Women are also born to be wild

By C.L. STAMBUSH
Guest Columnist

Editor’s note: This week, Scott Saalman yields his time to his friend C.L. Stambush. We’re not certain, but Scott may be out riding high and getting wild.

I’d parked and was walking toward the office when I noticed a man eyeing me. It was spring and I could smell the sweet scent of mimosa blossoms mingling with the warm afternoon air and feel the flutter of butterfly wings stirring the sunshine. As I neared him, his eyes skipped up and down my tall frame, not so unusual considering what he was looking at.

But when I reached for the door handle, he leaned toward me, his brown eyes locking onto my green, and uttered the sweetest words, “Whoa, I thought you’d be a dude.”

But I am not a dude – or even a dudette. I am a woman who rides a motorcycle.

And, as I swing my leg off the saddle and slip my helmet from my head, the element of surprise chokes these words from the most macho man, and for a moment, the world becomes a sweet, sweet place.

When a woman slips into the saddle of her own motorcycle, a rush of power comes over her, different than that a man experiences because of the social taboos she is breaking by crossing into a man’s world.

Women motorcyclists, however, are not new to the experience of riding; they have been holding bikes between their legs for the past 121 years. It may chagrin some men to learn that women have been riding since the invention of the motorcycle in 1885, although American women did not get the opportunity to straddle the machine until 1901. That was the year E. R. Thomas of Germany began shipping and selling his gasoline-powered bicycles to riders in the United States.

With engines snuggled into the bellies of bikes, the urge to race was irresistible – even to women. In October 1910, 18-year-old Clara Wagner rode a four-horsepower motorcycle in a 365-mile endurance race from Chicago to Indianapolis. Battling brutal roads and foul weather, she finished with a perfect score, bettering most men in the race. But alas, the judges refused to acknowledge Wagner’s perfect score because she was a woman and gave her trophy to a male rider instead.

While many men do not view women and motorcycles as the perfect pair, this has not stopped women throughout history from striving to change that by achieving greater goals as motorcyclists.

In 1915, Effie Hotchkiss and her mother, Avis, became the first women to ride round-trip, coast-to-coast, by motorcycle. They had a Harley with a sidecar. Bessie Stringfield refused to let her gender or race hamper her from breaking barriers. As a young black wife and mother devastated by the deaths of her three children, she turned to riding motorcycles in 1928. “I’d toss a penny over a map and wherever it landed I’d go,” she said.

Fifty years later, stuntwoman Marcia Holly rode a Kawasaki-based streamliner to set a land-speed record of 229.361 MPH, becoming the first woman to break into Bonneville’s 200 MPH Club.

Women from all walks of life ride. Few things get a man’s attention faster than a woman on a motorcycle.

I layer my body in protective gear. So much so, that when I climb off my bike and start stripping, men can be so taken aback. It is my full-face helmet that enables the surprised reactions I love so much.

Riding around in a more exposed fashion might make drivers’ heads turn, but it will not squeeze those sweet words from awestricken men when I dismount. “Whoa, I thought you’d be a dude.”

There are many reasons I wear a full-face helmet; surprise is but one. In my state of Indiana, riders have a choice to wear or not to wear a helmet. In addition to enjoying the gasps of men, I like the present arrangement of my face. I like the pleasant symmetry it offers.

Should the unthinkable happen one day – a crash – I would not want to have to live out my life with my chin where my nose used to be. But that is just me.

I must admit, the surprise some men show when they see a woman atop her own Hog or Beemer both baffles and delights me.

Perhaps it is the primitive notion that bikes are boys’ toys or that women are not strong enough to muscle their own machines.

If so, they are wrong. On the road today, one in five riders are women; that is, three million two-wheel riders belong to women. And those numbers are growing.

But enough of this talk about men and women and their respective place in society. The sun is shining, and it is time for me to start my engine; it is time to swing my leg over those ccs and twist that throttle; it is time to feel the vibrations between my legs.

And the next time a man utters those sweet words, “Whoa, I thought you’d be a dude,” I won’t hear him because I’ll be in my place – on the road, riding into the wind.

C.L. Stambush is a journalist, writer, and editor who has lived, worked, and traveled in over 20 countries. She is the first woman on record to ride a Royal Enfield Bullet motorcycle solo around the edge of India – five months and nearly 7,000 miles. Her book on that journey is titled Untethered: A Woman’s Search for Self on the Edge of India – A Travel Memoir.