Special Valentine's Day Offer From Jack Riepe...

(To view Monday's TW episode, click here.)

Attention Women Riders...

Tell Your Paramour/Rider/Lover Of Your Passion
— With A Personally Written Valentine —
By Jack Riepe

Free!* Free!* Free!*
(With The Purchase of His Widely Popular Cigar Book)

With less than a month away from the most romantic day of the year, this is your opportunity to make up for that really shitty gift you gave the most important person in your life for Christmas. Do you remember that lackluster look in his eyes when he opened that “As Seen On TV Tool” that doesn’t fit a damn thing on his bike; or the fleeting smile when he saw the designer tie that he has yet to wear on his job as a moose hunting guide; or the raised eyebrows when he received the Vegan Cookbook For Deer Camp?

Well this is you chance to make up for lost ground.

For only $30
plus $5 bucks shipping and handling

You can present the guy in your life with the most perfect collection of essays and mood-lifting stories ever to delight the male psyche...

Politically Correct Cigar Smoking For Social Terrorists...

Is the book written specifically for men who think they know who they are, and for women who intend to tell them otherwise... This book is 30 chapters dedicated to the manly art of cigar smoking, and its impact on romance, nature, politics, social change, sex, deep interpersonal relationships, and escaping from the drudgery that puts the grind in daily life.



Readers who’ve bought this book claim:

1) Having fewer arguments with in-laws (former)*
2) Enjoying the kind of sex lives typically shared by mink on breeding farms*
3) A better understanding of what to expect from elected officials, divorce lawyers, and poisonous spiders*
4) Sharing relationship success in third and fourth marriages*
5) And getting the most out of social climbing with a cigar in hand*

* All claims are unsubstantiated by scientific data but circulated as fact at the Wilmington Institute of Holistic Dry Cleaning.

But Wait!!! There’s More!!!

Male Sensitivity Specialist, Humorist, and Moto-Author Jack Riepe will personally autograph and inscribe each book — numbered to the date of each sale...

“And draft a special, two-paragraph Valentine
to your book recipient!”

You read that right... Each sale (US only) will include a brief interview (or e-mail exchange) resulting in an original 2-paragraph Valentine, written especially for the recipient of your book.

Here's an exciting sample... (From a woman to a man):

Dear Billy Bob —

If there was only one day in the year in which I could express my passion for you, it would have to have a month-full of hours. And even then, time would stand still when the tips of my fingers caressed your arms, tracing the tattoos of the jails that couldn’t hold you, the names of fallen women that came before me, and the coat of arms of the motorcycle club that is sleeping it off on the living room floor right now.

None can tell how long love will last... Yet even if our passion extinguished one star each evening, I know it would be over too soon for me... And I hide that thought behind the gleam of the gold in your smile. Please accept this book as a token of what I really feel for you, along with (or in place of) this evening of physical bliss.

With all my love,
Chrissy

Valentines will vary in intensity with the available information... Each Valentine will come with a certificate of authenticity, as having been written by Jack Riepe, guaranteeing it is one of a kind. All Valentine’s will be printed in script, on high-quality paper (not recycled mummification bandages), and mailed with each book.

Every Valentine comes with a $1 Million Dollar Guarantee... If you don’t like it, send Jack Riepe $1,000,000.00 (USD) and he’ll rewrite it until you do.

To Order Your Special “Valentine’s Collectors Edition” of Politically Correct Cigar Smoking For Social Terrorists — accompanied by a one-of-a kind message of passion and romance, simply:

Email your full name, address, and phone number to:
jack.riepe@gmail.com

a) Put: "Book Order" in the subject line.
b) Include the full name of the recipient (i.e. “Bill Jones”)
c) What is the relationship of the recipient to you? (i.e. husband, boyfriend, sperm donor, pleasant “ex”, same-sex partner, etc.)
d) Do they play golf... Ride a motorcycle (What kind?)... Hunts, fish... How do they endear themselves to you? Tell me something
e) Each book is shipped with an invoice and a stamped, pre-addressed payment envelope. Write a check, and slip it in the mailbox when the book arrives.

No data is kept or sold after books are shipped... Not like some vampire-run mailing houses.

Order soon... These take time to process! The last book will be shipped February 7, 2012.

Remember: Books autographed by the author are worth more in the event of his death, which has been predicted by a handful of women to occur any day now. Guarantee you have an "original" signed copy.

The Throttle Or The Breast...

