Motorcycle Maids Have Roaring Good Times Breaking Barriers on the Road
When a colleague told me she had bought a motorcycle, I thought she had a screw loose. My mother always told me that motorcycles were dangerous and that they suggest the wrong things about a girl. When my brother threatened to get one, Mom vowed to die first.
So I never thought much about traveling by motorcycle or the sense of freedom and power it engenders until I saw my colleague, wearing leather boots and jacket, roar away on her little Honda Rebel.
Women motorcyclists have been roaming freely for almost a century, led by such pioneers as 5-foot-2-inch Dot Robinson, who logged more than a million miles on 35 new Harley Davidsons between 1928 and 1990. In 1940, the same year she won the grueling Jack Pine 500 Mile Endurance Run (on Labor Day in Michigan), she and a friend, Linda Dugeau, founded Motor Maids of America, a national organization of women motorcycle owners and riders.
Today, the organization has 540 members who must own and travel on their motorcycles if they attend annual conventions, as 125 Motor Maids did last year when they gathered in Palm Coast, Fla. President Jan Barrett of Englewood, Fla., who has ridden her Honda Gold Wing 77,000 miles in all 50 states (and over the Alcan Highway, which crosses British Columbia and the Yukon on the way to Alaska), says membership requirements like these make participants of the long-lived group extremely active.
Barrett says Motor Maids is a social organization devoted to enhancing the reputation of motorcycle riding. At conventions and special events, members wear the group’s uniform: gray slacks and a blue overblouse with the Motor Maids’ insignia stitched on it, accompanied by a white tie, gloves and boots.
Susan Roche, the Motor Maids’ Florida and Alabama district director, thinks women have helped change the image of the sport, even though they comprise a little less than 10% of all riders. “The public doesn’t see us as hellions anymore,” Roche says. Many members are senior citizens who have been riding motorcycles for more than 50 years (which qualifies them as “Golden Life” Motor Maids). “You’d think the women at our conventions were at a quilting bee, until they go outside and start their bikes,” she says, laughing.
Roche started motorcycling when she was 9 and typically rode to Motor Maids conventions with her mom, who is also a biker. Next summer, she and her parents, who are in their 60s, are planning a two-week motorcycle tour of Europe. She has a 2001 Honda Gold Wing, a large bike that’s good for touring. “Bigger bikes, made for doing 600 to 700 miles a day, are usually more comfortable for long-distance traveling and have more space for luggage,” she says. Her Gold Wing has a CD player, heated handgrips and cruise control. “You don’t need all that stuff,” she says, “but, man, it’s fun.”
At 73, Ethel Voy, national secretary of the group and a Golden Life Motor Maid, rode her ’92 Harley about 700 miles from her home in Rockford, Ill., to the organization’s last convention. She took up the sport in 1945 and, at the time, was the only woman in her local motorcycle club. “I went into taverns with the group and ordered a soda,” she recalls. “We all wore leather for protection, but I don’t remember any tattoos.
“It’s the journey, not just the destination, that’s the most enjoyable,” Voy says. She adds, however, that women tourers need to be aware of what’s going on around them.
Motor Maids president Barrett agrees, saying she’s always a little concerned when she’s on the road by herself. She stays away from rest areas and truck stops, where women alone stand out, memorizes her route so she doesn’t have to keep pulling out a map and never has more than $50 in her pocket. “If you’re not an experienced rider, you need to understand your limits and stamina,” she says. “Heat and cold can take a toll, as can dehydration.”
Dot Robinson, who died last year at the age of 87, was known as the “First Lady of Motorcycling” and was always perfectly prepared for her trips, Barrett said. The night before Robinson hit the road, her boots were polished and her Harley was gassed up. But, as the story goes (there are lots of Dot Robinson stories), her husband, Earl, would get home from work, see the bike at the ready and take it out for a spin. To discourage this, she had the bike custom-painted pink, which is how pink Harleys became her trademark. (She never sold a bike without first having it repainted anything but pink.) Her last Harley is part of a “Women & Motorcycling” exhibition, touring the U.S. with the International Motorcycle Shows.
Born to a motorcycling family (her father invented the Goulding motorcycle sidecar in 1910), Robinson ran a Harley Davidson dealership in Detroit with her husband. They met in 1928, when he saw her working on the books in her father’s motorcycle shop. Together they rode back and forth across the country at a time when the roads were poor, travel facilities were primitive and women cyclists were about as common as oil filters in beauty shops. One time when she was riding her motorcycle, Robinson looked down and discovered that all the buttons on her cardigan had come undone. “There I sat in my Maidenform!” she said.
Incidents like this aside, Robinson “always insisted that we look, act and dress like ladies,” says Motor Maid Voy. Still, Robinson was a fierce competitor who didn’t need any special treatment to race with the men. “I didn’t think in terms of men and women,” she once told her nephew, Ron Rae, author of “The Goulding Album,” a booklet on the Goulding-Robinson family. “I was always determined to finish the events, and I always wanted to win first place.”
She and Earl retired to Florida in 1972. Back surgery and three knee replacements forced her to give up her bike in 1995. But the Motor Maids will never forget her as they ride on, making the seat of a motorcycle a kinder, gentler place from which to see the world.
Motor Maids Inc., P.O. Box 1664, Englewood, FL 34295; Internet https://www.motormaids.org.
