More women motorcyclists are taking to the road

[totalmotorcycle]

More women motorcyclists are taking to the road
By KRYS STEFANSKY, The Virginian-Pilot April 13, 2005



SUN GLINTS off sparkling chrome.

The deep thrum of an engine drums the windows of cars and drowns out passing traffic. A rider waits at a red light.

Eyes cut toward the motorcycle, heads swivel as drivers let the sound, then the sight sink in.

Hey. Small feet in black boots, a waist, that hair.

The light turns green.

Kathy R. Ponte of Virginia Beach guns her Harley’s engine and roars away, curls flying.

A woman on a motorcycle.

Once content to sit behind a man, arms wrapped around him as he took her for a ride, today’s woman is cruising in the saddle, pointing her bike where she wants to go.

One in 12 U.S. motorcycle owners is female, according to figures released by Harley-Davidson Motor Co. last fall. What’s more, half the women buying motorcycles are doing so for the first time, said J.D. Power and Associates, marketing information firm, in a 2004 report.

These new riders have children, husbands, belong to the PTA, hold down jobs, are fresh-faced or proud of their laugh lines.

They share one passion.

“Sometimes I wake up in the morning and the sun is shining,” Ponte said, sitting in her office on a weekday noon, “and I just can’t wait to get out there and ride. It’s that whole freedom thing.”

It’s the wind on the face, the mystery beyond the curve in the road ahead, the feeling of power in a roaring engine, the chance to shed responsibilities for a while.

She had tastes of a bike’s freedom from the time she was a child growing up in Massachusetts. Surrounded by countryside in Taunton, the six kids in her family traded around an assortment of vehicles – snowmobiles, street bikes, dirt bikes. Even after she moved to Virginia 17 years ago, going back north for visits meant a chance to hop on a four-wheeler and head into the woods for a ride.

Meanwhile, down here, more and more of Ponte’s friends started getting interested in and buying motorcycles. They’d ride on the weekends, and she’d feel that tug of desire to go along.

Managing the hectic pace of her tax preparation business, Liberty Tax Service, on Laskin Road in Virginia Beach, Ponte started asking questions, looking at bikes and saving, just in case she ran across something interesting one day.

Tyler, her 13-year-old son, was older now. His single mother was looking for something to balance the long hours she kept at work.

Then, in May last year, biking friends invited her to come along for the second time to the annual Virginia Beach Bike Classic at the Holiday Trav-L Park on General Booth Boulevard. The weekend buzzed with biker talk.

“They had everything,” she said. “Clothing, bikes, country music. It just fed me more.”

That scene was the trigger.

She got ready. Signed up for a three-day class on motorcycle safety and got her license.

More and more women are signing up for the course at Tidewater Community College Chesapeake campus.

Off the top of his head, Keith Lindgren says the number of female students is up 30 to 35 percent. Lindgren is the coordinator of motorcycle safety and a motorcycling enthusiast who calls the sport “addictive.”

Ten years ago, less than 5 percent of his enrollment was female. That was when women would take the class because their husbands or boyfriends suggested it so they’d feel more secure about riding along as passengers. Now they sign up for the safety class because they have their own bikes.

“They see how much fun it is and how much freedom there is in operating it themselves,” he said.

The industry has also put more women on wheels, lowering the seat height, accommodating a shorter leg length and designing motorcycles to be more user-friendly to women.

Ponte waited several months to find her bike. Then, last September, a friend told her that a Harley he knew about was for sale again. The Navy guy who owned it had gotten himself a bike with more speed and more power.

Ponte took a look.

It was a 1994 Harley-Davidson Sportster 1200. The sailor had customized it, put on a double gas tank, painted it with flames. It was metallic blue. It looked good.

She took it on the road.

“As soon as I got out there, it was unbelievable.”

The Sportster weighs about 575 pounds. Ponte is 5 feet 9 inches tall and kayaks, bicycles, lifts weights, works out.

She bought it, took it home and little by little added more chrome, blinkers, an all-new brake system, had somebody rework the carburetor and put risers on the handle bars to adjust for her height.

Tyler, her teenager, watched all this without saying much. His mother had inched up several notches on the cool scale with his friends.

“They’re surprised when they see her on it,” he said.

“He’s never bragged about it, but I could tell when he had friends over and I’d drive up on the bike and they’d go, 'Wow!’ ” she said, laughing.

On pretty days, she and a friend or two will head south past Pungo and stop at a curve in the road for burgers at Monk’s Place. After the pub, they climb back onto their bikes and ride home.

On the way, side windows of cars roll down and people call out to her.

That makes her smile, but it’s also kind of puzzling.

“I get looks, honks. I have no idea why. Bikes and women. I don’t know, is it attractive?”

WOMEN ON WHEELS: FACTS AND FIGURES

The annual number of motorcycles purchased by females rose from slightly more than 10,000 in 1990 to more than 45,000 in 2002

The annual number of new Harley-Davidson motorcycles purchased by females in the United States rose from only 600 in 1985 to almost 20,000 in 2002

Source: Harley-Davidson Motor Co.

GET STARTED

- Take a class on motorcycle safety: It should include classroom and on-bike instruction.

- Decide what kind of riding you want to do: dirt biking, touring or sport riding.

- Set a budget for your motorcycle: – touring bikes can cost from $3,000 to $20,000 and up.

- Find a bike that fits you: Try bikes out for size and feel.

- Get the right clothes: Helmet, gloves, long sleeves, long pants, sturdy footwear and rain gear

Source: www.chiff.com – Motorcycle Tips for Beginners

RIDE SAFELY

Tidewater Community College Chesapeake campus offers a 15-hour basic rider course designed to teach new and novice motorcyclists safe riding strategies. The course, offered nearly every weekend from March 1 through mid-December (course also offered in January and February on every other weekend), includes five hours of classroom instruction and 10 hours of hands-on training. Classes fill quickly, and reservations are required. Students must be at least 16 years old. Course fee is $90. To register for the Virginia Rider Training Program’s Basic Rider Course, call 822-5247 or e-mail tcroll@tcc.edu.

Note: Experienced rider course is also available. And for three-wheel instruction, ask for the sidecar and trike course. Both courses taught at TCC Portsmouth campus.

[chickenhawk]

I mostly just feel like a monkey at the zoo when I ride . For whatever reason, seeing more of us riding seems to increase this phenomenon.
Linda