Purple Mountains Mystery...

Prologue:

The following story is absolutely true, with a few alterations in places where it is not. The untrue parts are those that imply I was thin, rode my motorcycle with precision, and didn’t sweat while riding in the deep south. The true bits are those claiming southerners (US) will eat anything fried in enough lard, that there is mystery in the purple mists of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and not everything can be easily explained. (For example, can anyone explain why the English version of the 1986 BMW K75 owners’ manual has the photos captioned in German? If this can be explained, can it be explained in a way that doesn’t sound sinister?)

I was sitting in an Adirondack Mountain bar with Chris Wolf (a Honda rider with a yellow bike named “Hepatitis”), when he bet 10 rounds of drinks that he had a more mysterious motorcycle story than I did. I studied Chris’s eyes for sincerity, and would have been startled to find any. Chris is English, and came to the United States because he heard a British accent will get a guy laid here every time, even if the accent can only emote sarcasm. 

Chris Wolf — Accomplished rider of the yellow Honda known as "Hepatitis."
(Photo by the author) 

We pulled our chairs closer to the fire and Chris gallantly sneered, “You tell yours first.” To the waitress, he said, “Bring us ten rounds of drinks and stake the tab to the mantle.” This was a local tradition in which the wager, a whopping huge drink tab, was stuck into the hewn timber mantle using a Revolutionary War bayonet said to have belonged to a Hessian deserter.

“This in the bag,” I thought, “as I will be shortly.” I drew a deep breath, and began.

My Most Mysterious Motorcycle Story:
 

A little heat, a little fatigue, and a lot of miles can play tricks on a rider. It may seem as if motorcycle’s serenade has gained something: a note of wear or a ping that wasn’t there before. You may detect a momentary vibration that suggests something is loose. You’ll think you may have imagined it, just as you imagined that redhead in the convertible gave you a long, sweet smile. But you can’t be sure.

This level of extrasensory moto awareness is usually magnified by a hangover or sleep deprivation. It has been my experience that a hangover, and a night of Cupid’s gymnastics, are not mutually exclusive of each other. Some experts even suspect a “cause and effect-type” relationship between the two. But it is almost guaranteed that you will be doing 95 miles per hour when you think you hear something amiss on the bike.

A legendary rider — Horst Oberst — once said, “A motorcycle makes two kinds of noise, the cheap kind and the expensive kind.” At speeds over 95 miles per hour, all strange noises are the disturbing kind.

Horst Oberst — Accomplished rider and authority on both kinds 
of strange motorcycle noises. (Photo by the author.)

I was clawing my way up I-81, through “Old Virginia,” when I heard the “buzzing noise.” I distinctly thought the three-cylinder mill on my 1986 BMW K75 was gnawing something. Then I wondered if I had “felt” the noise more than heard it. It could have been a tire shredding, or the head bearings hanging up, or anything. I’d been six hours in the saddle, on a hot day, running on three hour’s sleep, with a prison riot raging in my head. I’d spent most of the night before in a Tennessee strip joint, where you could have intoxicated the on-stage porkers with barbecue sauce. (I am not attempting to be unkind here, merely accurate.)

There is an old expression that goes, “Honey, I’m going to drink you pretty,” but there wasn’t that much liquor in the state that night. That doesn’t mean I didn’t give it a good try. My decision to set off at dawn, about three hours later, was not one of my better ideas. I thought the cool mountain air of the south would revive me. In truth, a faith healer would have had his work cut out for him that day.

I eventually found my way onto I-81 and into Virginia. Shifting steel blockades of trucks and cages made passing impossible.  The most vicious ”white line” dancing didn’t buy me more than 200 additional yards in 5 miles. There are much nicer roads and several of them paralleled this interstate. But life moves at a slower pace in Virginia — about 55 mph slower, to be exact — and I thought I was in a hurry. The gas light winked on (for the second time that day) just as I  imagined I heard something grind. Then I thought I felt something drag. Then I thought I smelled burning oil. “Screw this,” I thought next. “I want hot coffee, a donut as big as my ass, and a place to sit that doesn’t feel like this seat. And if there is a motel close by, I’ll take take that too.”

I had no complaints with the seat. It was a Russell Day-Long Saddle, custom-crafted to match the contours of my ass. It was built on the frame of a pool table and had to be sent through the Panama Canal from the west coast. That seat was so good, it made me feel like every member of the US Senate had kissed my ass twice. My problem was the seat was attached to the motorcycle and I wanted off the bike.

I banked into the exit for Braleysburg (not its real name), which was actually 20 miles away, on a country road that wound through open fields, old hardwoods, a swamp and a couple of cemeteries. I pulled over to put my feet down at a shady spot where the headstones came right up to the road. The names of the deceased were distinctly American, like Silas Henry and Jubilation T. Soames. I wondered how many of these folks had descendants still breathing in the surrounding county. (Headstones in a Jersey City cemetery would have names like Aiden Clancey, Guiseppi Antonucci, or Stosh Polwalawycz.) I pressed on to the town. 

Founded in 1672 by a preaching hangman, who was an authority on distilling, Braleysburg  was a post office, a general store, a gas station, a diner, and a motel. Sixty percent of these facilities were in one building. The general store was closed. It had closed in 1972, the same year the diner got its last batch of fresh donuts. The motel was of a 1950s vintage that genuinely appealed to me. A sign on the road read, “Payson’s Motel. A ‘Vibra-Bed’ in every room.” The empty parking lot read, “Vacancy.” I was the only guest.

The sweet old lady who ran the joint welcomed me with a smile and plate of warm cookies. She reminded me of a Hollywood scriptwriter’s version of somebody’s grandmother: gray hair done up nicely, wire-rimmed glasses, and a soft voice. Her name was something like “Aunt Pitty-Pat Payson.”

My room was along the side, away from what little traffic there was. I could glimpse part of the road, but my view of the mists rising off the Blue Ridge Mountains was spectacular. Glittering dragon flies flitted above a tranquil pond on the edge of the property, marked by a few cattails.  The room was immaculate and homey, with a handwritten menu from the adjacent diner on the dresser. The furnishings were dated but glistened with lemon oil. There was a television on a stand, but the white lettering over its buttons had faded. I’d be fine here.

