On A Summer Day, in 2006

“How far do you think we’ll ride today?”

That question was posed to me by the late Mack Harrell, who was strapping the last of his camping gear to the back of a bright yellow BMW GS.

“Not as far as you’re accustomed to going,” I replied, with a grimace.

I’d been home less than 24 hours from a week on the road — via the BuRP Rally in Maggie Valley, NC — and had made a horrible discovery: my arthritis was no longer resetting to “zero” after a decent night’s sleep and a hot shower. Here it was, at the beginning of a run to Montreal for Mack and Lake Placid, NY for me, and my knees would barely bend. I struggled to get my side cases out to the bike and mounted to the frame. (According to the manual, each case could hold a maximum of 25 pounds. Mine were certainly heavier than that, but I knew the system was up to it.) Yet a loud creaking and popping sound accompanied the maneuvering to get each pannier on the frame. (There is a trick to mounting the bags, and knowing it guarantees the panniers will attach in two seconds or less, and stay attached throughout a nuclear attack. Not knowing it will cause the rider to say, “Fuck,” no less than 7,000 times, as nothing will get the bags on the frame.)

“Are your side bags creaking like that?” asked Mack.

“No,” I replied honestly. “That noise is coming from my knees.”

Later, when I started the engine, Mack cocked his head in amazement as the legendary whine from the K75 filled the air. “Is that sound coming from your engine?”

“No... My dick,” I lied, for variation.

Our ultimate destination was the BMW Rally in Burlington, VT (2006). But Mack had a romantic liaison planned for Montreal and I had always wanted to ride a motorcycle in the Adirondack Mountains of New York. His bike, the Trojan workhorse of the BMW line, was set up for a week of camping. It looked like he was out to discover the source of a strange river. My machine was a 1986 BMW K75 (with the rare Sprint fairing), carefully loaded to get the most out of a first class hotel with superb room service. The plan was to head north a few days before the rally, enabling each of us to pursue our own objectives, before meeting at the rally in Burlington.

Lake Placid was about 400 miles from the driveway and Montreal was another 90 minutes north of that. Most BMW riders would cover that distance before lunch, and Mack had made the run to Montreal, Canada from Essex County, NJ in one shot many times. But my longest day’s run (as a middle-aged male destined for the La Brea Tar Pits) was just around 300 miles, and it nearly killed me. (That ride was on a scalding hot day, and between the heat and my arthritis, riding buddy Wayne Whitlock  suggested replacing my helmet with a plastic bag.)

It’s not that I don’t like riding long distances. But the pain in my knees gets to the point where I start grinding my teeth, and that’s after taking the really strong medication. I would try to make the most of a day’s run by choosing a mixture of direct side roads and picturesque slabs, thereby squeezing 60 to 80 miles out of each hour. Hence my love of the interstates. I have been driving to the Adirondacks for over 35 years and knew the fastest routing — which ran through New Jersey. But Mack had just come from there, so I chose a scenic route up to I-84, that would bring us into New York without having to pass through the Garden State again.

Under the circumstances, that was probably the stupidest thing I could have done.

We took PA Route 100 up to US-22, and grabbed the Pennsylvania Turnpike (Northeast Extension) at Allentown. We followed that to Scranton, and got on I-84 (which misses New Jersey by about 8 feet), which we then traced to the New York State Thruway.
Except it wasn’t quite that smooth nor automatic.

The demons in my knees started hammering before I left the driveway. Pennsylvania Route 100 (heading north) has stretches that delight the eye and refresh the soul. I found myself chewing through my lower lip  with every imperfection in the pavement. There are traffic lights, little farm communities, and the occasional tractor pulling a load of shit. We were delayed by all of them, as the temperature steadily climbed into the mid-90s. While the routing I chose seemed to offer an abundance of high-speed slabs, it wasn’t the most direct route by far. Three hours into the ride brought us to a rest area on I-84 (in New York State), which wasn’t even the introduction to the ride that lay ahead.

We were both wearing mesh ballistic gear that enabled the hellish breeze to evaporate the moisture from our bodies. I was so dehydrated that I didn’t have to take a piss in 8 hours. (I tried, only to release a puff of steam and a whistling sound from “Thor’s Hammer.”.)

“How are you doing?” asked Mack.

“I’m having the time of my life, but don’t really know how far I can get today,” I replied. “I might have to call a halt in Albany.” Albany is the State Capital of New York and was only a little more than halfway. But the truth was that I was starting to think of one of the cheap, run-down hotel properties that one can find for $60 or $70 off the toll road in the vicinity of the Catskills, fifty or sixty miles before Albany.

“Whatever you want to do,” said Mack. The stink of defeat was in the air.