Two sensations to which I have never grown accustomed are holding a woman’s breast in my hand; and twisting the throttle of a well-tuned motorcycle. While each is about as different as two actions can be, both leave me breathless and utterly euphoric. The breast caress is generally accomplished in seclusion, amid whispers and an exchange of soft looks. The throttle twist is best savored when it puts you out in front of your riding buddies, or just ahead of the mundane thoughts that hold everyone else back.

I refuse to write a word of appreciation for the female breast. To me, it’s like expressing gratitude for oxygen. There are breasts, therefore poetry, sunsets, love letters, moon rises, candle-light, exotic beaches, rare liquors, and art all have a raison d’etre. (Breasts don’t have to be big, nor round, nor pointing upward to be perfect... Just connected to a sigh.) I am always amazed when a majority of men fail to understand that the fastest way to find a woman’s breast in their hand is to never let their eyes leave hers. And when the poetry is right, this sensation occurs again and again with the same woman — ad infinitum.

The motorcycle is a metaphor for life.

It is so easy to think of motorcycles as machines with the utility of painted ponies, with the loyalty of dogs, and with the killer instincts of leopards. Yet nowhere does the pulse of moto-metaphysics beat strongest than at the throttle. You may experience a buzz in the pegs... You might feel the imperfection of the road through the handlebars... And you may see your life pass before your eyes in the skid of the front wheel... But only through the throttle will you touch the soul of the machine, and feel it touch yours in return.

I touch the soul of my motorcycle every time I pull away from the curb, but there are some moments when it grabs me first.

The State of Delaware (US) is about the size of a large tablecloth, and yet it has some of the most beautiful and unique motorcycle runs in the country — albeit short. One of these is Delaware Route 9, running south from New Castle, through beautiful salt marshes and migratory bird refuges. The gateway to this stretch of heaven is the “Reedy Point Bridge” over the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal. Built in 1968 by the US Army Corps. of Engineers, the bridge stands 138 feet tall and has two steep approach ramps that carry a two-lane roadway.

This is one of my favorite places to take the pulse of my motorcycle.

Coming south out of Delaware City, you first cross an archaic, steel-decked bascule bridge, providing a view up the curving ramp to the towering pile of rust that is the Reedy Point crossing. This is where I twist the throttle about three quarters of the way around. The steady hum in my right hand becomes an incessant buzz, as if I was holding a fist-full of bees. Shifting from third to fourth adds dimension to the buzz, as my 17-year-old BMW K75 digs into the ramp like a chain saw going through a crowd of zombies. I shift into fifth, the final gear, at the top, with the tach reading 6 grand.

The effect is amazing.

I feel as if I am being shot out of a howitzer.

The bike and I become one at the top of the Ferris wheel, fourteen stories above the water. For a few brief seconds, I can see three states... I am taller than the ships coming in from sea... I’m above a nuclear power plant on the horizon... I am as close to weightlessness as I will ever get... And then we swoop down into the salt marshes on the other side. I am astride a red Valkyrie, plummeting to the surface of the marsh. The road is barely an inch or two above the water under the best of circumstances, and the cattails tower over me as the bike levels out. The pavement on the barely-maintained bridge can best be described as “ Aspiring Third World,” and first-time riders on this route should expect some debris or flooding everyplace else, depending on the weather and the tide.

My bike is powered by a three-cylinder, 72-horsepower, liquid-cooled engine that sounds like a blender in a power dive. It is contained in a package that carefully replicates the sexy lines found in a bale of hay. And while it is as responsive as a whore aware of her advancing years, she still gets up to pole dance at five grand. (This mill routinely runs at an RPM that would turn the engine in my truck to paste.)

But you don’t need a bridge and a marsh to get the howitzer effect.

On another morning when the mist was glued to the edge of the pavement, I was accompanied by Dickie Burkenstock. and Michael Redcheek. (They are members of a soon-to-be renegade BMW riding club and have requested their last names be concealed... Not from the law but from their respective spouses.) We were headed for a fund-raising, lingerie breakfast and found an utterly deserted slab just begging for a little Houliganism.

The boys were in loose formation behind and I tapped the button for my flashers... Then I twisted the throttle around until I could feel the grip throb in my hand. The whine of the engine changed to a dare and I laughed in my helmet. The bike rode lower on the forks, but otherwise rose to the occasion. Dickie B. knew the drill and responded in kind. He was astride a much younger, bigger BMW “R” bike, that had huge opposing, horizontal jugs, and which had no trouble keeping up — though it would never pass me.