According to the menu, the diner was open until 7pm, but that was arbitrary. It was just as likely to close two hours earlier. I was hungry enough to eat, and decided I would go “deep Southern” for the night. My ambitions included fried green tomatoes, chit’lans, collard greens, possum fritters,  catfish or ham... whatever the hell they had that personified Dixie. I already knew that nothing beats a southern breakfast. A southern breakfast is the second best thing I have ever tasted.

No biscuit is complete unless it is dripping sausage gravy. No ham steak is as inviting as when accompanied by fresh eggs, grits, and red-eye gravy. And while a meal like this scores 48,000 Weight Watcher points, I recommend it be followed by a third cup of coffee and whatever pie is hot out of the oven — preferably buttermilk pie. If a southern breakfast was this good, I could only image what a great southern dinner could be like.

“Imagine” would be the operative word.

The diner used to do a great business during the halcyon days of the War Between The States. It’s popularity had suffered since then. The waitress (blond, late forties-ish) and the “chef” (who had a tattoo of an armadillo on his arm, under the legend “Remember the Armadillo”) seemed mildly disinterested by my arrival, until I fired off my New Jersey accent. Then they looked like they were smelling something bad.

“What would you like?” asked the waitress.

“What do you recommend?” I replied.

There was a pause, and I swear I heard the cook mutter, “I recommend you stick your head up your ass and roll down the road like a hoop.”

The waitress stifled a laugh and cleared her throat at the same time.

“How’s the chit’lans and collard greens tonight?”

They looked at each other and busted out laughing.

“We’ve got meat loaf, macaroni and cheese, and green beans,” said the waitress. 

“There are no other entrees?”

“You got three right there,” she said. “How many do you need?”

“We got sides,” said the cook. “We got more sides than a box. We got cornbread, left over from this morning; grits, left over from this morning; black-eyed peas, left over from yesterday; and goose liver pate.”

“When was the goose pate left over from?”

“It’s left over from when the cat wouldn’t eat it,” she said.

I am particular about meatloaf. Most places make it according to a time-honored recipe from the Turkish penal system.  It is inedible by my standards. The same goes for macaroni and cheese. The only acceptable options are Kraft Mac and Cheese  or absolutely home-made casserole, with chucks of ham and fresh green peas, mingled with firm-cooked elbow macaroni, oozing sharp melted cheddar. (No one makes the second kind any more.) In the south, macaroni and cheese is semi-flaccid, served in bright orange spackle.

“How about chicken-fried steak, black-eyed peas and fried green tomatoes?” I asked. “Can you heat some cornbread on the grill?”


This was as close as I was going to get to an authentic southern dinner. A thin beef steak dipped in batter normally reserved for fried chicken was made to dance in a puddle of sizzling lard. Black-eyed peas are actually beans, usually cooked with anything else (bacon, possum or squirrel) to give them flavor. And fried green tomatoes... well they are different.

I first became aware of fried green tomatoes watching the 1991 movie of the same name. It starred Mary Stewart Masterson and Mary Louise Parker, who ran a cafe somewhere in Depression Era Alabama. (“Depression Era” is the time period, not the name of the town.) The cafe became locally famous for its barbecue and fried green tomatoes. This movie made me want a tomato sandwich... a sandwich in which the tomatoes were Mary Stewart Masterson and Mary Louise Parker, with me wedged in between.

I have eaten fried green tomatoes in Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. I must be missing something because they taste like shit everyplace. Imagine fried eggplant, without the redeeming quality of the eggplant. But it doesn’t stop me from trying. I imagine Mary Louise Parker feeding me fried green tomatoes, one slice at a time.

The best part of dinner was the blackberry pie. The blackberries were local and fresh. They were as big as the last joint on my thumb, semi-deflated in a gooey thick sweet blackberry juice ooze, encased by a somewhat collapsed yet delightfully flaky crust. There were three pieces of pie left in the tin and I bought them all.  My head was still troubled and all I wanted to do was sip coffee and watch the last rays of the setting sun dance on the Blue Ridge Mountains.

There is a phrase — purple mountain’s majesty — which applies to the Blue Ridge Mountains, more so than any other mountains in my experience. I have seen the Alps disappear in the clouds. I have seen the contrast of the Rockies against flawless skies. I have watched the Adirondacks mask themselves in gray mist. Yet it is only in Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina have I seen mountains cloak themselves in purple shades of royalty. The sight alone is worth making the trip.

It is amazing how how color appears in nature. There is wonder in the green flash of dawn as the sun rises over the Atlantic, and awe in the blue glimmer of the northern lights in Upstate New York. Rainbows shimmer in the sky and on trout. And now I finally witnessed the “purple mountain’s majesty” as stated in the song.

I was falling in and out of reverie when the muted growl of a motorcycle came from the road. The Doppler effect provided a nice touch as the sound of the engine rose and fell in passing. It wasn’t the guttural growl of a Harley, nor the Messerschmidt cadence of a BMW. It had a more cultured baritone quality to it. 

Then I heard it return. The engine was running at a lower RPM as the bike pulled into the motel’s lot.  The sound effects of unseen activity seeped around the corner of the motel. The engine got switched off. Boots crunched in the grit of the driveway. The screen door to the office screeched open and slammed.  And then they repeated themselves in reverse. A second or two later, the motorcycle pulled into view.

The machine was a deep blue 1983 Honda CX 500 Custom, one of the most beautiful motorcycles ever built. Compact to the point of being “concise,” it had an upright configuration, with a decent rake to the forks and a slight buckhorn cast to the handlebars. Extraordinary in its appeal was the Moto-Guzzi-style sideways mounted V-twin. Under the tank, a chrome-shrouded radiator did the cooling. The paint was flawless. It was the kind of blue that gets its opaqueness from the soul of the bike. (I am partial to BMW’s Orient Blue, a lustrous color that derives its hue from the blackness of the rider’s soul.)  Yet it wasn’t perfect. The radiator shroud was executed in garish chrome and the wheels were a Frankenstein combination of cast and riveted rims. I might have been able to live with the radiator, but not those wheels. The Honda was without a windscreen and sported soft leather saddle bags.

