Women face the wind as motorcycles hit the road
Female ridership up as women's clubs flourish
Danine Dibble's second Harley-Davidson is a 1550cc Softail Deuce.
Dibble who lives in Danby and works at Ithaca College, has been riding
since 1994. / SIMON WHEELER / STAFF PHOTO
“And then you date boys that have bikes, and then you don’t want to ride on the back,” Dibble said. She bought her first bike, a 250-cc Kawasaki Ninja, in 1993, but soon after decided it was time for a Harley-Davidson. She sold the Ninja and bought a Sportster.
“I’m more independent than anything,” Dibble admitted. She now owns a second Harley, a Softail Deuce. The license plate reads “GIGGLZ,” her roller derby name.
The number of female motorcycle operators in the U.S. has increased slowly to about 7.2 million of about 27 million overall riders in 2009, according to the latest survey by the Motorcycle Industry Council. About 1 in 10 owners are women, said Cam Arnold, a vice president for the trade group.
“I hate riding on the back of a bike,” Arnold said. “It’s a lot more fun being in control.”
The American Motorcyclist Association has about 225,000 members. Women make up fewer than 10 percent, but the number of new female members has increased, driven in part by a higher profile for women on two wheels, more training opportunities and better equipment, said AMA board member Maggie McNally.
Dozens of female-only motorcycle clubs have joined established groups like Women on Wheels or Ladies of Harley. The makers of bikes and gear are reaching out to women like never before through special events and marketing campaigns that include Harley-Davidson’s “No Doubts. No Cages” program.
Women no longer have to endure jackets, gloves and helmets designed for men. And it’s easier to find or modify bikes for shorter bodies, said McNally, the AMA’s vice chairwoman and the highest-ranking woman in the group’s 75-year history.
“I’m only 5-1,” she said. “I wore boys’ work boots for years and found the perfect gloves only three years ago. Things have changed a lot. Manufacturers today have realized that women are a huge part of the market.”
McNally started riding in 1981 after hanging out with friends, thinking up dream cars, in a Troy, N.Y., parking lot, the same lot where she now teaches newbies of both sexes to ride safely.
“I said that I wanted to get a motorcycle, and one of the guys said, ‘You can’t, girls don’t ride motorcycles,”’ she said. “I thought, ‘He shouldn’t be telling a temperamental redhead what she can and cannot do.’ I had my permit within a week.”
Caroline resident Edie Spaulding began riding after she met her husband, who also rides. Her first bike was a small, two-stroke 350-cc “you had to kick-start,” Edie said. “That didn’t last long.” Over the next decade, she bought and rode several bikes, each bigger than the last.
In 2009, she broke her leg in a bike accident when she hit loose gravel on a corner. While her leg was still in a cast, she bought her 2009 Harley Road King. As soon as her cast was off, she went to Maine to ride it back from where she bought it.
And she’s been riding it ever since. Edie is a real estate agent for Audrey Edelman Realty USA and is a Ladies of Harley officer, an affiliation of the Harley Owners Group. She organizes women’s rides, “but I don’t care what women ride. All are welcome.”
Whether they prefer dirt or the open road, a scooter or a Harley, thousands of women will gather Thursday through Sunday in Carson City, Nev., for the AMA’s sixth International Women & Motorcycling Conference. Many will be mothers, an anxious status for some when it comes to riding.
“People were shocked that I didn’t sell my bike when I became a mom,” McNally said, “but I knew that once the bike was gone, I might never get back into the sport.”
When her second child came along, she and her husband bought a sidecar. “Riding and motorcycle camping became a family activity that probably wouldn’t have been possible otherwise,” she said.
Nancy Sabater, in southern Maryland, is an off-roader and street rider. She was chosen as AMA’s motorcyclist of the year in 2011 for fighting a federal anti-lead law written so broadly as to ban dirtbikes and ATVs intended for kids 12 and younger. President Barack Obama fixed the law in August.
“It’s definitely about skill, pushing my own limits, trying to climb a hill, trying to get through a tricky rock section, that kind of thing,” she said.
Women are generally more interested in formal safety training than men, with 58 percent of women taking a rider course, compared with 44 percent of men, the AMA says.
Harley-Davidson, based in Milwaukee, is the market leader in sales to women. The company travels around the country offering training and safety tips for women.
“We’ve heard from enough women who think they might like to do it but don’t know how to get started,” said Claudia Garber, director of women’s outreach for Harley. “They’re worried about things like ‘the bike seems too big and too heavy for me,’ or ‘maybe I don’t know other women who ride.’”
Roshani Dubel, 33, an eighth-grade math teacher and mother of three in Gilbert, Ariz., was more than ready, but she had to face those fears after winning an essay contest telling Harley why she wanted to learn to ride. She and three others were flown to Milwaukee for mentoring and training last summer.
A video documenting her struggle shows her breaking down emotionally as she tries to walk the bike back and forth. “I’m 5 feet tall. I kept thinking to myself, ‘How am I going to ride if I can’t even walk this monster?’”
Things clicked eventually. She’s logged more than 800 miles on her Harley since, cheered by her students and fellow teachers when she rolled up to her school on it for the first time.
For more info: http://www.theithacajournal.com/article/20120723/NEWS01/307230041/Women-face-wind-motorcycles-hit-road?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE&nclick_check=1
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