We pulled through the tollbooth of the New York State Thruway 20 minutes later, and moved out into traffic. That was when the real demon made his presence known.

I have always love to see things by car, and the New York State Thruway has been my gateway to freedom since I was 17-years-old. It was the fastest way to get a dramatic change in scenery for a kid who was raised in a city of flat roofs, broken glass, and dog shit. You can’t really see the Hudson Valley to the right, but the foothills of the Catskills open on the left, and all this open, wooded, uncrowded space boggled my adolescent mind. Once again, I found myself lost in reverie on this road.

Now, at age 52 (astride this near vintage Beemer), I stated thinking of the thousands of times I had driven this road in both directions. Twice with new brides... Eight times with new lovers... Dozens of times with hunting and fishing buddies... Hundreds of times on visitation weekends with my daughter (starting at age five)... And many more times by myself (as I owned a business in New Jersey yet lived in Lake Placid, a scant 7 hours distant). Yet this was only the second time I’d traversed this road by motorcycle. (The first was in 1976, when I rode a Kawasaki H2 to Niagara Falls, turning west at Albany.)

Despite the fact that only 11 years separated the issue date of that Kawasaki H2 (1975) and that BMW K75 (1986), there was no comparison between the two machines. The Kawi was primitive, rough riding, and buzzy in the extreme, complete with an odd engine sound. The Beemer was as smooth as 20-year-old single malt, far more responsive on the lower end, immeasurably better in the curves, a lot more reliable on the brakes, and marginally better sounding. What a difference a decade makes!

Then I thought of the comparison between the riders... With more than 34 years difference, the Kawasaki rider had the knees of a varsity fencer, the reticence of a Kamikaze pilot, the commitment of a serial killer and the sense of a doorknob. That rider’s throttle knew two positions: “balls to the wall” and “guilty as charged.”  The H2 rider got a erection once in 1975, and that lasted from April 3rd to December 22nd.

The BMW rider was a shadow of that kid. Rotten knees and an outlook stained by two failed marriages, a mad compulsion to eventually write down every thought and inflict it on unsuspecting readers, and a desire to cling to the one link that forever kept him 19-years-old (at least in his mind), conspired to keep him in the saddle, always waiting for the other boot to drop.

The demon began to seep into my hand through the throttle, and I felt a tingling in my fingers. Looking down at the speedo, I realized I was clipping along at 93 miles per hour, with Mack in hot pursuit. (Some things never change.) I opted not to slow down, but pulled into the first fuel stop to tank up.

“You seem to be feeling a bit better,” noted Mack. “How’s it going?”

It was going worse than I wanted him to know. It hurt taking my left left off the peg almost as much as it hurt to get it up there... And the pain was gravitating toward my hip.

“These rest areas are spaced about every 20 or 30 miles all the way to Albany,” I said. “Would you mind if I pulled into each one just to drop my legs?”

Mack didn’t mind at all, suspecting that we’d have another 40 miles to go before I got off the bike for the day. But the demon had begun to possess me now... And he was feeding on the pain. We covered the distance between rest areas like errant bullets, running speed traps twice. The Catskill Mountains reared up on the left, where we could see a thunderstorm  loose among the peaks, with lightning arcing from crown to crown. The temperature dropped a bit, which was reflected by another jump on  my tach. We ripped past the exits for the cheap hotels, hurtling beyond a picturesque valley housing a maximum security prison.

I carried my own prison in my knees.

There are three beautiful streams crossed by the Thruway and I have always wondered what it would be like to hike along them, casting a fly here and there... But not that day. Hiking and fishing are for the damned when you can be riding a motorcycle. I clung to the far right lane crossing these bridges, so I could see over the side, knowing that they’d be behind me in a second or two. I pointed out waterfalls, mountains, rivers and landmarks to Mack. One of these was the first covered bridge I ever saw in my life, though they would be common enough where I would come to live in Pennsylvania. Mack was a technical rider, who was all business. He never took his eyes from the road and would later confess he had no idea why I was gesturing and waving.

I pulled into every rest area, and got another hour’s leeway in the saddle for every twenty minutes I stretched my legs (without getting off the bike). We were burning up daylight, but covering the miles too. Albany, the center of government in New York State, is but the heart of a metropolis formed by the sister cities of Troy and Schnectady. It is here that the New York State Thruway heads west, and we continued up the Hudson, carving through the interchange that put us on the Adirondack Northway. Imagine what this road first looked like to me when I was 17, a guttersnipe from Jersey City, encountering my first highway signs in another language: French! This is to accommodate the hoards of French-speaking Canadians headed north.  (The second time I’d see highway signs in French, I’d be driving a Citroen SM from Geneva to Chamonix in the French Alps, in the company of a sizzling brunette. I’d be 35. I used to get away with fucking murder when I was alive.)

