Letters 12-25-13

Loud motorcycles just aren’t ‘cool’

Loud motorcycles just aren’t ‘cool’

Regarding Gary Hattenburg’s letter of Dec. 12 concerning straight-pipe motorcycles: Right on!

I’m a biker and love to ride. I wrote a motorcycle travel article that was published in four mainland newspapers and won an AMA award. To the point, I believe there is little else, excepting vog, that degrades the quality of life in Kona like noise pollution, and no noise offender is worse than straight-pipe bikes.

Straight-pipe riders will say, “It’s a safety issue.” There’s some truth to that, but ask yourself if you need to be heard from over a quarter-mile away? Others say they modify their bikes for the horsepower bump. If your bike requires that you spend a lot of money for fractional boosts in horsepower, I would point you to the many models that will give you more power than you could ever use, with mufflers that won’t rattle windows. Think of the conversations interrupted, the babies woken, TV shows drowned out and the annoyance scattered with your offensive (and illegal) exhaust systems.

Remember the “noise check” stops the Kona police conducted in 2000, 2001? It kept the noise pollution down. As Mr. Hattenburg says, it’s not necessary to have decibel meters or argue in court about how loud a bike is, Hawaii law says no exhaust system modification. That’s a law I, too, would like to see enforced.

There are a lot of people who look at you when you rumble by. But we’re not, as you might imagine, thinking “how cool.”

David Wagner

Kailua-Kona

Obamacare benefit

I just returned from California where I had a surgery not available in Hawaii. The time from initial exam to surgery is usually a lengthy wait. But thanks to Obamacare I got to the head of the line.

The poor soul who had the date that I got was unable to make his appointment because his insurance had been canceled. So, thanks to Obama, I am cured while the other guy is not, poor fellow.

Mike Lawler

Kailua-Kona