The American Spectator

Reader Mail

(Page 2 of 10)

Harley riders are always quick to talk about the romance of riding down a country road on a beautiful day, of experiencing a sense of oneness not just with the road, but with the whole environment. I understand, I've been there; I loved it, and I miss it. And I would assert that the Zen-like calm experienced in such activity is greater, more pure, and in all ways more enjoyable, when much of the overall sensation is not being blocked-out by an overpowering, sense-killing racket.

p>But whether these Harley riders can be brought to appreciate the beauty and sense of a bike that hums rather than roars is immaterial. The rest of us simply shouldn't have to put up with such hell-raising hogs. br> -- C. Vail /p>

The bumper sticker should read "Loud pipes draw attention" because that's what the whole biker mentality is all about. Why else would you dress in such a fashion and drive a gaudy $20,000 bike if you don't crave attention? Loud pipes are merely a bonus to the "look at me!" factor. It's the same reason the teenagers around here put those "fart can" exhaust pipes on their ancient Toyotas while the thumping subwoofer in the hatch shakes every bolt in the car loose and rattles the dishes in my kitchen whenever they drive by.

Ask the biker who lives a few blocks west of me why he as a pair of angel wings (not an actual angel - just the wings) tattooed on his forehead. I am by no means an expert on these things, but I would think this just might limit his employment opportunities somewhat... I would ask him myself, but I'm afraid to go near the bar he hangs out in since one of his buddies was killed in that big shootout with the 2nd district police a few weeks back.

p>Yeah, I know... "Most bikers are normal, hard-working people." But the rest of them all seem to live in my neighborhood. br> -- Todd Stoffer br> Cleveland, Ohio /p>

I grew up in a small town rural Midwestern area with pretty much unlimited freedom to ride motorcycles at will from age eleven until I left for college. With this extensive early experience, in my later teen years I raced motorcycles quite successfully and I have also done a cross-country motorcycle ride or two. I also recently returned from a two family vacation in Colorado where the main activity was seeing how many Fourteeners (14,000 foot peaks) we could climb. Me? Close, but none. My early teen step-kids and their friends? A few. From this perspective I could not agree more about the overgrown adolescents on their Harleys with their loud pipes who were also streaming through and contaminating the wonderful two-lane mountain roads and roadside bars of Colorado.

p>For this you can thank one of the lesser moments of the late great Ronald Reagan in signing one of the most stupid trade protection laws of all time. I am referring to the tariff law giving Harley Davidson and their at the time poorly engineered and unwanted relics a new lease on life by granting them by a wide margin of advantage over their foreign rivals. The motorcycle world has never been the same. With all due respect to late Malcolm Forbes, the result is all the pseudo tough guy characters playing dress-up (most by the way who don't know how to ride), clogging our highways and disturbing our peace. I haven't ridden in a long time but give me a brilliantly engineered and quiet BMW or even a newly re-engineered remake of those British classics like a Norton or Triumph any day over the Harley. br> --

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