Passing through Albany, Mack Harrell got his first surprise... “Let’s go as far as Glens Falls,” I said, “about 45 miles further north.”

The Northway crosses the Erie Canal, which is about as wide as most waterways in states that do not support a legendary river (like the Mississippi). Then just before Glens Falls, it crosses the mighty Hudson. At this point, the Hudson is not as wide as one of the cruise ships it floats 140 miles to the south. It has a lake-like quality as it disappears into mist and mystery, en route to the Blue Ledges. (Again when I was 17, I’d hiked to the headwaters of the Hudson — Lake Tear Of The Clouds – and stood with one foot on each bank.)

I informed Mack that we wouldn’t be stopping at Glens Falls nor Lake George, but going straight through to Lake Placid, another 86 miles to the north... And he could see the madness in my eyes. The pain was coursing throughout my body by this time, but it was a different kind of pain. It was the pain that accompanies the desire to accomplish one more ride — just like I was 19- or 20-years-old again. My soul thirsted for the wonder and the thrill of yet “another” first time feeling on a motorcycle.

We crossed the imaginary “blue line” of the Adirondack Park, one of the most amazing reserves anywhere in the world, in the honky-tonk resort of Lake George. There should be a “blue line” painted across the road, but there’s just a sign. I blew my horn like I always do, and did a swerve of celebration. The Adirondack Park is the largest state park of its kind anyplace in the United States. With 1200 lakes and hundreds of miles of rivers, it spans 7 million acres, and is larger than any three national parks combined (in the “Lower 48”). I couldn’t help thinking of all the circumstances under which I’d driven this road before. The best of these adventures were spent in a red GMC Suburban, with a 5-year-old marvel on the bench seat next to me. My daughter and I played every game, sang every song, made up every kind of story, and ate lots of ice cream and Chinese food in that truck. And we did it every other weekend for the next 7 years. (I put 50,000 miles on a new Suburban in the first year I owned it.)

But something different was happening now. There was electricity flowing from the throttle into my hand and the effect on me was amazing. The interstate (I-87) is sweeping turns, marshes, dense forests, and views of open water north of Lake George, which itself is 44 miles long, and I would have run it wide open, had I not been sure I’d have been arrested. I pointed at every landmark I knew, laughing like an idiot, knowing that Mack Harrell had no idea what was running through my mind. The Beemer (Blueballs) was 20 years old that summer, and I rode it like it was new. Sparing neither the horses nor the emotion, I routinely pushed that machine to the red line, only to discover that it used no oil after cruising at sustained speeds in excess of 85 and 90 mph. It barely burned 3 ounces that whole summer.

Our exit was a hundred miles north of Albany, and I pulled over on the shoulder of US-9 (the same US-9 that runs through Jersey City), to catch my breath. Dusk was settling in and the sky was scarlet, against “honest-to-God” purple mountain’s majesty. With the bikes switched off, we could hear a stream tumbling into a ravine, scented with the fragrance of a million balsams.

“How much farther?” asked Mack, amazed that we were pulled over in a place where there was nothing but solitude.

“Another 50 miles, or so.”

“What the fuck got into you today?”

“A sense of who I wanted to be, and what I wanted to feel like,” I replied.

“Well who do you feel like now?”

“I felt like Charles Lindbergh earlier. Now I feel like the Lindbergh baby,” I replied, thumbing the starter for the final time that day.


Have you ever noticed how the last light of the day disappears in the blink of an eye? We weren’t stopped 10 minutes when the shadows matured into a tangible darkness. Pulling in, our headlights had been a suggestion in the gathering dusk. Now they punched a hole in the night, fifty feet ahead of the motorcycles. And while it was night on the pavement, the last vestiges of daylight bled through  the openings in the trees above us, and in the wide expanse of Keene Valley, through which the AuSable River flows.

The road gracefully climbed past Chapel Pond, with the granite cliff rising straight out of the water, before plunging into Keene Valley. Mack only saw the pavement of Route 73, framed in the headlights. I saw the road in my mind, as I have seen it a thousand times. I found myself carving into one “S” curve after another, feeling each turn as I remembered it — but in a truck. I was leaning into them for the first time after all these years. And there was something ethereal about doing it in the dark. All of you have experienced the thrill of riding into a cold pocket, where cooler temperatures envelop bike and rider like a specter. We rode through a dozen of them, as the river pooled alongside the road in unseen recesses, home to trout and wild mink.

