Rant: Put a Cork In It
As I stare out my motorcoach's tinted windows at the red rock LaSal mountains, not a sound can be heard while I read the online Sunday LA Times' story about how police in scenic Laguna Beach, California are ticketing excessively loud motorcycles. The tranquility of 'getting away from it all,' reminds me that it's about time to fire up my Honda CRF450 and shred some not-so- knobby-anymore tires against said slickrock.
Mentally back to reality and the point at hand: My CRF is box-stock and very quiet, and I like that. Jim loosed one bolt out of the back of my exhaust, popped out the inner core and presto! It's loud: "sounds good, now, huh?" he queries me with that devilish smile of his. 'No,' I think, 'it sounds garishly loud, don't touch my bike!' Count, one-thousand-one, one-thousand-two, and...
Ah, the sound of my riding pal Jim Ryan's piped XR650 echoing amongst the canyons is music to his ears -- what's with guys and loud pipes, anyway?
"Yes, Jim," I reply, suppressing that rude voice constantly in my head, "it sure does, but I like the way my bike runs and don't want to mess with the power delivery at all, please put it back." There, that part is true, an outright lie avoided, all my karma intact. Which is important to me, as I feel that it's rude to pump noise at others -- a sentiment shared by much of the rest of the world. So I put the muffler core back in. The ease with which my exceptionally well-engineered Honda can be "uncorked" stays with me, churning thoughts in the back of my head...
I return to Thailand in 11 days, where there's virtually no traffic laws but you simply don't encounter loud vehicles. Not because it's illegal, but because it's rude, and the Thai people are many things, but overtly rude isn't one of them. Where's the karmic kindness and generosity in being rude unto others? Self-regulation in the populace can work. Really, it can -- I've seen it in action.
But I digress. I enjoy tooling around on motorcycling's land barges with MO's de-facto "cruiser guy", Fonzie. And I think piped Harleys sound kinda cool. But modified, shrieking inline-four sportbikes and especially base-rail-laden SUVs and the lowered micro-Honda cars with rims wider than their tires all seemingly pump noise right into the trigger area that can launch me on a horrid three-day agony cruise. That's right, if you're one of these, your lifestyle choice can put me in the emergency room. Walk a mile in my shoes?
One could argue that the greater problem herein isn't loud pipes, it's that those that partake of this illegal liberty take joy from being rude. Further, that forcefully pressing their choices onto others is "cool" and an acceptable -- even fun -- thing to do. In the rest of the world, this is perceived as the defining attribute of American culture -- and why much of the rest of the globe, even many of our allies, hates America the ideal. That's the downside to our culture. Its reach has great, inadvertent global consequences -- read up on the Khmer Rouge, the genocidal Cambodian regime that was a fallout of our war with Vietnam. If you've ever been to Cambodia and seen the devastation still lingering in some small, lasting way from the Khmer Rouge, it'll haunt you. As it does me. You've probably seen the televised car commercials where a butterfly in Brazil flaps its wing and imparts striking global change -- they're a spoof of the afore-linked Butterfly Effect, Chaos Theory's law of unintended consequences which postulates that your choice of straight pipes could very well avalanche a thundering change. Outlawing motorcycles in private communities could gain momentum, leading to national tiered licensing legislation -- or worse -- as a scheme to exert control of how, when and what you ride. Freedom lost, in short.
The populace -- growing denser all the time -- doesn't want you rattling their windows, and they certainly don't have any desire to hear your 99-percenter weekend rebellion.
My singular point here isn't political -- this is Moto
So, MOFOs, if you're loud and proud, put a cork in it!
More by Ashley Jade Hamilton
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