILL IN THE BLANKS.
Later, your pal and tormentor, Ihor

ADK said...

Aw Reet, It's Thursday and I'm checking in, but what for?

irondad said...

I really wanted to flick you more crap here. On the other hand, life seems to have hit you hard lately. For some unknown reason all I can seem to do is wish you well and offer some cheer. Pretty stinkin' lame, isn't it? Not to mention insane.

Guess I getter go check into a mental institution and think of a letter for Dispatches from the Front.

Jack Riepe said...

Dear IronDad:

There are somethings I can handle well... And there are others that strike me down like snake venom. I have several large projects pending (i.e. one speaking engagement and a technical prsentation at the BMW MOA rally in July, plus a book project now in its advanced stages).

I had several guests bikers as house guests this past weekend. Their visit coincided with the most unusual medical condition from which I appear to be suffering. This condition appears to close my throat periodically, giving me the impression that I cannot breath nor swallow easily. In truth, I can breath fine (though swallowing is difficult)... But my body doesn't know that, and goes friggin' bersek. I have managed to stop the panic, but sometimes this occurs in the middle of the night... And that ends the sleep process.

I got 4 hours sleep in three days. You have no idea how this affects my award-winning personality. Leslie/Stiffie hascmoved me into the garage. She wants me to be comfortable, so she leaves the air conditioning on in the car. Naturally, the car has to be running.

Still, I am shockerd that you couldn't find a barb in all this. Maybe you're getting soft in your dotage... (See how easy that was?)

Fondest regards,
Jack/Reep

Jack Riepe said...

Dear ADK (Chris Wolfe) Former Friend:

Looking at the calendar, there is less than a month from the time you will be pulling into the driveway here, and drinking my rum. Have you started abstaining from booze so you can work up a reall good thirst?

And you know you laughed your Brit ass off over these letters.

Fondest regards,
Jack/Reep

Jack Riepe said...

Dear Ihor:

I cannot deny that simple benedryl seems effective in puttingf the brakes on this respiratory thing... But it take 45 minutes for the pills to act. And now there is something going on with my throat. It feels hot, not sore, inside. I started using those Boots throat lozenges, which put out the fire like nothing else.

I'm going to have to visit a specialist to get this addressed. How I hate this fucking shit. You will no doubt laugh to read that eating anything harder than soft cooked eggs seems to make it worse. So I am not really eating.

I do hope to join you in the Adirondacks this summer.

Fondest regards,
Jack/reep

Jack Riepe said...

Dear Charlie6 (Dom):

There are almost as many people riding to Prudhoe Bay in Alaska as there are going to the BMW rally in Pennsylvania. It occurred to me that farmers will learn to adjust their crop rotations based upon this migration.

I don't know iof the Haul Road has ever been done by sidecar. That would make a great story.

Fondest regards,
Jack/Reep

Jack Riepe said...

Dear Scooter In TRhe Sticks (Steve Williams):

Twisted Roads is never a chore. It is more like a calling. The world needs more K75 riders to solve its problems, answer complex questions, and personaslly put the seal of approval on thousands of sets of hooters.

I'm surprised you haved found a great K75 to take for a test ride, to see for yourself. Hey, I've got an idea. Why don't yopu take mine for a check-ride and see for yourself. And I will make it the subject of one of my BMW MOA Owners News Columns.

There's a challenge for you.

And I know where we can do it too.

Fondest regards,
Jack/Reep

Jack Riepe said...

Dear Ken:

I regret you do not live closer. I'd be relying on your expertise.

Fondest regards,
Jack/reep

Jack Riepe said...

Dear Conch:

I have nothing left to say to you, as wehave just spoken on the phone.

Fondest regards,
Jack/reep

mtlcowgirl said...

Cher Mange Moi,

The Great Canadian Postal Strike is a perennial favo(u)rite. It is as Canadian as the Calgary Stampede. And just as disruptive. As for NPR and the CBC, they are both so stupor inducing as to eliminate any possibility of road rage when listened to on the car radio. Your book should arrive shortly. Canada Post is going back to work tomorrow. And I am sure they thank you for getting the postal code right. FU indeed.

Avec amitie.

La Quebecoise

Classic Velocity said...

Wow, you have the most diverse readership!!

Stacy said...

You had me at "annual BMW GS migration."