The Hobbit-town lights of Saint Huberts, Keene Valley and Keene, winked before we started the final ascent, through the Cascade Lakes, into Lake Placid. The solitary beam of a motorcycle headlamp is like looking through a keyhole in reality... The  bike is cradled by the same invisible forces that hold it at an angle to the ground during the day, but they are positively cult-like in the dark.

The Cascade Lakes are a ribbon of water that span different elevations parallel to the road on the final climb into Lake Placid. Route 73 is gentle in this stretch, but twisty and steep leading in and out of it. I flicked on the MotoLights, mounted to the K75’s brake calipers, and the front of the bike was wrapped in a basket of light. The bike glowed like an ember, rising upward. I knew this entire stepped valley was walled by granite, softened by millions of Aspens, all deep green this weekend... But my world was the golden ring of light, and in that moment, it was all the world any rider could ask.

Two stunning vistas lay before us, but we flashed by them in the dark. (It is unlikely Mack would have seen them in broad daylight.) These were the cluster of high peaks visible at the open field  (where Adirondack Loj Road joins Route 73), with the Olympic ski jumps just beyond. Minutes later, we entered the soft, elegant light that is the resort of Lake Placid, home to two Winter Olympic Games; neither of which succeeded in compromising the charm of this exquisite village.

We pulled up under the marquee of the Crowne Plaza Hotel, one of the nicest places to stay in town. I put my feet down with an audible sigh, and switched off the bike.

“You must be hurting,” said Mack.

I was... But it was the kind of hurt that accompanies the realization one cannot hurtle through space forever. There reaches a point where the ride is over. Hopefully, the bar is open at that point.

©Copyright Jack Riepe 2012
All rights reserved

Shango Rider At Americade!

June 5th to June 9th, 2012 

Lake George, NY

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When The Ride Is The Destination From Hell...

The Civil War had been over less than 10 years, and Patrick Murphy had survived the gunfire of Gettysburg and a handful of smaller, though no less potentially lethal, engagements. He’d been a sergeant then, and barely two years off the boat from his native Ireland, where he’d fled year after year of failed crops and a century of cultural despotism. After the War Between The States, he’d discovered the rule of “NINA” (No Irish Need Apply) was in full effect throughout the counties of Northern New Jersey, almost as if he was in Ulster. Yet his days of moving west in search of the perfect life were now over, and he got his rights and recognition the hard way — through the ballot box. And on this blistering hot day in June,1875, he was a foreman on a construction crew, laying a 36-inch water main prior to the cobblestone paving this broad stretch of a boulevard would shortly receive.

The broad boulevard ran along a ridge top that extended from the northernmost point of North Bergen, NJ, to the open water of the Kill Van Cull at the southernmost stretch of Bayonne, NJ, passing through Union City and the growing expanse of communities that would emerge as Jersey City. Through this huge pipe would surge fresh, clean water to refresh the throats of a million people, many of whom were immigrants, whose drinking water currently came from dozens of questionable sources. The work was hard and fairly technical. But it paid well for the time, and Pat was grateful for a job that covered his needs, and that of his new wife and growing family.

A vacant field opened to the west of the ridge top. It was filled with wild grass, a few trees, and a lot of little yellow flowers that were nothing but weeds. It would have been a grand place to build a house with a little yard front and back. Kids could play in the front yard, and a few chickens could roost out back. This was a luxury in concept and possibility that Pat would never have had back in Ireland. The field would have accommodated a hundred such houses, and horses too, as it sloped away from the ridge line.  But this field was one of many still available in the vicinity, and the word was it had been purchased by one of the local churches for a cemetery.

“Ye’ll get more accomplished looking in the damned trench than at the horizon,” said the job superintendent, Tim McNulty.

Murphy was a “hands-on” foreman, and just as likely to be found wielding a shovel as opposed to telling someone else how to do it. He resented the constant jabbing from McNulty, who was the kind of Irishman who served as a landlord’s agent or an informer in “the old country.” He also knew that his team was far ahead of schedule, and leading other crews in the laying of new water mains throughout the county. But there was no arguing with a man such as McNulty, so he just looked up and smiled.
“Laying this pipe is a lot different than laying your wife,” he said to McNulty. “It’s more satisfying and will serve the public a hundred years.” Then he threw a shovelful of dirt on the superintendent’s shoes.

Thirty days later, cool, clear water roared through the iron pipe, which remained filled and under constant pressure for the next 100 years. Yet nothing lasts forever, and tiny casting imperfections, considered well within the manufacturing tolerance of 1875, began to fail with the next thee decades. Weak spots grew into cracks, that ultimately oozed water. The water began to dissolve the earth that nestled the pipe, creating  subterranean channels that  quenched the grass above the graves, in the cemetery that sat on the western shoulder of  the broad boulevard.

