I see you did not understand my point. There is no difference to both being illegal and idiotic to have noise beyond a safe level. Why do you think deaf people are not allowed to operate vehicles? It does not matter if you are driving a armored tank or walking down the road. I hope that you can understand my writing and take it out of context again.

On a recent ride (the STP) there was one group of guys who had one of their riders towing a BOB trailer in which was built out of plywood a boombox that included a car stereo and presumably some kind of internal power source. Attached to the outside of the box were car audio speakers. He controlled the system with a wired remote control complete with detachable connectors that was attached to his handlerbars. There must have been some kind of hi-capacity MP3 player in the system too since he never ran out of tunes and was actually taking requests (he filled a good majority of them). Needless to say, he picked up quite a rolling crowd. I must have followed him for a good 30 miles at first and managed to regain contact with him several other times during the ride.

I enjoy musci while I ride. As for the whole balance idea. I find the intensity I get while listening makes the ride that much better. I have a small mp3 player with ear buds. I listen on a low vbolume and go to it.

I also spend very little time on public trails so usually I am not in the way of or need to hear anyone around me.