The 1983 Honda CX 500 Deluxe — A beautiful motorcycle (Image from Wikipedia)

The bike and its rider were covered with bugs. The rider was a skinny weasel. He wore scarred boots, faded jeans, a short leather jacket (made for practical riding with a high collar), soft gloves, and a tinted flip-face helmet.  I gave him the manly nod reserved for charter members in the cool-but-strange-bike-riders’-testosterone club. It was ignored.

He pulled off his helmet to reveal a shock of short red haircut and the worst case of helmet head I had ever seen. He was a she. She had two thin lines for lips and freckles that had been drizzled onto an angular face. Her eyes bored through mine, doing a retinal scan for character flaws. She hadn’t been in my company for 30 seconds and had already dismissed me as a shit-head.

“Welcome to Braleysburg. There’s hot coffee and homemade blackberry pie,” I said, gesturing to the unopened cup and the pastry box on the cheap white plastic seat I was using as a table. “I didn’t know what time you’d get here, so I just opted to have something sweet.”

The corners of her mouth flickered upward as a softer light flashed through her eyes. I responded by leeching more blue into my own. (Just in case.) Her lips visibly tightened. I’d caught her underestimating me and she didn’t like it. Not that she gave a damn what I thought. She was just pissed that my eyes said, “It’s okay, Honey. I’m used to it.”

 “Nice bike,” I said. “You don’t see too many of those around.”

“Thanks,” she said. She looked over at mine but said nothing. I knew she had never seen anything like the K75 — with its rare Sprint fairing — and was struggling through the first impression.

“Fuck you,” I thought. “I wouldn’t have wheels like that on a dung cart.” Just thinking this made me flash her another smile.

She pulled a saddle bag liner out of one pannier and opened the door to a room two down from mine.  I took a long sip of the cooling coffee and closed my eyes again.  It had been my intention to light a cigar, but now held off, out of consideration. (Not consideration for the woman, but for my expiring headache.) Some things are not improved by a cigar.

I felt myself dozing off. Every place has a distinctive feel to to it. The allure of a New England village (Maine), where the wind carries the salty taste of a cracker; or an Adirondack (New York) camp, where the woodsmoke competes with the balsams; or a saloon where aromas of mint, bourbon, and perfumed panties (New Orleans) mingle at the bar. Each stands out as sensations to be savored. Here, in this place, the water scent of the pond was suggestive of a summer that lasted nine months.  I closed my eyes thinking of summers I’d spend as a kid.

It was past dusk when I opened them again. The moon was up and its silver light  caught the mists coming off the distant mountains. They were slowly filling the fields around me. First flowing around stands of trees and then filtering through them.  There was a muted explosion of sound on the pond, as a swimmer surfaced and stepped out of the water. It was the woman. A filmy tee shirt, glued to what few curves she had, dripped water as she stood in the moonlight — staring straight at me. The tee shirt barely came down past her waist.

I like skinny women. And if they are flat-chested... well, I really that. This one could have been a model in the late 1970’s if she’d had another couple of inches in height. It was then I noticed the most peculiar thing. She was positively luminescent in the moonlight. Not that the moonlight danced around her. Not that she was the kind of woman who could bend light with a smile. The moonlight seemed to pass through her. She derived her substance from the moonlight and the mist. It was almost as if this was her real form, while the guise of the rider was assumed.

She started walking toward me, moving with a measured grace that was positively feline, putting one foot in front of the other, stepping through the cut grass. Yet there was a purpose in her movement that made me wish that I had been inside my room, behind a locked door, dead drunk in my bed.

“Do I make you nervous?” she said.

“All pretty women do.”

This was not the reply she was expecting.

“You find me pretty?” she asked.

One of the greatest movies ever made is the black and white classic Casablanca, starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains, and Paul Henreid. There is a scene in which a young woman, about to be taken advantage of by a corrupt police official, asks Humphrey Bogart, “What kind of man is Captain Renault?” Bogart replies, “He’s like any other man, only more so.”

Those words could have been written about me. I love women, and I’d love a different one every weekend if it was up to me. When necessary, I can squeeze a nicely-worded compliment from my DNA. But I cannot lie with my eyes which is why I don’t play cards nor work as a marriage counselor. My eyes answered her question and she was surprised.

“You should be nervous. I am the goddess of moonlight and mist, in challenge to the smoke you have been  blowing up the asses of women for years,” she said. “Stand up. and be judged.”

“Like hell I will,” I thought. But my will was not my own and my body followed her commands.

She took my hand and led me into the darkness that was my room. The door was already open and the moonlight seemed to follow us. What happened next was one of the strangest experiences of my life. She was naked, except I don’t remember her taking anything off. She was touching me, although I had no sensation of being touched. And she was kissing me. Yet there was no satisfaction in her kisses, just a wild insatiable longing. What I did feel was a terrible sense of being taken for granted. I somehow knew that I would be left without purpose...  without substance...  without a shadow... Left to wander the earth without motive. I would become the personification of fried green tomatoes. I also knew that the Honda CX 500 Custom had belonged to some other worthless guy who was now in hell.

She was a collector; some sort of supernatural wonder that avenged women who had become superfluous to the lives of men. This was a charge for which I had no defense in my younger days, but for which I repented when I was older. (I repented by kissing the asses of a dozen woman who rewarded my devotion by starting the final conversation with, “I’ve been thinking about us.” I now associate the taste of shapely ass with a short fall through a trap door.)

The extent of my repentance was not enough. She looked at me with eyes that threatened to drain my soul, or whatever the hell it is that men use for a soul. She was here to make me pay; to take something from me. In a second, I knew I’d be consumed and that she’d be riding out of here on a 1986 K75, with a Sprint Fairing. I wondered if my soul-less body would be damned to ride that Honda with those wheels. For an instant, there was despair. And she smiled. I felt myself fading, dissolving in the moonlight and the mist. There was but one course of action to take.

I closed my eyes for a second, and when I opened them again, I fired my secret weapon: The “Battered Baby Seal Look.” No living woman can resist its power. The question now was, “Could it save me from the malevolent spirit of one?”

The “Battered Baby Seal Look” gets its name from the cute expression of the Harp seal pup. There is no cuter expression on the face of the earth. It will melt butter at 400 yards. (Too bad it has the opposite effect on Canadian hunters, who are practicing divorce lawyers during the summer.) I looked into the eyes of this vengeful soul and gave her both barrels at point blank range.

