My significant other — Leslie (whom I call “Stiffie” just because I like the way it sounds) — is a good-natured, beauty of a woman who can see the humor in most anything (like the time the dog grabbed the hose from her hand and ran around soaking everything and everybody). Stiffie and I have been together a long time (twice as long as any of my previous marriages) despite the fact that we are not married. I ask her to marry me every Thursday at 4pm and she just smiles, then shakes her head “no.” She once philosophized, “Why would I buy a hog just to occasionally have a foot of sausage? My response, “To keep others from running off with that sausage,” caused her to raise an eyebrow, and spawned the riposte “Since when did marriage ever stop you from doing anything?”
There is no point in arguing with this woman when she insists on confronting heartfelt emotion with cold, hard fact.
I have explained in previous stories that I now ride a motorcycle because Stiffie insisted we get them. As the hardened, but dedicated Twisted Roads reader will recall, Stiffie had gotten caught in the moto-melee of Sturgis, South Dakota during the height of the summer’s Harley Rally, while driving home from concluding some business in the Pacific Northwest. Her call from the epic-center of leather, chrome, and thundering noise was brief. “Jack,” she said, “I’m getting a motorcycle as soon as I get home. You should get one too.”
Now guys... When was the last time the woman in your life insisted you get a motorcycle? I danced around in the kitchen, wearing nothing but war paint, for 24 hours. Then I sacrificed a quart of rum to the motorcycle gods, by passing it through my kidneys.
Stiffie was like a women possessed. She looked at Triumph’s, Suzuki’s and finally Harley’s. The Harley dealer had the most savvy approach, insisting she sit on the bikes in the showroom — while starting them up. She got the full benefit of the sight, the sound, and the vibration of the legendary Motor Company Machine. But she didn’t see in reality what she had envisioned in her mind... Until she stopped by the local Honda dealer. There on the showroom floor was a white and silver pearlescent Honda Aero Shadow (750cc). She sat on it, and checked the machine’s balance. When she glanced at me, her eyes had that same look that “Mina” had, after she’d danced with Dracula for a bit (Winona Ryder in the 2009 version of Dracula).
It wasn’t long before that bike was in the garage, complete with auxiliary lighting, a windshield, an aftermarket Mustang saddle, saddle bags, a Steeble/Nautilus compact air horn, and special tail-lighting. It was the perfect machine for an Elvis impersonator. And she looked great on it. Shortly thereafter, I acquired a 1986 BMW K75. I bought this bike because friends of mine Shanghaied me into it. Compared to the “Shadow,” the K75 was the most peculiar-looking motorcycle I had ever seen. The bike transcended ugly... It was “fugly.” My BMW-riding friends insisted this was the motorcycle for me to get... And I only got it because the owner at the time insisted he wouldn’t take a cent less than $5000 dollars (for a 19-year-old fugly BMW). So I offered him $4600, and this bunko artist said “yes” faster than I could blink.
Above: Leslie's Honda Aero Shadow — Fully tricked out and ready to roll. Photo by Leslie Marsh.
Leslie and I began with the compulsory rides around the neighborhood, and slowly added the byways and farm roads of Amish Lancaster to our repertoire. Sometimes Stiffie would take the lead, and every Harley rider that passed would give her a big wave. I’d wave too. It is easy to mistake a fully farkled Honda Aero Shadow for a Harley in a split second, and once the mistake is realized most guys are thrilled to get a warm smile and a wave from a chic on a bike. Not so with a BMW K75. To the uninitiated, the K75 looks like it’s constipated, or gives the impression of an honor student who’s just been kicked in the balls by a varsity football player. The waves quickly became extended fingers, sometimes followed by a loogie in flight. I got hit with lit cigarettes on several occasions. One rider u-turned and caught up to us to make sure the guy on the constipated giraffe wasn’t bothering the nice lady.
Above: Leslie and some guy on the back of her 2005 Honda Aero Shadow at Christmas. The "Santa" figure is a handmade doll and part of "Stiffie's" holiday decorations. Photo by the author.
Above: My 1986 BMW K75 was the farthest thing from the classic lines of Stiffie's Honda Aero Shadow, and peculiar-looking too... In the beginning. Now I know better. Photo by Leslie Marsh.
On the occasions when I led, the image of Stiffie following behind me — in her pink leathers or her silver mesh jacket — became a kind of visual foreplay. I liked the way she looked, framed in my Napoleon bar mirrors. The rides with Stiffie were a lot more interesting than the runs I took by myself. She’d feel compelled to pull over and snap a picture of something cool; or stop to admire an old barn, or even a scene unfolding between people. One of these was of an aged Amish farmer, trudging along behind a single mule, guiding a plow that turned over one furrow at a time. Leading the mule was a young Amish woman, her face hidden by a bonnet. She held the animal by its halter and seemed to keep it from moving too fast for the elderly man.
We were a hundred yards or better away from this field, with the bikes parked beneath a clump of trees. And even though we were not readily visible, Stiffie refused to take a picture. She felt it was an intrusion that we were even watching this moment straight out of American Gothic.
“He is probably her grandfather, and this one-acre plot is what they rely on for vegetables in the summer, and for some extra money raised through a little produce stand by the side of the road,” said Stiffie. “He might be a furniture-maker by day, starting at dawn, working the wood with hundred-year-old tools, with handles worn smooth from three generations of men, yet with edges that are razor sharp. And she thinks of an Amish man who might be courting her, but she helps her grandfather, in this little field, in the last hours of daylight.”
