jacktheriepe The Battered Baby Harp Seal Look
By The Nearly Late Jack Riepe #116117 ROMANCE
AND
motorcycle riding are inseparable as far as I am con- cerned. I have believed this since 1975, when I got my first bike, a Kawa-
saki H2, because I knew it would help me find a girlfriend. I was 19 years old then and believed all kinds of peculiar notions. This one was based on close personal observation, how- ever. I noticed that every Harley, Norton, or Triumph rider of that era had a hot pillion patootie wrapped around them like a python. All I had to do was get a bike and wait for a brunette or a blonde to settle on the back like a kind of air fern. (Natu- rally, there was more to it than this, and I learned the hard way, as explained in my book, Conversations With A Motorcycle.) It’s 40 years later, and I still believe
that motorcycles are catalysts for deep romantic involvement. In my case, these involvements can last 18 years or three hours, whichever is likely to come first. The sound of a motorcycle has a hypnotic effect on many women, which is immediately shattered by the sound of my voice. My last great romantic liaison endured as long as it did because I didn’t speak for six weeks and simply jazzed the throttle to communicate. (The bike was a 1995 K 75, however, and this delightful woman came to the conclusion that I whined about everything. When she finally did hear my voice, she jumped off the back while we were doing 107 mph on a local interstate.) Some motorcycles generate more romantic encounters than others.
104 BMW OWNERS NEWS May 2016
The legendary Harley-Davidson still kick- starts a huge number of vibro-mances, per- haps more than any other piece of two-wheeled driveway art. But romance has to go beyond chrome and a numbing idle. Iconic BMW R bike riders have dis- covered that true love begins with incredi- ble mileage. Go to any Teutonic-oriented rally (I highly recommend the Four Winds Rally just outside of Pittsburgh or the Fin- ger Lakes Rally in New York for authentic BMW rider-tude.) and you’ll find well- maintained R bikes and well-preserved R bike riders in the traditional Alpha dog stance. They have discovered a certain breed of
woman is attracted to a bike with a simpler design, with the natural weathering of miles, and an odometer that reads like a millionaire’s bank statement—rife with zeroes after three or four digits. These are the riders who can be heard to say, “I started out from Tierra del Fuego, yester- day.” You can see they are used to having ladies utter, “Estas un hombre.” Regretta- bly, rides of this duration sap their bodies of electrolytes and often leave them with a blank look in their eyes (the riders, not the women they hope to attract). Riders of the mechanically complex but
conceptually perfect K bikes have a much harder row to hoe. For one thing, the spee- dos on their rigs start at 80 miles per hour, and the windscreens have a permanent backward bend from resisting breezes in excess of tornado force. Mileage means nothing to these riders. They measure dis- tance in fines paid, farm animals caught up in their wakes, and soil samples from dif- ferent states trapped in the bike’s various filters. The atmosphere surrounding K bike pilots is often choked with cigar smoke or fumes given off by Bourbon or sour mash- tainted sweat. And considering that all K bike models are generally regarded as an acquired taste
looks-wise, few women
come up and say, “Wow, that bike is the perfect balance of weight to horsepower, let’s go get a drink.” As a committed K bike rider, romance
has slipped through my hands more often than a greased trout. (Now there is an anal- ogy that will raise a few eyebrows.) That is until I discovered a secret power that I alone possess: The Battered Baby Harp Seal Look. By relaxing certain muscles in my face, while looking out of the tops of my blue eyes, I conjure up a facial expression that reminds women of a baby harp seal. These are the incredibly cute pups of a Canadian seal species that scamper about on the ice until they are clubbed to death by Canadian wildlife enthusiasts. The Jack Riepe “Battered Baby Harp Seal
Look” works better than any line I can deliver or any gift I can present. Possibly because anything clever that I say or any- thing of a thoughtful nature I can give is an immediate tip-off that I have big plans for the lady in question. Most women would enter the witness protection program five minutes after I said “hello” to them. Not now. My patented “Battered Baby Seal Look” implies a level of sincerity and sensi- tivity that no mortal man can rightly pos- sess. Some of you will scoff at this, claiming it is more of my nonsense. But I have a witness... Several summers ago, members of the
Mac-Pac (the premier chartered BMW rid- ing club serving southeast Pennsylvania) and I were having dinner at a local tiki joint. I was sharing a draft at the bar with Matt Piechota, who is your basic R bike- riding engineering type, incapable of a lie or even an exaggeration. The barmaid was a super-attractive young thing that seemed to regard our crowd as escapees from a Turkish prison laundry. I was determined to make her turn in my direction and smile. So I began describing the “Battered Baby Harp Seal Look” in stage whispers that
lifestyle
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