The Baby Harp Seal... (Image from the Internet)

The “Battered Baby Seal Look” is to women like hot butter is to popcorn. While the effect is soft, it is also immediate. She looked at me with surprise, almost in disbelief. And then her own eyes softened. She could suddenly feel my tortured soul. Even in the darkness, I knew my eyes were glowing like electric sapphires. Her hand acquired substance and warmth against my chest.

“A little lower,” I suggested.

She was still there at dawn, past the hour when she was to have collected my soul and taken my bike.

“Is there anything else I can do for you?” she asked.

“Would you mind washing my K75, and taking extra care to soak the bugs off the windscreen with a hot towel? It’s really easy to scratch that Sprint Fairing.”

“Sure,” she replied, getting up. “You want coffee while I do that?”

“Easy on the cream and two sugars,” I replied.

She was gone when I got out of the shower. There was no trace of the Honda and the K75 gleamed in the morning sunlight. A cup of java, just as I like it, was by the bike. I decided to make my escape pronto. I was doing 60 mph by the time I left the motel parking lot. With less than 5 miles to go before I-81, I saw a single headlight closing behind me. The rider had a familiar skinny profile.

The bike behind me was a Honda CX 500 Custom — one of the most intriguing motorcycles ever built. But I was on a K75, one of the ugliest motorcycles to ever achieve mechanical perfection. Undoubtedly, the “Battered Baby Seal Look” had worn off and the spirit wanted to revisit my character flaws. I twisted the throttle and thought, “Feets don’t fail me now.”

The K75's engine wound up for the pitch and gave me the fast ball. Despite the fact that I had again gone without sleep, the cadence of the motor was flawless. There was nothing amiss with this bike. I shot out onto I-81 with the tach and the speedo needles parallel to each other — pointing straight ahead. I was clipping 85 mph when I glanced in my mirrors and saw her waving. Then I realized, she was giving me the finger.



Epilogue:

“So that’s my story,” I said. “Admit it. It’s better than yours. Do the manly thing and pay for the ten rounds of drinks we just consumed in its telling.”

Chris raised his eyebrows and gave me a mild look of askance. “So you claim the last woman you had sex with was probably deceased,” he said.

“Either that, or she may have been English,” I replied. “You have missed the entire purpose of this story. Now let’s hear yours.”

“I have to piss first,” he replied. “You’ve been talking for an hour and I need to drain the iguana.”

That was the last I saw of him. His mystery was apparently ongoing.

“I believe this is yours,” said the waitress, holding the bar tab in one hand and the bayonet in the other. I started to protest but a got a good look at her eyes. I swear they had the mist of the Blue Ridge Mountains in them. 


©Copyright Jack Riepe 2013
All Rights Reserved

Who Reads Twisted Roads?

Paddy sent us this...

Paddy Pollard has been a devoted Twisted Roads reader for the past two years. He recently sent me a nice note complaining that he's never won anything on this blog. Guess what, Paddy? Your luck is unbroken. Pollard runs a small motorcycle touring/hire company in Scotland. Judging from the pictures, he rides through some of the most beautiful places on earth. His runs range over moors, around fens, and through mountains that delight the eye and captivate the soul. He can be reached directly by clicking www.scotlandbybike.com. But I wouldn't wait too much longer to make reservations for 2013. 

 The rugged beauty of Scotland and the nature of the "GS" friendly terrain beckons to all riders.  Contact Paddy Pollard directly at www.scotlandbybike.com.

Local inns and pubs abound with Scots character and hospitality. Paddy knows where to take ye. It is rumored that some of these places are haunted by great single malt spirits.

Traditional entertainment in Scotland. Not your average pole dancers. Paddy has invited me to come to Scotland as soon as the weather breaks. "Aye, when it's a cool day in hell," said Paddy.

 The Cantwell Factor...

This picture (below) was submitted by Twisted Roads reader and close personal friend Mike Cantwell. It depicts his daughter “learning about certain forces of nature” through the study of the baby harp seal, which is mentioned in this story. Cantwell believes that 99% of life is a learning experience. He does not state what the other 1% is, but he wants his kid to recognize it when she steps in it.  

 

"Kid, when you see eyes like this: start running!"

"Okay, Daddy."

From The Book of Patzer... 

BMW wrench Dan Patzer — writing from the great Pacific Northwest — wrote to comment on the centerfold photograph in his copy of Conversations With A Motorcycle. This was the first time Patzer had ever encountered a brunette with legs like the New Jersey Turnpike. 

 "Dear Jack," Patzer wrote. "One picture is worth a thousand words. 

You could have eliminated all of chapter 6 with this one."

  According to Robert Knorr...

In a desperate attempt to sell this motorcycle to the first person who will listen, Robert Knorr systematically explains the advantages of riding a bike that is cooled by recirculating whale oil. The rider, "Sam," has only one question: "Is this an 'R' bike?" He will later point out to Knorr that there is a reason why "K" comes before "R" in the alphabet. Note the look on Knorr's face as he realizes the kid is right. 

 Sam: "Does the ladder come off the back of this?"

Knorr: "I paid extra for that."  

Look for more readers' photos and a special announcement tomorrow. 

 

The Dragon Is Loose On Twisted Roads...

I love the feel of naked women, motorcycle handlebars, and the keyboard of an Apple computer. I do not regard these wonders as things to be possessed, but things that possess me. Nothing in life has brought me greater satisfaction than wild romance, wild rides, and writing the story of both. Yet it appears my luck has run out lately.

I am giving up on women until the summer and possibly longer than that. I had thoughts of hitting on one in particular but have decided to give her the pass. Like a surfer on the beach in Hawaii, where the waves are four stories tall... or like a skier peering down a near vertical drop, ripe for an avalanche... or like a S.Q.U.I.D revving the guts out of a crotch rocket at the beginning of Deal’s Gap... I look at her and my mouth gets dry. She is stunningly beautiful in a cultured pearl sort of way, full of charm and sophistication. Her perfumed embrace could be heaven’s prelude or the portal to an emotional chipper. There was a time when I would have danced on the edge of that challenge— with a drink in my hand. Now, I think, “One false step and it’s in the chipper for our hero.” I think she can only take me in micro-doses before throwing up anyway.