Creton had been drinking at the bar in the “Bucket of Blood,” for the better part of the afternoon, while putting the moves on Lori, a brunette with big eyes, big teeth, and big tits. Unfortunately for him, she also had big ideas on what constituted a romantic evening, and returning to an apartment that qualified as one of the world’s biggest shit houses didn’t quite cut it. In his hour of desperate need, Cretin turned to me and asked, “Want to trade keys for the night?”

“Why? What’s in your apartment that could possibly benefit me?”

Creton lived in an apartment building that had been built in the 1930’s, with huge rooms and high ceilings. The structure clung to the side of an abrupt cliff, and was three stories in front and six in the back. His digs were on the first floor, with a bedroom on the street, but on the fourth floor in the back, with a breathtaking view of Midtown Manhattan from the living room. A cigar store Indian could have gotten laid on the strength of that view alone.

My apartment was a townhouse on Boulevard East, built in the late 1960’s, with an equally breathtaking view of  upper Manhattan, including the George Washington Bridge. I had a much smaller living room, and a tiny kitchen, but I also had a built-in bar  and a terrace, overlooking the tree-lined boulevard. Both apartments were  great babe magnets. The primary difference between the two was in the living style of the tenants.

My place was spotlessly clean.

Cretin’s place looked like a Middle-Eastern bazaar that had recently hosted a car bombing. There was shit all over the place. The living room was decorated with 1930’s furniture that he had planned to have reupholstered, but never did. There were parts and frames from three motorcycles on the floor, illuminated by lamps missing shades. The plaster walls had been punctured by hundreds of “BB’s,” fired by a drunken Cretin on the night he tried to shoot a mouse. The kitchen was decorated in a more contemporary style, with piles of unwashed dishes in the sink, dozens of pizza boxes stacked here and there, and a collection of science experiments (that may have started out as Chinese take-out) in the refrigerator. The bedroom featured a mattress, festooned with balled up blankets, and a window with shades pulled down tight.

Everything throughout the apartment was covered by clean, folded laundry. Cretin had a thing for clean clothes, sometimes changing his jeans and tee shirts several times a day. He had more clothing than any other guy I knew, with jeans, shirts and underwear ensembles numbering in the hundreds. And these were stacked everywhere. He once brought a hooker home, who said upon entering, “You wouldn’t have to pay for sex if you just cleaned this place.”

“C’mon, Reep,” Cretin said, rolling his eyes.”I want to make it with this chic and the apartment I described to her was yours.”

Now I was perfectly willing to give Cretin the keys to my bike, my apartment or anything else I’d had under normal circumstances. But pure mayhem had ruled the last time he’d brought a woman to my place.  For one thing, he told her that my caged birds were all finger trained. (I collected and raised finches back then.) They were not. He released a dozen of them into the apartment, and tried to lure them back by sprinkling a can of bread crumbs all over my book shelves. (Finches do not eat bread crumbs, nor Chinese dumplings, which were his next idea.)

He then took a series of “art” photographs, using his girlfriend “Susie” as a model, with a camera of mine he found in a closet. There were 18 pictures left on the roll and Cretin fulfilled some fantasy on each one. He neglected to tell me about this. The first 18 shots were of a trip I had taken with my girlfriend and her dog. I didn’t remember shooting the whole roll, but I popped it out of the camera and gave it to her to get developed. The looks she got at the photo place made her really mad. The only thing that saved me was Cretin had taken a close-up of his Johnson, and it was substantially different than mine. (It probably had two heads.)

Finally, he got really smashed and took a piss off the balcony. That means he stood out on my terrace, balls-ass naked, and pissed over the rail, onto the street below. The only saving grace to this was that he did it in the middle of the night, and managed to hit his Norton, parked on the sidewalk. (I later found out he and Susie were both out on the terrace naked, and that he was letting her “aim” while he unloaded.)

“I can’t tonight,” I lied. “The princess is coming back on a late flight  from Arizona and we are planning a lovers’ reunion.”

“You can take her to my place,” Cretin suggested.

“Only if I want her to go back to Arizona,” I replied.

“Where else can I take Lori? It took all day but I finally got her eating out of my lap.”

“Stick her on the back of the bike and head up the Hudson toward the Tappan Zee Bridge,” I said. “There’s a cheap motel with a view of the river in Stony Point, and a cheap steak place with a bar across the street. The hotel is called the ‘Maple Leaf,’ or something like that.”

“Is it clean?” asked Cretin.

“It’s cleaner than your apartment... But so is a Port Authority men's room,” I pointed out. “You could always take her into one of those.”

It was getting dark when the two them pulled away.