Michael R. came late to the realization that he was being abandoned. It wasn’t until Dickie B.’s tail light diminished to the substance of a rumor that he would put the spurs to his K75 too. Dick and I arrived at our destination, opened our helmets, and said... Nothing. There was nothing to say. We laughed quietly, knowing full well what the other guy was thinking. And then Michael pulled up, grinning like the village idiot.

“I have to get this GPS fixed,” he remarked. “It showed I was going 55 miles per hour over the 65 mile-per-hour limit.” Then he reset it.*

These are not the sort of things riders brag about, nor even admit in mixed company. Certainly not riders who are old enough to have kids in their twenties’ and thirties’. It’s enough that they just know what the soul of a motorcycle feels like set free... Or even just rubbed through the bars of the cage on the way to the Post Office or the hardware store.

I didn’t always know about breasts and throttles.

In fact, there was a time when I thought I was going to die as the direct result of a breast drought (age 19). It seemed as if every woman I looked at had joined a union, which circulated my picture attached to some kind of a warning. Then I met the first of four women who would forever change my life in the most incredible way. She was a Mediterranean beauty with olive skin and brown eyes, with waist-length hair as dark as my romantic prospects the day before I met her. Naturally, she thought I was an asshole... But that was before she got a look at the purple Kawasaki H2. (Once she saw the color of the bike, I think the word “douche” may have occurred to her too.)

Still, the day came when that bike carried us to the rim of the Hudson Valley, where we sipped a cool, herbal gin drink from a Thermos, and watched the sun dissolve into the mountains. It was there she learned that gin unbuttons blouses... And I learned that as exciting as a motorcycle’s throttle is, it doesn’t hold a candle to a woman’s breast.

*This erroneous GPS reading was scored on Route 182, the primary interstate highway in Samoa. Twisted Roads does not advocate irresponsible speeding on motorcycles.

Copyright Jack Riepe 2012

The Gesture Of The Stolen Motorcycle....

It is no longer acceptable to begin a motorcycle story with a line like, “I admired the purple-ish red paint of my bike, over the head of a perfect beer, poured by Vinnie, the bartender at the ‘Bucket of Guts’.” Current social consciousness precludes even hinting that there was ever a day on which a rider mixed the wind in his hair with the head on a beer, or that such a occurrence could ever happen again. Yet I would be lying to my gentle readers if I suggested that my late adolescence and early 20’s didn’t string dozens of those days together — without the dire consequences that are now so often predicted. It’s hard to say if I was “super cool” or just lucky.

The “Bucket of Guts” (not the bar’s real name) was located in “The Heights” section of Jersey City. While the designation “The Heights” had a certain elitist sound to it, very few of the eastern-facing streets had a commanding view of Manhattan. What was understood, however, was that “shit flowed downhill,” and that living in “The Heights” (and to a degree its subset the “Western Slope”) theoretically raised your head and shoulders above the rest of Jersey City’s effluential neighborhoods.

To my way of thinking, this bar was the pinnacle of local café society. It drew characters with names straight out of a Dickens classic, with all the peculiar physical traits common to the cast of a Fellini movie. Guys were “Possum, Critter, Duke, Fingers, Lefty, Froggy, Joey The Mouse, and Louie The Snake.” In addition to the tattooed men and women, there were the those with the Taras Bulba haircuts, body piercings of 10-penny nails, pet scorpions in matchboxes, street brawlers, and the “specialists” (who could accomplish anything with a little scratch). Into this society, I rode a purple-ish red 1975 Kawasaki H2 and routinely parked it at the curb. I will not deny that I parked at the far end of the line of bikes outside, so as not to upset the riders of the Harleys, the Nortons, and the Triumphs, who all regarded my machine as a cross between a moped and a urinal.

Though no one was ever handed a registration form to join this public house, membership was by tacit recommendation only. I had none of the skills, the unique attributes, nor the street-cred of these guys... But I came with the backing of “Cretin,” one of the most amazing Jersey City personalities who ever lived. He had the physical presence of a legend, the ability to dissolve like a shadow, the wisdom of a diplomat, the survival instincts of a virus, the classic education of a blue blood, the generosity of a Franciscan monk, and the ability to beat someone within an inch of their life.

I was waiting for Cretin as this story slowly unfolded, and I admired the purple-ish red paint of my bike, over the head of a perfect beer, poured by Vinnie, the bartender at the “Bucket of Guts.” There was only window in this bar, strategically placed so that no activity inside could be viewed from the street. But it was possible to see out if you moved a stool over to the glass, and I had yet to tire of looking at my new bike. So I sat on a stool, sipping a beer, taking in the limited view.