This is a bad sign and I have decided to concentrate on “Plan B.”

"Plan B"is a emotionally rewarding relationship with a sensitive, semi-retired, slightly tanned, 45-year-old pole dancer, who can look at me in that sizzling way, and say, “I decided to do a proper tune-up on your ‘K’ 1300GT.”

My Favorite Things: Apples

She’ll be perfect if her tramp stamp reads, “K Bike Postage.”  I hope to meet her on a ride between the Jersey Shore and the Pacific Coast this summer. The odds are slightly better that a more understanding woman like this won’t take offense if I occasionally fart without filing an environmental impact statement. It would be really cool to end up with a petite redhead who was an expert welder and an authority on the Chicago Manual of Style. Then again, I wouldn't mind meeting a demure blond who knows how to keep a low profile at bike events.

I used to think nothing could match the breathless excitement that comes from undoing a brassiere for the first time. Then came the day I opened up the throttle on a BMW K75 and passed a long line of trucks on a curving stretch of Pennsylvanian interstate. I was doing 70 mph as I went by the first rig at the end of the line. The speedo read a cool 108 mph as I eclipsed the eighteen-wheeler at the front— 12 trucks later. You have reached a certain level of maturity (wisdom) when you’d rather twist a throttle than massage a breast. One is a lot less dangerous than the other.

There was no vibration. The engine growled with Teutonic confidence. The tires were new and perfectly round. Handlebar inputs were as subtle as telepathy and the bike banked on a suggestion. Molecules of wind toyed with the bare skin at the collar of my jacket as my transformation became complete. I was no longer a man but an emotion. The kind of emotion Patti Smith oozes in Because The Night.

The trucks were in my “No Zone.” In fact, anything that was mundane or rooted to the earth was now in my “No Zone.” This included one job, one relationship, one stalled writing project, and anything that wasn’t on the stretch of road in front of me.

By vibration-free I mean the rage that was the engine output found its way to the back wheel instead buzzing through my testicles. Still the ride was far from smooth. The surface of the road was marred by half-assed repair and outright neglect. While thousands of jolts were swallowed by the forks and a Works Performance Shock on the back, the larger cracks, heaves, and seams gave a spicy flavor to the ride, reminding me why I was a god above the sheep in the cages around me. Though there was a good three-quarters of an inch to the red line, this was maximum effort for the K75 and anything else would have just been noise.

All of this happened on the first day I took a motorcycle on an interstate, after not having ridden a bike on one for 30 years. There is something about a motorcycle that just says, “Let the damn thing go.”

I have been a professional writer for more than 30 years. In the early 1980s, my weapon of choice was an IBM Selectric typewriter that could correct a mistyped character. That was replaced by a Brother electric typewriter that presented a line of text on an little LED screen, and which could delete an entire line of text, even from the typewritten page. At the time, I was working for a white slaver of a publisher who wanted me to use a word processor. Writers are superstitious by nature and change is as welcome as a dose of clap. I came into the office to find an early word processor (with a tiny blue screen) on my desk.

“The entire company is switching to these,” said my boss proudly, “What do you think?”

“I think you should shove it up your ass,” I replied. (This is a true story. I don’t like my writing process to be disturbed. Believe me, the way I compose is peculiar enough.) He was back two years later with another bizarre invention. This one was an ivory plastic cube with a gray screen on it, that sort of lit up, and was accompanied by something called “a mouse.”

“Wait until you see this one,” he said. “It does simultaneous composing and typesetting, it will give you a printed copy to hold in your hand, and the hard copy will look like it came out of a print shop.”

It was the first Macintosh computer by Apple and I fell in love. The machine came with no directions. It worked intuitively. It worked the same way every day. It required no code. It never broke and it never broke my balls. I have had four Apple desktops and three laptops in 30 years. I believe that my current laptop, a MacBook Pro, is the finest computer ever made. I cannot imagine life without it. I certainly can’t imagine struggling through life with a PC. If my only option was to compose on a PC, I’d have stayed married and been dead by now.

The MacBook Pro’s illuminated keys and polished aluminum case feel like the finest brassiere silk to my fingertips. Composing on it is one of the five earthly comforts. The other four are the taste of French kissing in the office, the aroma of exquisite cigars, the bite of Irish Whiskey, and the the sound of a hot motorcycle winding up for the pitch.

The way I compose has driven three women and two publishers to madness. I first go into a kind of trance that entails drinking 9 cups of coffee, watching old black and white movies, smoking a few cigars, and generally doing nothing, while some part of my brain — a part not directly connected to anything — tries to figure out what the hell it is that I want to say. Then suddenly, it come out like a torrent, washing whole villages and civilizations downstream.

I was once commissioned to draft Congressional testimony for a client looking to impact some obscure legislation. It was due at 2pm. My editorial assistant was a lover whose intellect was substantially larger than mine. She said, “They are going to fire your ass though a cannon if you don’t meet that deadline.”

I was sitting in a comfy chair at the time, watching Jimmy Stewart in Mister Smith Goes To Washington. This Hollywood Classic had just reached the point where Jimmy Stewart, a junior Senator from someplace, stood up, pulled an apple out of his pocket, and launched a filibuster.

She: “Are you nearly done with the testimony?”

Riepe: Nothing

She: “Have you started it yet?”

Riepe: Nothing.

She: It’s 11:45am. You have two hours and 15 minutes.”

Riepe: Nothing.

Jimmy Stewart finished speaking, and I said, “Honey, could you take dictation for me?”

I spoke for 11 minutes. She emailed the text to my office, 20 feet away. I cleaned up a few points and sent it to client. It was approved on the first take. It went to Congress in its finished form at 1:57pm.

She: “Why the hell didn’t you do this yesterday? You’re making me crazy!”

Riepe: “This movie wasn’t on yesterday.”

I never learned to type. I use two fingers. The forefinger on my left hand works the shift key. The forefinger on my right hand does everything else. I have written two books, 395 short motorcycle stories (actual count), and millions of words this way. I have written hundreds of press releases and speeches (on site at conventions) this way. I write a monthly column this way. I answer email this way. I have always done it this way... until this weekend.