Two hours earlier, a chunk of iron the size of a tea cup blew out of the great pipe that had been carefully laid by Patrick Murphy, one hundred years before, under the pavement of what was now one of the busiest thoroughfares in Hudson County. It is estimated that six or seven hundred gallons of water a minute was shooting out of the main. But no one knew this as the original cobblestone pavement, covered by seven layers of asphalt, held tight.

Since the water couldn’t go up, it went sideways... Blasting a subterranean  passage-way into the cemetery on the west side of the boulevard, ten feet under the street. Once the dirt securing the pipe had thoroughly dissolved, bigger chunks blew out of the rotten main, releasing a rocket thrust of water into the ground. Water is one of the most democratic substances on earth. It finds its own level without regard for the living nor the dead. The uncontrolled torrent began to soak through layers of the deceased with a fury.

Cretin and Lori peeled off into the gathering dusk with high expectations. She’d expected a night in one of the world’s shittiest apartments, hastily cleaned, if at all; and what she was about to get was dinner out and a night in a dumpy hotel with a view. (I’d exaggerated the qualities of the restaurant and the hotel. But a night in purgatory is better than the same time in hell.)  Cretin expected to be peeling the panties off of Lori in less than 90 minutes. He considered himself a kind of Saint Francis, releasing flawless breasts trapped in confining brassieres, to the freedom of his hands. He and Lori were happily lost in their own shallow interpretation of lust’s promise.

The Norton had roared to life on the second kick. Cretin opted not to take the “Boulevard” north, but shot straight down to US 1-9, which ran parallel to the foot of the ridge. He effortlessly threaded through light traffic, at about 65 miles per hour. The route was fairly straight and sort of industrial, with residential spots here and there. The exception being where the old cemetery on the hillside appeared on the right.

The water from the broken main opened more than a dozen graves on its mad course downhill, strewing the contents of caskets with reckless abandon. New burial regulations call for modern interment within a concrete containment vessel, though this was not always the case. Several of the deceased found themselves liberated from the tomb, and headed downhill. Most of the bodies became entangled with tombstones. little fences, and other grave ornaments. Yet one gentleman, in a now tattered suit, seemed more determined than the others. He made it to one of the paved  roadways in the cemetery, which offered the water an unhindered exit onto the highway.

The pavement on Tonnele Avenue was a smooth as a Congressional promise, and the Norton jolted from one patched pothole to another. The headlight never offered much in the way of contrast, and was virtually washed away in the foot-deep lake that now surged across the road. But Cretin was alert and started to brake, though the nature of the pending threat had yet to fully register. The Norton hit the water a split second later, still moving at 40 miles per hour, drenching the two of them. He released the brakes  and concentrated on remaining upright, with the throttle completely chopped. Nearly through the water, the headlight picked up the prone figure of a man in a suit, face-down  on the pavement.

Cretin’s first thought was to swerve, and he downshifted while the giving the bike some gas. He was out of options, however, and he hit the person dead on, with the bike bouncing over the man’s body. Cretin brought the bike to a halt on dry pavement within 30 feet, and yelled for Lori to get off. Making sure she was out of the path of approaching traffic, he then dismounted and ran back to help the poor bastard he had just hit, and probably killed.

Cretin was still a few feet away when he yelled, “Buddy, are you okay?”

Critical descriptive details of the “victim” were obscured by the darkness. As gently as possible, Cretin rolled the gentleman on his back. The headlights of an oncoming car starkly illuminated the facial features of a middle-aged man, who’d been dead for at least 30 years.

Lori said Cretin’s scream could be clearly hear over the sound of approaching sirens.

He fell over backing away from the soaked cadaver, and watched as a car came through the water, and ran over the body again.

It was then he noticed the water gushing from the cemetery grounds, the remains of shattered coffins caught by the property’s rusting iron fence, and other debris, which enabled him to conclude that he was more of the effect than the cause of this situation. Consequently he got back on the Norton, restarted the bike, and took Lori straight to his apartment.

I saw them both in the bar the next day. Lori was wearing a pair of Cretin’s pants and one of his tee shirts.

“So how was the ride last night?”  I asked.

“Fucked up,” said Cretin.

“Why? What happened?”

“Cretin killed a dead person with his Norton,” said Lori. “So we had to spend the night in his shit house, drinking Jim Beam straight from the bottle because there were no clean glasses.”

He gave Lori the kind of look that I knew meant he was torn between spending another night with her, or just writing off the loss of his favorite Grateful Dead tee shirt. I knew he bit the bullet when I saw him wearing the same Grateful Dead tee shirt three days later.

©Copyright Jack Riepe 2012
All rights reserved

"Hard Ride" Gives Biker 20-Month Boner... Me Too!

