Hearing Loss

When we age our `parts' wear out.  Our sense of `hearing' simply diminishes with time.  It is often a slow, barely distinguishable process. 

And then there are motorcycles. 

My hearing loss (left ear) happened fast.  Over less than a few months.  In April I could put my cell phone to my left ear and hear without a problem.  In June I could not. 

One of the local training routes is a mountainous two lane road, thick with ascending and descending switchbacks, that hangs off the edge of the Bradshaw Mountains in the Prescott National Forest.  In the winter there is very little traffic because of ice and snow.  The other nine months of the year hordes of motorcyclists practice suicides on this road.  Over the 17 mile length of the road I've counted more than 20 `road shrines' dedicated to motorcyclists who have careened off the cliff edges or smashed into the rock face. 

Motorcyclists like themselves to be noisy.  Big, blasting tail pipes.  Something between their legs that they otherwise lost many years ago. 

So, the hordes of lemmings on motorcycles that have made misery out of pristine nature have taken another toll: hearing in my left ear. 

Could be worse, I guess.