The arthritis that is turning me into a gimp has now spread to my arms, hands, and shoulders. There are days when I cannot hold a pen in my right hand to autograph books. There is a wheelchair parked at the edge of my desk. I regard it as the ghost of “Arthritis Future.” Right now, there is a box of cigars sitting in it. I will take the LeBrea Tar Pits or the gas pipe before I sit in this fucking chair. (That is a promise.)

If you combine my odd composing style, complicate it with the pain of arthritis, and add to it the postpartum-type of depression that followed the release of my new book, you’ll understand my absence from this blog. The book was a success from the word “go,” and was received with overwhelming enthusiasm from just about everyone who bought it. The “really liked it” crowd ran about 99.44 percent to the .66 percent who politely said, “This is shit.” I couldn’t keep up with demand and won’t have that problem solved until February. But I didn’t anticipate that. I worked myself int a funk wondering what people really thought.

My new book sold out three times before Christmas! There is a waiting list for the next release!

The lack of blog activity here sparked concern among a number of my readers (none of whom have ever left a comment). Banding together on a BMW MOA (Motorcycle Owners Of America) forum, they determined that I had turned into a giant shapeless mollusk. They assumed I was stretched out on a shit house floor, blinded by a whiskey rage, with ineffectual slime stalks resting on a keyboard.
They were 66 percent right. (I wasn’t drunk.)

These incredibly sensitive guys — led by Mark Morales and Chris McCarthy — rallied 18 or 20 others into buying me a Dragon Dictate for the Mac program. The assumption was that arthritis would ultimately leave me a chattering head in a 10-gallon aquarium tank. This program would enable me to dictate my memoirs, observations, and stories — even as a severed head in a tank. It was suggested that they could put my head in a top case and ride me around too. Chris McCarthy offered to take my head bowling. (This has a sinister ring to it.)

I have never been so flattered and so honored by readers in my life. This was more significant to me than winning a Pulitzer Prize. (I am saying this because I am fairly certain I am not in the running for a Pulitzer Prize. If, in fact, I am being considered for a Pulitzer Prize, let me say that the honor paid to me by these kind readers could only be surpassed by a Pulitzer Prize.)

The Dragon Dictate For Mac arrived last week. I was so excited, I squeaked. It was followed by another box that was a more deluxe headset and microphone. I opened each and poured over the abbreviated instructions. I had visions of sitting with my feet up, cigar in hand, while a captured Dragon took note of every word and turned it into text.

The installation went as expected and the program came alive. First, the microphone had to be calibrated. That took about 90 seconds. Then I had to read 12 paragraphs of a short story (provided), so the computer could learn my accent. At the onset, I checked the option for “British Accent” and British Spellings.” I guess I still had hopes for impressing the woman in the opening paragraph. I have a Jersey City accent that makes me sound like Leo Gorcey, and the program kept asking, “What? What did you just say?” Then it automatically recalibrated itself for a “low brow, New Jersey accent common to urban Morlocks.”

The program steered me into a highly simplified tutorial designed to get you dictating like a fascist leader in record time. The best way to describe the manner in which the program takes direction is to compare it to the way telegrams were originally composed. (As I write these words, I realize there isn’t anyone under the age of forty-five who knows what a telegram was.) All punctuation is stated. Each simple sentence ends with the word “PERIOD.” Yet in composing an email to a friend today, I described a former relationship (not my last one) as “juggling loaded pistols with a woman whose period lasted 7 years.” I couldn’t complete the sentence as the program kept typing “juggling loaded pistols with a woman whose.”

Then there is the other challenge: I talk to myself. I intended to write, “The bike leaned into a turn so tight that I nearly split my pants. There is something wonderful in being able to reach out and touch the pavement, sliding by at 80 miles per hour.”

What the program typed was, “The bike leaned into a turn so tight that I nearly split my pants. Who the fuck is going to believe I ever leaned a bike over that far? There is something wonderful in being able to reach out and touch the pavement, sliding by at 80 miles per hour. But I wouldn’t know shit about that.”

The program also has a hard time believing that a human can be as scathingly vicious as I am. It translated the word “douche bag” into “elected official” and thought I wanted “insurance company lawyer” for the phrase “that fucking scumbag in the suit.”

This dictation program is amazing as it works in every Mac application. I answered 40 emails today in the time I would have typed responses to four. The instant spell check is really good. I plan to spend an hour a day with the manual, memorizing every command option. I intend to write the sequel to Conversations With A Motorcycle without ever touching the keyboard. In fact, I intend to write it with a cigar in one hand, a drink in the other, and a brunette (or a redhead) in my lap.

I cannot adequately thank the BMW MOA Forum of guys — the Posse — who made this possible. You guys snapped me out of a tedious malaise. Some of the folks who contributed to this project comment regularly on this blog. Others I have just met (online) for the first time. Mark Morales is a great guy and Chris McCarthy... well Chris McCarthy is some kind of a guy too. Chris is likely to become a recurrent theme on this blog. I would like to ride with all of my blog readers sooner or later — but if I can ride at all this summer I will meet up with Chris.  I suspect he has visited a number of locations mentioned in my book, within an hour of my last being there.

There will be an interim blog post in two days. The madness is again on me. I’m sorry I was gone so long.

Readers Pictures Will Start Running Again in Two Days.... 





©Copyright Jack Riepe 2013
All rights reserved...

Che Guevara And I Have Two Things In Common...

I deeply regret the long absence from this blog. The hurricane thrust me into a week of darkness that seemed to last long after the lights came back on. Quite frankly, the life and the laughter just went out of me. Hundreds of thousands of people had it much worse than I did, with homes and businesses smashed. Hurricane Sandy put a dramatic dent in the distribution of my new book — Conversations With A Motorcycle — but I have managed to get a handle on it. 

All book orders taken prior to October 15th will be filled within a week or so. Most folks have their books now. Some got two. Orders taken after that will be filled before December 18th. I thank all of you for your patience and support.  

I remember a sentiment expressed in the Revolutionary Spirit of the workers who rose up against the Czar: "That which does not destroy me makes me stronger." Many shouted this as they were cut down by Cossacks, proving the point. In that spirit, I now commence the publication of this blog with the following story about socialist moto- love. 

