Listen you wuss yuppies I'm not cranky, I just don't like the G-D noise!

By Jeffrey R. DeRego


"I'm an individual, just like all of my friends!" is the battle cry of the yuppified Easy-Rider wannabe's that crisscross town on their modified Harleys.

Now, I have nothing against motorcycles or motorcyclists. But, do the bikes have to be this loud?

Loud pipes save lives? I suppose motorcycle technology has gone so far that modern bikes are nearly silent. Now, I can understand that bikes have a considerably smaller footprint than cars and that makes them less likely to be seen by the average cell-phoning, coffee drinking, kid disciplining, behind the wheel menaces that prowl the streets in SUV's and mini-vans.

Here's some advise for the bikers: no matter how loud you are, don't try and pass them. They aren't paying attention anyway.

How does obnoxiously loud motorcycling make this any less of a threat? If the logic of the average brain addled nouveau-biker is sound, then I should be able to cut the muffler from my car, and so should everyone else until the Earth is overrun with the constant roar combustion engines.

But, I can't do that. Mufflers are mandatory here in the United States specifically because they cut down on noise pollution. How is it that bikes somehow escape this law?

More irritating than the bikers themselves is the pantheon of paraphernalia that comes with bike ownership. Isn't just having a motorcycle enough? Do you really need to advertise it with leather vests, jackets, boots, underwear, posters, mud flaps, baby clothes, bandanna's, hats, sweatshirts, sunglasses, and microwave dinners? Is it necessary to advertise that you are a cool, hip, rebel (as if cool, hip rebel's need advertisement...) wherever you go?

Yes, you are cool. I really like the Harley Davidson bumper stickers all over your Camry, and yes, they balance out the Baby on Board sticker rather nicely.

How is Harley ownership any less a product of aggressive marketing than Pokemon?

I would probably not be as hostile as this if I didn't have to listen to them every minute of every day barreling up my road at sixty miles per hour. I'll tell you what, there isn't a night that goes by that I don't fantasize about stringing a cable across the street.

BWWWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.... SPROING!

Every year I see more and more of them clogging intersections, highway rest areas, and gas stations. Every year they get louder and louder and louder, and every year the riders look and act more like extra's from one of the Road Warrior movies.

Another thing that baffles me is the attraction women have to the men that "live the biker life." Maybe I would've had more dates if I cut down on the personal hygiene. Maybe if I got a tattoo that read "Live to Ride!" or my nose-eyebrow-lip-ears-neck-cheek-leg-kidney-right foot pierced. Maybe I could drape myself in enough leather attract the ire of PETA. Maybe I could stop brushing my teeth.

Now, don't get me wrong. Some groups of bikers really do great things. They collect money for cancer research as well as several other charities, add color to the community in which they live (normally black leather, but that isn't really a color is it), remind the rest of us that social rebellion doesn't have to be a purely, or even remotely, intellectual exercise, and point out that helmet laws are a form of fascism.

Fight the power!

But, it's the noise that gets to me more than anything else. It's the constant staccato of exhaust blasts that reminds me of a water buffalo with a colon infection; the teeth-rattling, bone-shaking, Earth-oscillating cacophony that thunders through my house whenever you spread your message of collective individuality.

I can't wait for winter. At least the show plow's are muffled.