A California man filed suit against the manufacturer of premium German-built bikes, claiming the hard ride on  his near-vintage 1993 BMW, equipped with a Corbin-Pacific seat, gave him an erection that lasted over a year and a half. (See the story here.) In a suit against BMW North America and Corbin-Pacific, Henry Wolfe, 52, is  seeking $25,000 in damages, claiming that a grueling four-hour motorcycle ride resulted in a raging boner that wouldn’t quit for 20 months. Wolfe seems to think the stiff,  “ridged” design of the seat, and something about the bike, precipitated the condition known as “priapism,” in which a man’s penis engorges with blood and refuses to deflate. In severe cases, the penis develops a mind of its own, taking over the host’s body, and assuming responsibility for making spur-of-the-moment relationship decisions involving pole dancers and truck-stop beauty queens.

Dr. Albert Hissingaz, legal counsel of the Wilmington Institute of Holistic Dry Cleaning, believes this will start a boner-enhancement race between major motorcycle manufacturers, who have been waiting to make claims like this for years.

Not surprisingly, I have received dozens of emails and FaceBook communications riveting my attention to the situation. Many Twisted Roads readers are of the same mind as Mike Shipley, who wrote, “I thought this was right up your alley.” While I regret that Mr. Wolfe has suffered some degree of hardship, not withstanding what his 15 minutes of fame is likely to cost him in any biker saloon, there really isn’t much of a story here. Any BMW rider knows that pointing one of these machines into a straightaway, or a series of tight curves, and opening the throttle will result in a bullet-proof hard-on. The finely balanced weight-to-horsepower ratio of every BMW model guarantees great gas mileage, which means you can be in the saddle for quite a while. It is on long rides that many BMW pilots have reported vying with their penis to remain in control.

Not all are successful.

Tillman C. Flager was a mild-mannered insurance company actuary who got tired of tipping lap dancers, only to have them spit in his drink when he tried to chat them up. He bought a 2011 BMW F800, thinking a motorcycle might bring out his inner man.

It did.

On a three-hour and forty-five-minute run from his home in Spilt Milk, Nebraska, Flager’s Johnson inflated and took on the characteristics of “a washing machine drain hose stuffed with rebar.” (His description.) It began making decisions regarding the direction in which he was riding, eventually determining where he would stop and who he would talk to. He had a mad compulsion to screw every third women he met. And after a while, he just wanted to screw everyone. So he quit his job and got elected to Congress, where he is known as one of the most enduring pricks in government.

In another case, Elliot Flossenberger, a librarian facing forced retirement,  was ripping along a back road in West Virginia on a 2004 BMW K1200GT — when he realized he’d lost all track of time. Flossenberger figured he was in the saddle about four hours, when the wind howling over the bike (which was cruising at the normal 125 mph) ripped the gas cap from its hinges. Acting as a siphon, the sudden draft began to vaporize the exposed fuel, when the opening was suddenly plugged by his raging phallus. The heroic appearance of an epic boner not only enabled him to ride for another four days, but it solved a bigger problem when he got home. His future, former wife started to bombard him with hundreds of annoying questions, which he answered by slapping the old salami and saying, “Direct your inquiries to Cupid’s microphone.” She fled, never to be seen again.

BMW "R" Bike Rider Dick Bregstein demonstrates how seat-effect helps him carry a bundt cake home from the bakery. Clyde Jacobs (to the right) says, "No cake fore me tonight!"

Most BMW riders have accepted the fact that Teutonic motorcycles are natural boner-enhancing agents. Ride toughened members in one chartered BMW riding club (serving southeast Pennsylvania) celebrate this fact by hanging mistletoe from their belt buckles around the winter holidays, so their wives and girlfriends can join in too — whether they ride or not.

I just accept the fact that riding a BMW K75 makes my life different in a number of ways — some of which were more practical than romantic. One year, my former lover and I had decided to plant a vegetable garden out back. The ground was very rocky and  I filled three spackle buckets with stones. I was able to carry one in each hand, and the third by looping the handle over “Big Lou and The Twins.” On another occasion, in which I had  an expensive BMW side bag in each hand, I was able to use the “Jack Hammer” to catch my motorcycle, which had begun to fall on the heat-softened asphalt.

While Henry Wolfe is complaining, a number of BMW riders have reported that their seats were stolen by riders of other marques, whose bikes seem to have the opposite effect.

But there does reach a point where fighting for control with the “other”pilot does get tiresome, however. One former lover of mine claimed the bike had turned my one-eyed anaconda into a compass needle that was forever pointing toward her ass. I guess this just proves that BMW motorcycles aren’t for everyone.

Here are some of the comments I received lately.