The woman had a reputation for tedious discussions on the politics of protest, the enslavement of the worker class, and the benefits of the collective. Her life was dedicated to exposing whatever the hell it was that kept the proletariat in their accustomed chains. Lithe, with unrestrained breasts that bounced beneath tee shirts that were always a couple of days past clean, she had an an urban earthiness that was anything but urbane. Her name was Louise Enwright but she called herself Lenochka Lyubov. She wore a beret and an expression that permanently indicated her disdain for make-up, deodorant, mouth wash and other excesses of western thinking.

She was a genuine red... a real pinko... a Communist — from Long Island. Her mother was a doctor and her father was a stock broker. They had so much money that her maid was a Republican.

I met her in my last year of college, in a class called “The Literature of Revolution.” She was always reading “the Russians.” These were authors ranging from Tolstoy to Dostoyevsky, who understood life to be a pointless endeavor suffered in frozen, desolate train stations while waiting to be arrested by the czar’s secret police. (For comic relief, key characters occasionally fell in front of the train or froze to death. They were envied by those characters who survived.)  According to the word around campus, Lenochka liked two things: criticizing the bourgeois and a good straight hump.

I generally overlooked belligerent proletariat ladies, whose pubic hair extended to the tops of their knee socks. Yet I was going through a self-inflicted romantic dry spell, largely caused by annoying every female within 400 miles. I had heard that the women of the local fifth column were the least discerning on campus, and most likely to respond to vodka-flavored paint thinner and the promise of breakfast.

I wandered into a Soviet-friendly poetry reading wearing a tee shirt that sported a red star on the front. (It was an advertisement for a brewery.) Most of the shirt’s details were concealed under a green G.I. field jacket that I wore when on my bike. The motorcycle was an insidious 1975 Kawasaki H2. Under my arm was a green (metal flake) helmet, with black trim. When the ensemble was complete, I looked like a militant candy apple. Lenochka had been hitting the vodka all night. To her, I looked like a Communist super-hero. All I needed was a red cape and hip boots from a plumbing supply store.

But I had the next best thing. I clutched a dog-eared paperback copy of Nikolai Karamzin’s “Poor Liza,” printed in Russian. The pages had yellowed  and some had simply fallen out, only to be stuffed loosely back in. I had liberated it from some obscure shelf in the campus library. At some point, she would ask me to translate a page and I would just make it up.

I was surprised at the number of Communists in the room. The men had that treacherous, beaten-dog look about them. The ladies showed the hard, timeless contempt of women in perpetual revolution, damned to screwing men whose passions were conspiracy and bumming cigarettes.

Lenochka’s preference was for weaselly guys who looked like bomb-throwing anarchists right out of Doctor Zhivago, and who could do push-ups for two straight hours. According to several authorities, if you had a knack for that sort of exercise then you could ride in her sidecar all night. I did not have a knack for doing push-ups, even when I was thin and on the varsity fencing team. I did have a knack for alluding to the fact that I could do push-ups for hours. My thought was that it might be easier to change the game once it got started. After ten or twelve vodkas, served straight up at this campus cultural celebration, I told her I could do push-ups with both hands behind my head.

I thought the night would be easy, as I had a bottle of vodka, the price of breakfast, and a clean shirt. Yet I had competition. Across the room was an exchange student from Tito’s Yugoslavia. This bastard was communist lite, but the closest thing to a real red within 4,000 miles. He was interested in Lenochka, as the other beauties lacked even her minimalist appeal. He spoke with a genuine accent, had genuine rodent eyes, and came from a country that was still in Europe but close enough to Turkey to be suspected of something.

He offered to take her home.

“How,” I asked, thrusting myself into the hushed dialogue. “There is no streetcar to reality from here. I have a motorcycle.”

“Why do you ride a motorcycle?” Lenochka asked. “It’s an expression of rebellion, isn’t it? Is it your way of striking back at the establishment through non-conformity?”

I didn’t answer right away, as nothing piques the feminine revolutionary mind like a dramatic pause. Instead, I gave her the kind of sideways glance used to great effect by Nikita Khrushchev when charming the crowds at the United Nations.

“I ride a motorcycle to be more like Che Guevara.” I had it on good authority that Che rode bikes and proletariat women hard.

The famous Argentinian revolutionary took a 6,000-mile motorcycle ride through South America in 1952. The profound poverty he found forever set the aspirations of Communists everywhere. My suave manner as a Che devotee made Lenochka waver in her initial assessment of me as a sexual opportunist who would say anything to get laid.

Then I applied the clincher.

“Nothing helps me understand the literary weight of the ‘Russians’ like riding a motorcycle,” I said. “From time to time, I pull over and read this book.” I looked down at the floor and pulled the book from my pocket. A dozen pages dropped out.  "It is nothing," I quipped. "I have them memorized." I looked up and smiled. It was the smile that would become known as the Battered Baby Seal look.

Lenochka said we should go to her place. The motorcycle had triumphed over the politburo. The communist from Yugoslavia shrugged, accepting the obvious. He would spend the night with the red version of Madame Defarge, a woman regarded as an enigma considering her demeanor was concealed by facial hair. She was passed out on the floor.

The motorcycle was a challenge for Commissar Lyubov's skirt. Lenochka mounted the pillion and tucked the excess material under her ass. She was wearing the kind of knee socks you’d expect to find on an extra in the Wizard of Oz, but no underwear. I gave her the usual bullshit about tapping her leg when she needed to hang on. At one point, I reached back for a handful of thigh. It felt like she had a ferret in her lap.

“Can we ride around for a bit so I can feel the Russians too,” she yelled.

I took her hand from my waist and put it in my lap. “That’s Peter The Great,” I shouted.





She asked me to pull over and read from "Poor Liza." I did, under a streetlight. Or I appeared to. I basically ran through a few scenes from Poe's "The Pit and The Pendulum." That's cheery enough to be Russian. We were sitting on the bike together as I slithered through this travesty, and she began to touch herself. Or maybe she was just taking the ferret's pulse. I told her to get off so I could restart the bike. And then I started to laugh, because that's exactly what she was doing. 

