Motorcycles: Strong Enough for a Woman; Made for a Man

I'd always expected my mother to take up a pastime when her children jumped the nest--golfing perhaps, or knitting. (After all, my grandmother crocheted for years.) But I was caught by surprise when I learned that my mother had come home one day with a Honda Shadow 650, a sleek black hog with a bumper sticker that read A Woman's Place Is on the Road. From the backseat of our Dodge caravan, I'd grown up observing my mother as she diligently followed every traffic rule. The thought of her zooming down the highway on a two-wheeled projectile was a bit overwhelming.

My reaction, I'll admit, was based largely on stereotypes. Motorcycles were for men, not women, right? Not that I really thought women couldn't ride motorcycles, but I'd grown up with movies and TV shows and music that equated motorcycles with masculinity. You know the story: Powerful hero rescues weak girlfriend, inviting her to jump on the back of his Harley and ride off into the sunset.

Despite my 1970s flower-child upbringing, my two enduring motorcycle memories are surprisingly gendered. The family for whom I babysat--the Smiths--kept two Harley-Davidson gems in their garage. Mr. Smith took his bike out every Saturday afternoon, but the second bike just sat there. Once I asked Mrs. Smith whose bike it was. "Mine," she said. "I used to ride, but with the baby, it's just too dangerous." (I often wondered why it was okay for Mr. Smith to risk his life, but not okay for Mrs. Smith.)

I also remember a pack of neighborhood toughs who used to ride their bicycles up and down our cul-de-sac in the summertime. We would watch them from Kristy Lighter's backyard, where the little girls played school while Kristy's mom kept a close watch. "Just wait until those boys are old enough to drive motorcycles," Mrs. Lighter used to say. "They'll be covered in leather and sporting tattoos--a real bunch of thugs."

My mother is no thug, though she does have a tattoo--a dainty sun on her ankle--and she's no stranger to leather. "A woman has not truly lived," she says, "until she straps on a pair of her own leather chaps."

I'd attributed the motorcycle to a mid-life crisis, but my mother pooh-poohed the notion. It was, she told me, a practical decision. Five days a week, fifty weeks each year, her job requires that she travel into the city. She estimates that now, with the motorcycle, she saves 30 minutes each way by weaving through gridlocked traffic--not to mention big bucks in parking on the crowded city streets. "That's fifty hours I was losing every year--more than two full days--because I considered motorcycling to be something girls didn't do."

As it turns out, this notion that girls "don't do" motorcycles is wrong--theoretically and factually. These days women are taking the road in record numbers. According to the Motorcycle Industry Council's Statistical Annual, of the 5.7 million motorcycle owners in the United States, 357,000 are women. Though this figure represents only 6% of all motorcycle owners, the number of female bikers has doubled in the last 10 years. That's a lot of biker chycks! And most of them are surprisingly similar to my mother--the average female biker is in her early fifties, with an income of almost $60,000.

Practicality, of course, isn't the bike's only benefit. With the extra two days that she saves each year in commuting, my mother hits the road with her biking buddies, a bunch of women in Western Massachusetts who take weekend tours together. They've formed an enviable community with a decidedly feminist tone.

"They teach me how to ride safe, how to ride alone, how to break down my own bike and fix it, how to anticipate a turn, how to ride a storm out," my mother tells me. "There are women out there who are down on themselves after reading how they should fit into a dress size smaller than their ring size, but I feel good about myself -- with the help of sister riders and Shadow."

Along the way, my mother has learned a lot about her bike. She knows how to measure a bike's fit, making sure that both feet rest flat on the ground in standing position. She knows how to adjust handlebars and check the position of the hand and foot controls. She knows that the shifter and brake pedal should rest evenly with the boot soles when the feet are on the pegs.

Of course, my father refers to the Shadow as the Donor Cycle, and he's not wrong to be concerned. Motorcycling can be a dangerous pastime. In 1998 alone, there were 50,000 motorcycle crashes and roughly 2,200 fatalities.

But Mom takes safety seriously. Like most legal motorcycle drivers, she is a graduate of the rider education program offered by the Motorcycle Safety Foundation, a nonprofit organization that has offered training since 1973. As a result of continued emphasis on safety, motorcycle injury crashes have declined 41% since 1989, and annual motorcycle fatalities have dropped 27% over the last 10 years.

In the 7 years that my mom has ridden, she's never had a major accident. According to her, safety is about control and fear--if you lose either one, you're at risk for an injury. "The fear is important because it makes you remember to maintain control at all times."

Here in the Bay Area, traffic is in a crisis state, and as my good old Honda Civic nears the end of its life, I've thought about getting a motorcycle for my commute as well. When I mentioned this to my mom, she suggested I wait a year or two. Evidently she believes that fear is something acquired with age. Still, as she hangs up the phone, she gives me her usual parting advice: "Keep the rubber side down," she says, "and the shiny side up."