The Kawasaki H2 combined the worst of Japanese know-how, which was just getting warmed up in those days, with the vague lines of the typical Brit bike. The chrome was shiny in the beginning, but had a cheap “pressed” look to the mufflers, along with a rakish line to the seat, which made the pillion candy slide into the rider. And the “badge” on the gas tank was the kind of cheap decal found on outboards a decade earlier. It sounded like hell, but flew like a bat out of the same place, as long as you didn’t try anything fancy with it.

I loved it.

It was a dead summer day in the bar. The usual suspects were slow shuffling in and Cretin was nowhere to be seen. Two of the other bikers were surprisingly congenial and engaged me in conversation that would not be typically forthcoming. I switched from beer to something healthier, like gin, and enjoyed being one of these guys, howsoever unlikely that seemed. Late afternoon became early evening and my bike was joined at the curb by ten or twelve others, though “Cretin’s” Norton was not among them. You can get lost in a neighborhood bar and I found myself putting handfuls of quarters in the jukebox, savoring the bite of the gin in a Tom Collins, and getting urge to find something spicier in the jeans of some brunette, when Cretin arrived like one of the plagues from ancient Egypt.

“Reeeep!” he yelled, from the door. “That piece of Japanese shit finally break down on you?”

“It’ll kick the shit out of that Norton any day of the week.”

“I guess not today though,” said Cretin. “You got it in the shop?”

“It’s parked at the curb, you blind asshole.”

“Where?” he snapped.

The Kawasaki was gone. There were 15 other bikes there... But there was only a gap like a missing tooth where the H2 had been parked.

The blood drained from my head and I could feel the cold grip of reality grab my balls.

“Did you park it here or around the corner?” asked Cretin.

“I parked it right here.” My voice was beginning to climb an octave.

“Did you leave the keys in it?”

A fast search through my pockets and a mad dash back to bar revealed my keys were among the missing too.

“Well, we know how they got it. Now we have to get it back,” said Cretin.

My suggestion was to call the police. This comment drew sidelong glances up and down the bar, where the mention of the police was not usually associated with a solution. “He’s kiddin’,” said Cretin to the crowd. “Reep, we’ll find your bike.”

For once, I didn’t share his optimism. At the very least, I expected the bike to get stripped, dropped, or chopped, and I made the mistake of saying as much.

“Who would chop a Jap two-stroke street bike?”asked Cretin. “They have a parts value of eighty cents. The only person stupid enough to buy one was you. And you bought a purple one.”

A handful of guys reputed to know something about hot motorcycles fanned out from the bar. A few of the other guys, all specialists, also left while Cretin started working the pay phone on the wall. Vinnie the bartender started pouring me gin like it was water, and I started drinking it like I was a carp. An hour later, a guy named “Bennie the Glip” came into the bar and handed Cretin a slip of paper.

“Bennie The Glip” found your bike,” said Cretin. “We’ll wait until some muscle shows up and then we’ll go and get it. The muscle was three bikers the size of boxcars, with upper arms sporting life-size tattoos of Visigoths burning villages. Surprisingly, Cretin led us to an alley only two blocks away.

“Isn’t this Spider’s place,” asked one of the huge bikers.

“I never liked Spider,” said Cretin.

I knew Spider, and I liked him fine. I liked his girlfriend even better.

The alley ended in a garage, that had a dim, flickering light showing through the windows.

“Go get it, Reep.... We got your back,” said Cretin.

I wasn’t kidding when I said I wasn’t cut out for this sort of thing. The last fight I’d gotten into was when I was eleven years old, with the neighbor’s kid who was the same age. And that girl beat the shit out of me. Nevertheless, I went toward certain death like a snowball to the sunlamp. I pushed open a side door and looked inside. There was my bike in the center of the garage, surrounded by candles. On the seat was an exotic dancer from one of the seedy topless joints up by Union CIty’s Transfer Station. Her name was “Rani,” and we’d met through a lap dance a week earlier. She was topless then and she was topless now.

Laughter from the guys confirmed I’d been the victim of a hoax.

“Happy Birthday, Reep,” said Cretin.

Led Zeppelin seeped from a boombox and Rani started dancing on “slow simmer.” The guys closed the door on their way out.

I had seen Cretin deliver a gesture with one finger. This was a bit more elaborate.

©Copyright Jack Riepe 2012