My college was located in a highly fashionable New Jersey suburb that oozed money. The streets were lined with trees that all spoke two or three languages and the houses were Tudor homes that no Tudor could afford. Lenochka didn’t live near there. She directed me across the tracks to an industrial hell, where she had an apartment between a salmon cannery and a steel mill. Now one might think the aroma of fish from one direction or the scent of sulphur from the other could be a bit overwhelming. Both were nothing compared to the reek of cat piss which came a litter box that got changed with every Presidential election. (The cat apparently pissed dioxin.)

The place was decorated with unwashed clothing and the sink choked on porcelain dishes that were slowly being etched by bacteria. Rutting microbes stampeded in the bathroom. But such was the heat of my desperation that I was willing to bonk the ferret with the hammer of Thor anyway. Lenochka offered me a glass of white wine that fizzed when the cork was pulled. I declined.

The spirit of the house was a Siamese cat named “Akula.”  It was sleek with a smooth chocolate coat that didn’t seem to bother my allergies, as long as I didn’t touch it. Plus, all the booze that I had chugged earlier in the night seemed to forestall my allergic reaction.

Lenochka dragged me further into this soviet sty, the center of which was a sacrificial futon. A candle bathed the room in a dingy Communist light and I realized this woman was a manifesto with breasts. She wasn’t big on kissing and wanted a good straight hump in the tradition of the push-up.

I was prepared for about 12 thrusts before the inning change and moving to the bottom.  At thrust #10, I cleared my throat in anticipation of making a suggestion when the fucking cat attacked my bare ass and dug its claws into my skin. I screamed, arched my back, and thrust downward causing Lenochka to clamp onto me like a bear trap, pinning my arms. I yelled again and started convulsing to get the cat off my ass.

Lenochka gasped and lie there quivering.

I delivered a backhand across my ass that launched the cat like a tennis ball. My butt was bleeding and the only clean thing I could find to wipe the blood was my own undershirt.

“Do you want me to do something for you?” asked Lenochka.

“Yes,” I said. “Get moose and squirrel.” **

The ride back to my place stung at every bump, but the worst was yet to come. Showering after the next fencing meet, two of the guys had ‘the red badge of passion’ on their backs: the fingernail scratch marks of appreciative women.

I had similar chevrons... but mine were  smaller and engraved on my ass.

“Did you nail a ferret or something?” asked one of my teammates.




** Anyone looking for an explanation of "moose and squirrel" in connection with a communist theme isn't really hip enough to read this blog, and should click here.


Who reads Twisted Roads:
These are actual pictures, submitted by actual readers, unafraid to actually admit they read Twisted Roads...

Above: This is Mark Jones, the head honcho of Air Ambulance Worldwide, Inc., posing in front of his yellow Goldwing (which is a Honda, for our German riders who don't get out much). He is coveting the R1200RT in the foreground, which is owned by Mal Clingan (Florida). Air Ambulance Worldwide is a fixed-wing evacuation company. (Where they hell were they during my second marriage?) Mal is taking the picture and probably giving Mark the finger. You have to wonder what kind of a rider Mal is if he needs the CEO of an ambulance company to escort him on rides to the Post Office and the proctologist. Note the extra large top case on the "R" bike. This houses the steam boiler and auxiliary whale oil tanks. Nice paint, Mal. 

Above: Carla Sark rides a Honda 750 Shadow (pearlescent gray and white). Here she is on Thanksgiving Day, stalking wild turkeys as they cross the road in her native Indiana. (What the hell is it with Hondas today?) And where are your gloves, Carla? This Honda is tricked out with the optional light package, the crash bars, and cool saddle bags that actually have Fastex releases under the chrome buckles. Carla likes long walks on the beach (good luck in Indiana) and polishing 56 square yards of motorcycle. 

Above: Twisted Roads Reader David Zmoda sent us this picture of one of his sheep, who I shudder to think may be his current ride. "Z" (as he is known to his friends) claims he hasn't ridden a motorcycle since 1978. Yet there seems to be a strong sheep-riding contingent in his native Maryland. Gangs of sheep-riders have been seen on the highways there.  I am thrilled that the model picture above does not have a BMW logo on it. 

 

Above: Dedicated Twisted Roads Reader Charles Murphy (Murph to his friends) zapped me yesterday with photos of his shop (Oregon) which is something of a legend in local BMW and Moto Guzzi circles.This will be one of my stops when I head out west next summer.

 Above: Murph's roadside service is handily provided by this immaculate "R" bike, which was rumored to be ridden out to the Oregon area by the Lewis and Clark expedition. The "R" bike design represents one of the purest, engine concepts. The earliest of these designs (known as Airheads, after members of Congress) were cooled by the breeze. Later models (the Oilheads) relied on whale oil, air, and the phases of the moon for cooling. Newer models use a stunning water-cooled technology first employed on "K" bikes during the Regan administration.

 
Above: This is a cool... Murph developed this test stand to put rebuilt engines through their paces without having to reinstall them in the frame first. "This enables me to test for oil leaks and other things with everything out in open and easy to access," said Murph. "It's also a crowd magnet at local rallies and events.

Above: The control panel allows Murph to test various engine functions on command, as well as determine the efficiency of other engine components.

Are you a Twisted Roads Reader? Then send in a picture of you, your bike, or your girlfriend on your bike. You could win a valuable prize. This month's winner (November) is Dave Zmoda of Maryland. His winning entry — the willing sheep — has earned him an EZ Tire Pressure Gauge. And he might win another prize if he submits a picture taking a reading off "Lamb Chop" with the gauge. Remember — Loud Bleats Save Lives! 

Send Pictures To jack.riepe@gmail.com — Put "Rider's Photo" in the subject line.

* No farm animals were injured, insulted, nor maligned by affiliating them with either political party in this blog. However, I did poke a few "R" bike riders in the eye with a stick. But this only because the BMW "K" bike gets the stink-eye from so many of them. And I did make another swipe at elected officials, only because it is a sin to miss a slow-moving target. Twisted Roads apologizes for not zeroing in on Dick Bregstein lately. That will be rectified shortly. Twisted Roads is not BMW-centric and welcomes photos from riders on Harleys, Ducatis, Moto Guzzis, Hondas, Kawasakis, Yamahas, Suzukis, Triumphs, and Vespas. All bikes (and sheep) actually.

©Copyright Jack Riepe 2012
All rights reserved
Photos submitted of hot girlfriends do not automatically receive prizes but I will look at them often.