Have Motorcycle, Will Come

Today I was stuck on a hill in an air-conditioned room, surrounded by the brilliance of a sunny, balmy, weather-perfect day. Being outside on this day contains one extra annoyance that I could do without: grating noise pollution. I don't mind the motorcycles. But the noise! Oh, the noise, noise, noise! Somehow every single biker on the continent found out there was a motorcycle festival of some sort here and now you can't even tie your shoe here without running into a couple of Harleys. And the people who ride them, the stereotypical leather jackets, bandannas, long, white hair, tattoos, red-white-and-blue accessories, black leather boots, and ... what have I missed? Nothing about the bikers themselves bothers me. I think it's fascinating to see the widespread biker culture and how people seem to slip so easily into social norms, create themselves into the stereotype they aspire to be, and then when they do it for so long they don't know how to be anything else. I am also amused to feel what it must have felt to live in the 1960s in an area where law-abiding, tax-paying residents feared the motorcycle gangs and Hell's Angels-type clans, feeling maybe a little wary about all the intimidating bikers closing in all around them in a grocery store parking lot or rest stop or accidental stop in the midwest on a deserted strip of flatland in front of a biker bar; today, 40 years later, it seems that the perpetuation of the stereotype is but a novelty, and the relics from the past still wandering and playing are but a curious cultural phenomenon, at least from my angle ... But can I just roll down the window of my car to enjoy a little bit of the cheery, breezy, beautiful air outside, after I've been holed up in an air-conditioned room all day? No, I cannot. The obnoxious roar from the motorcycles behind me, in front of me, and beside me steal any tiny sliver of relaxation and weather appreciation I might have hoped for. Add to that the exhaust fumes from the added traffic to this city-turned-metropolis. I hope they're having as much fun as it seems they're having.