Unnecessarily loud motorcycles: The bane of transportation

Motorcycle travel is very popular in Thailand because most people can't afford a car. It is also a lot quicker to get around in a busy city like this one if you are on 2 wheels instead of 4. Most people have those plastic scooter things that are 100-125 CC's and these are fine.

However, Chiang Mai is also a popular launching point of sorts for motorcycle tours in the surrounding mountains because there are many great places nearby with good roads and winding hills with fantastic views. This ends up meaning that there are a lot of people that own larger motorcycles that are 400 CC's all the way up to over 1 thousand. This is also fine, if there is a reason for it and I love riding these bikes as well.

There is one group of bikers that I absolutely do NOT like though, and these are the guys who purchase the loudest bikes that the possibly can just because it is loud, not because it actually has any sort of performance advantage.

I know a few people with bikes like this and I will tell them to their faces that they are assholes for having a bike like this. Many times these bikes are poorly tuned and frequently backfire and this makes them even more of a nuisance to wherever they happen to be.

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This is not his bike but it is something similar. He has intentionally cut the exhaust so that the bike, which was already pretty loud, will be a LOT louder. This offers zero performance advantage and is just for the sake of making the bike even more annoying than it already was. When he pulls up to the bar that most of the locals hang out at everyone grimaces as he approaches and some people like me actually cover our ears. We all secretly hate the guy because he is ruining the peace everywhere that he goes.

I once had a chopper and it was the worst bike I ever owned. After having one of these things I really do not understand the allure. There are motorcycle clubs of course and these guys think that they look super cool with their leather and unnecessarily loud cycles but really, I'm pretty sure that the only people that actually admire these guys, are these guys themselves.

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_{one of my favorite SouthPark episodes is about exactly this topic}

It is already so difficult to find any peace and quiet in this world and when you have people like this that are intentionally making their vehicles as loud as possible, they ruin one of the best things in life: Peace.

If it is someone that is poor and their motorbike is barely functioning and he or she simply cannot afford to repair the exhaust I am willing to let that slide. The people who own these loud, Harley Davidson wannabe bikes though, they are just jerks and they already have multiple other methods of transport.

There are groups of That motorcycle punks that have these sorts of things on their 150CC scooters and they are comically stupid because the bikes are not faster, but they do scare the shit out of you when they pass you. These tailpipes are actually illegal and are frequently confiscated and destroyed by police. I don't normally like police but in this instance I am happy they do this.

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So if you are one of these guys that has one of these unnecessarily loud motorcycles, congratulations, you are an idiot, all of your neighbors hate you, and the only people that think this is cool or interesting are other assholes with the same unnecessarily noisy method of inefficient travel.