Tiger Tales 15: Midlife Women Find Hog Heaven
By the Law Tigers
America’s Injury Lawyers Who Ride
Midlife Women Find Hog Heaven
Jane Glenn Haas
Our Time
Special to the Register
My maternal grandmother was a pioneer, a woman who drove a car even before many men had taken the wheel.
Nannie used to load her five kids into the family Franklin, strap a picnic basket on the running board, and take off for a day in the country.
Today, she probably would be straddling a motorcycle. A ladylike one, of course.
Nearly one out of 10 motorcycle owners is a woman about at midlife, age 42, says the Motorcycle Industry Council.
Not beer-swilling, tattooed babes either.
Women like Sis, who spent more than 15 years sitting behind her man, watching the road over his shoulder.
Finally she bought her own Harley-Davidson, a pink one, and wore pink leathers “so everyone would know it was a girl driving the bike.”
That was in 1992, and Sis, now 59, was one of some 600 women nationally who owned a Harley.
Being in the driver’s seat, she says, “was not considered very feminine.”
By 2003, the last time the Motorcycle Industry Council did a survey, 635,000 women owned bikes. Manufacturers like Harley market directly to them with everything from
feminine apparel to dealer “garage parties,” all-girl events to get acquainted with the 21st-century biker world.
Men suddenly find it “fairly attractive” for women to be driving, says Rebecca Bortner, a Harley spokeswoman.
I started researching babes on bikes when I met a couple of midlife women – each attractive, petite, quiet – who spent their weekends riding bikes alone or in groups.
Why they mount up has a lot to do with always wanting to do what the boys do. Like riding dirt bikes in their youth.
It’s all about going for a second childhood, says Tina Bartel of Orange Park Acres, who has an advertising business, raises horses and is developing a racing magazine.
“I got a divorce and was looking for something physical and social to do. Riding a bike lets me do something that’s not all women-oriented,” she says.
So what do the men think?
“Well, the motorcycle clubs have changed over the years. They’re no longer all boys clubs, although there are certainly those groups available. Like the first group I joined and was politely informed they allowed wives ‘because they had to.’ ”
Bartel says there are still women more comfortable riding behind a man, still men who want to be “independent and masculine.”
Vroom, vroom and all that jazz.
Riding in the back isn’t her style, she says. “I might be comfortable doing that with the right person, but I’d no more want to do that all the time than have some guy drive me around in the car.”
She’s made a few trips with clubs but never done the big alone ride.
An educator I know – better her students don’t know this, she says – learned to love motorcycle riding behind her former significant other.
“But once I got on and was the driver, I could never go back,” she says.
She could go alone. All the way to Alaska and back – 6,800 miles – on a 28-day trip during which she lived in a tent except for four days when it rained.
At least 60 percent of the female drivers are married, says the Motorcycle Industry Council.
The other 40 percent are not necessarily looking.
“Prince Charming would have to be very secure,” Bartel says. “Secure guys are out there, but biking sure does eliminate the guys with preconceived notions about how a female should behave.”
