Editor’s Note: This article originally published April 7, 1971 in Who Kniws, Arapahoe Community College’s student paper at the time. 

Ah. Spring. A time for love to blossom and the sun to shine. The smell of moist grass and budding flowers is in the air. All of it waits out there, for you to embrace its fullness with all the strength of your soul. A feeling that can only be described as one of absolute inner tranquility encompasses you as you prepare to mount your machine and take the first ride of Spring.

Spring. To ride into the warmth of its bosom, to hear the muted throbs of harnessed power beneath you, to feel the wind in your hair and the sun on your face. This is the moment you have ridden through five months of biting cold winter for.

A beautiful time, Spring. But now nearly impossible to enjoy to its fullest by a True Believer. No longer are we allowed to let the wind turn our heads into seemingly impossible tangles of hair. Neither may we experience the radiance of the sun on our cheeks. Why/ Because Colorado’s lawmakers have sene fit to force us to wear helmets and facesheilds.

A helment can prevent you from seeing, hearing and enjoying all that which is around you. A colored face shield can turn green lights red and exquisitly beautiful girls into blue or amber monsters with complexions akin to Herman Munster.

Admittedly, wearing a helmet is a wise choice when it is just that, a choice. But it is no longer. Does the State of Colorado have the constitutional right to force me to protect myself against my own stupidity, as one state senator puts it?  I think not.

If the State sees fit to do this to me why then, don’t I have to wear seatbelts, at the risk of a three point ticket? Simply because they would have to go through the same inconvenience and that is too much trouble. A law is not quite as ritous when the maker must bear the consequences.

I can see a little bit of their reasoning though. If we die there will be no one to pay taxes, i.e. their salaries, and they would be out of a job. But take heart friends, for there is one saving grace. With the eighteen year old vote fast approaching they may repeal the law to either appease or get rid of us. I am very interested in your opinions of this law so please take a moment to write it down and either take it to the newspaper office, (in the basement of the English offices) or give it to me personally.