Buzz Davis: There are many reasons to ride a BMW... Here’s the best one (hard-on).

Bregstein: I paid extra for that (seat) feature.

Mike Shipley: I thought this (story) was right up your alley.

Dan Allen (Shango Rider): I note that he waited 20 months before filing his lawsuit.  Was he having fun for 19 months and only then decided he should sue?

Brian Curry: Now I know why Jack got so much for the K75 with the “custom seat.”

Gef Flimlin: Another reason to ride a BMW... (hard-on)

William Quarton: I don't know why your name came to mind when I saw this article... (about the moto hard-on).

A Review of:

Politically Correct Cigar Smoking for Social Terrorists

Published By Croften and Stone ° 30 Chapters ° Price $30 (Autographed by Author)

By Michele Smith

The convoluted humor of Jack Riepe is not for everyone. Those who like his work tend to really like it. And those who dislike it generally hate both it and him. Rarely have I read a book with such mixed emotions, wanting to read it day and night until I finished, but not wanting the stories to end.  I decided to read it by chapters, pausing between each short story to thoroughly enjoy it's content. It has been a very long time since I have laughed like this book made me laugh, or even realized how much I really needed to laugh.

Riepe has a unique writing style. His command of the English language appears coincidental, until you realize his choice of words and use of complex sentences is anything but. He has the ability to draw the reader into the situation to the point where I felt like I was a character in each chapter, watching each plot unfold, anticipating his bumbling reactions, and gauging the expressions of the faces of other characters. His method of telling a story is flawless.

Yet the book is flawed. I found dozens of typos that should have been caught by a proofreader, giving rise to the question: “Did the author refuse to let a proofreader look at it for fear they would change the context?” Those familiar with Riepe’s work in his blog or his column in the BMW Motorcycle Owners of America’s monthly Owner’s News will also see a distinct difference in the style used throughout this book and his current material. The only explanation is that his perspective has matured, to the extent that an irresponsible kid’s perspective can ever mature.

Michelle Smith on her BMW F650GS. A hard ride suites her just fine. Note pigtails.

Technically speaking, the book is about cigars. Riepe uses a blend of tobacco terminology and loose facts to create an aura of familiarity with cigars and the people who smoke them. And while he seems to convey the idea that he knows what he’s talking about (in the same way he writes about motorcycles), the book is far more focused on human nature (relationships, politics, romance, divorce, and trends).

It is hard to state which chapters I loved the most though a few favorites come to mind. First, was the story of Riepe’s grandfather smoking a cigar at a funeral. Secondly,  the story of the “real” woman (with the stogie in her mouth), who gave the author a lip-lock, while he was pinned under his motorcycle. Finally, there was the story of the cigar room with the submarine hatch for isolation, in response to the author’s lover de jour, who was growing pantyhose in his bathroom.

The only chapter I did not completely love was the last one. however. The author saves his parting shot for those who have gone out of their way in their persecution of cigar smokers — who are enjoying their vice outside. He singles out politicians, lawyers, and accountants, as well as tree huggers, as bottom-feeding, social gnats.

Politically Correct Cigar Smoking For Social Terrorists seems like an unlikely topic for the  average woman. But this book is more about a humor writer’s perspective on life’s trends, and how to buck then, duck them, or do anything else that rhymes. It has whet my appetite for Riepe’s next work, rumored to be about motorcycles.

Michelle Smith is a Twisted Roads reader and rides a BMW F650GS through the alligator infested swamps of southern Florida. A former cigarette smoker, she does not advocate the use of tobacco products, though believes ripping around on a motorcycle, or in red-hot vintage muscle convertibles builds character. She’s right. Smith works with lions, tigers, and wild cats on an animal preserve. 

Give The Biggest Mother You Know 

A Copy Of My Cigar Book!

How To Order Your Copy Of:
Politically Correct Cigar Smoking For Social Terrorists...
1) One Autographed, Personally Inscribed Copy...
• $30 plus $5 Shipping and Handling

2) Two Autographed, Personally Inscribed Copies...
• $45, plus  $5 Shipping and Handling
• You save $15 on the cost of the second book, and an additional $5 bucks in S&H...
• Plus You get to give a book away for “Mother’s Day!”

3) Email me at jack.riepe@gmail.com
• Just indicate “Cigar Book Order” in the subject line!
• Tell me if you want one book or two...
• Tell if the book is for you or for a friend...
• If a gift, tell me the first and last name of the recipient, plus something about them...
(i.e. They ride a BMW and have had a hard-on for the last 18 months or so...)

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Each book is mailed 1st Class and comes complete with an invoice and postage-paid envelope.

Include your first and last name, your address, and your telephone number...
 

©Copyright Jack Riepe 2012