Motorcycles were a really fast deal last weekend. Emails complaining about noise had no beginning and no end. They were silent, as emails are, and had many capital letters and unusual punctuations that looked like screaming.
Fayetteville cancelled Bikes, Blues & BBQ a couple of months ago, but that didn’t apply to the rest of Northwest Arkansas.
In Busch, nine miles west of town, Hwy. 62 sounded like a 48-hour catastrophe movie. There were mufflers and sirens and dashboard sound amps. Even the stars way up in space seemed to lose sparkle. Busch attracted eight sirens and one chopper on Saturday.
Most of the emails we got were from people who were rattled and said so were their pets. “Why do we have a noise ordinance if it’s not enforced?” was a common question.
For years, we’ve read about Sturgis, a town of 7000 in western South Dakota on the high prairie close to Deadwood and Spearfish. Beautiful, holy country, where any of us could live if it weren’t for winter. Sturgis started hosting motorcycles in 1938. Now 700,000 bikers spend 11 days, starting on the first Friday of August, at an event billed for “Adults Only.”
Noisy beyond belief, yes, also, an $800 million boost to the town.
Then there’s Daytona, with a Bike Week, which lasts 10 days and brings in 500,000 bikers (300,000 in virus years) every March. Biketoberfest, in two weeks, anchors another 100,000.
Myrtle Beach has Bike Week in May, as it has for 75 years, squeezing in to make room for 200,000 after-market mufflers and those who ride on top of them trying to steer.
“Rumble in the Ozarks,” our close-by rally, is billed as family friendly, but you don’t see many families riding Harleys.
“Who are these people?” was another email question.
I don’t know.
“Are they bad boy wannabes except they don’t want to be alone so they say, ‘Timmy, will you ride to Eureka Springs with me?’ until it becomes a six-pack, 12- pack, full case of riders in a line?”
Yep. Don’t know.
What I do know is that traffic is quiet and reasonable today, tonight. And I know that getting angry is more cholesterol-causing than leaving or closing the town down. Neither of those is likely.
I also know that when people write to the newspaper, they are distraught or in search of a backup for their thinking.
As fast and loud and unseemly as motorcycles are, it does come to an end. It’s not war or a pandemic, it has a finish line.
I’m not trying to cheer you up or anything like that, but I do have one more thing to share. Twenty-four hours ago right now, Perlinda and I were asking ourselves why we even do this. Right then we got a text with a picture of a tiny human with a head full of black hair who decided there wasn’t enough womb where he was so he popped out to see what’s happening in our world.
Birth is so profound, so buoyant, so hopeful. Any birth, every birth. This birth is Jeremiah’s second son. His first son is in our office right now, pointing at us, saying “Uh-oh!” Jeremiah was his age when we started doing this newspaper stuff.
Life goes a lot faster than motorcycles ever thought of.