Testosterone jungle

As baby boomers, age, and I'm one of them, we all seek different methods of proving our immortality. I had twin boys at age 51.

Another trend was on display in grand and explosively loud way last evening in Middletown as every 50 year old who's too embarrassed to ask for a prescription for Viagra arrived in town on a 700 pound phallic symbol bedecked with chrome and leather. All this big boys with disposable incomes are reliving the days when they were driving Chevelles and wished they had the money and the nerve, and their parent's permission to ride a Harley.

It was noisy. Lord it was noisy, as the faux outlaws roared up and down the sidestreets with their illegal straight pipes, and their disrespect for peace and quiet. For some reason, Middletown has become a biker's town. Part of it may be it's location on the summertime route to the shore. Some of it might be the welcome the Chamber of Commerce lays out for them on occasions like this. Some of it might be that despite the doubling of motorcycle deaths over the last decade, our town's chief emergency responders, the Fire Department, auctioned a Harley to raise money for the department. Some of it might be the Police Department's collective shrug as dozens of bikers a day scream through town with hellishly noisy illegal pipes.

But they are patriots. As the Courant noted, they protect families of fallen soldiers from anti-war protestors. Although there has never been a report of an anti-war protest at a single service person's funeral. There have been religious zealots who have protested, but the anti-war movement actually is sensitive and smart enough not to torment the families of fallen soldiers. In fact, the anti-war movement cares just as deeply about the young men and women who are sent to fight in the unjust and futile war of the Bush administration.