“I think she is his wife through some sort of marriage arranged at midnight, for which her destitute parents were cut a break on a crushing mortgage," I said. "She is forty-five years his junior and he never lets her out of his sight. When he goes to the outhouse, he makes her stand outside the door and sing. Under that bonnet is a face stained by the tracks of a thousand tears and the only other living thing she has to talk to is that mule."
Stiffie simply looked at me and said nothing for a bit. “You probably do think that,” she said, “which is indicative of how far your mental state has deteriorated. Some people see a glass as half full. You not only see it as being half empty, but undoubtedly containing something foul."
The woman left the mule and returned with a pitcher and glass, which she filled and handed to the old man.
“See,” said Stiffie. “She brought her grandfather a cool glass of lemonade.”
“Is the glass half empty?" I asked. "I bet she poisoned him."
We rode off together, passing this unique couple.
“It’s poison,” I yelled to the old guy, knowing that Stiffie couldn’t hear me over the Shadow’s growl.
Our ride took us deeper into one of the largest Amish settlements in the United States. This is a broad valley that encompasses a number of communities, some of which are quite large. Others are famous tourist attractions, like Bird in Hand, Paradise, and Intercourse. The road through Intercourse leads to Paradise, but I wonder how many of these bearded guys end up in Bird in Hand.
The road took us past farm after farm. In one field an Amish farmer, as thin as rail and wearing a straw hat, stood ramrod straight, balanced on the yolk of a plow, pulled by five enormous draft horses. These animals can weigh 1500 pounds each. Stiffie and I pulled off the pavement to watch, and it was there I pondered the question: if a draft horse is larger than one of these buggie horses, is it possible that a draft horse can be more than one horsepower? I made the mistake of pondering this out loud.
Stiffie has a sweet expression that suggests she is occasionally required to work extra hard at humoring me. Other women do this with their husbands too. We went to Paris some years ago and spend a few days touring museums and cathedrals. In the Musée de la Armée, I was explaining how French troops went to the front in cabs during WWI, and was showing one of these vehicles to Stiffie, when we passed a Frenchman and a woman, presumably his wife. He was explaining to her the innovations of the first French tank... Stiffie and the other woman, perfect strangers, caught in the perfect moment, rolled their eyes at each other in perfect understanding.
Stopped again with our bikes on the side of the road, I couldn’t help but notice that most of the Amish dairy cows seemed like storybook cattle, clean to the point where they looked groomed and contented, with their teats pulled twice a day by rosy-cheeked Pennsylvania Dutch milkmaids, who could be posing for Hummel figurines. Yet some of the other farms, undoubtedly run by Englanders, had cows that looked scruffy, unkempt, and generally disheveled. It was here I suggested to Stiffie that someone ought to be looking after these bovine charges.
Stiffie gazed at me with an especially deep level of understanding, and said, “You could do it. You could become the ‘cow whisperer.’”
“What do mean?” I asked, touched that she thought I had this ability.
“Well, horses are lean, and muscular, and sensual, as was the Robert Redford, when he played the role of the ‘Horse Whisperer. Cows are sort of docile, and lumpy, and slow moving...” Stiffie couldn’t finish her statement as she was laughing very hard. (For the record, I was laughing too.)
Back at the garage, I delayed entering the house. The bike was making that ticking, clicking sound, as the headers and block cooled off. Running my hand over the K75, which by now had revealed her true self to me as a mechanical marvel, years ahead of her time, and capable of delivering one hell of a good ride (much faster and more responsive than the bovine Aero Shadow), I found myself whispering to the bike. “Tell me your story."
I thought I heard the motorcycle communicate with me, on a level known only to BMW riders. It was more of a sensation than an expression... Though words were clearly understood. In a dream voice with a German accent (like Marlene Dietrich), the bike said to me, “Unless you slim down, what does my precise weight to horsepower ratio really matter?”
I looked to see if Leslie was hiding in the garage, and wondered if she had secretly trained as a ventriloquist. The bike and I were alone. Despite this first level of contact, I had become the K75 Whisperer. The cows could go to hell.
I had plans to ride through Maryland and upstate New York with Stiffie. Alas, they were not to be. Leslie developed a vicious case of vertigo that precluded taking banked curves on a bike. In fact, she gave up driving a car for any distance that year too. She held onto the Aero Shadow for an additional two years anyway, then reluctantly sold it. While I have had some of my best adventures driving around with Stiffie (like the week we toured Ireland in a rental car), I do miss the limited time we had on motorcycles. If it wasn’t for Leslie’s insistence, I would never have gotten another bike in my middle age, nor would I have written any of these stories. Please send your complaints to her directly. Leslie is an accomplished photographer and mixed media artist, Her work can be viewed by clicking here.
Author’s note: This blog episode was a day late in posting. This was because I opted to spend the afternoon in the garage fooling around with my K75, taking a couple of hours to wipe some polish into the paint. Towards the end of the day, I put my hand on the gas tank and whispered, “What would you say to me now?”
“This garage is some shithouse,” said my K75. "Do you plan on cleaning it any time soon?"
©Copyright Jack Riepe 2011