Cycle World Show Update

Just back from the Cycle World International Motorcycle Shows in Atlanta and Chicago and wanted to report on the great variety of people and bikes that I met. I signed hundreds of books, a lot of people came by that I had met only in cyberspace, and it was great to shake their hands and chat with them in person. In particular, Chicagoan Sharon Hicks-Bartlett, a sister member of Motorcycle Bloggers International with her great motorcycle blog Sojourner’s Moto Tales, stopped by, and then we ran into each other at the Enfield Motorcycles area where we both sat on a beautiful, shiny Classic, the model I own. Kevin Mahoney of Enfield snapped a photo with Sharon’s camera, posted <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/shicksba272214/sets/72157594529330404">here</a>.

I want to thank Chicagoan’s for buying so many books. They’re a very literary crowd of bikers, many of whom collect motorcycling books and gave me the names of titles by women motorcycle misadventureresses that I’d never heard of. I’ll be collecting these in a list to post on my site.

In Atlanta I met Van and Sharon who told me about a Thursday night gathering of motorcyclists downtown at the Vortex Bar at Little 5 Points. Hey, Van and Sharon – my friend Kirstin may be looking for you there soon, especially if she gets ahold of that Harley V-Rod that fit her so well at the show. I liked it, too. It was fully decked out with the touring package with a very comfortable seat, windshield, and panniers. I loved the color scheme — military green with silver striped with red.

Doug and Becky were the first of many to tell me about the Tail of the Dragon Road at Deals Gap, with 318 curves in 11 miles at the Tennessee/North Carolina state line that claims to be "America’s number one motorcycle and sports car road." Now how did I miss that? I definitely want to ride it one day in the (hopefully) not-too-distant future. They also said don’t miss the Cherohala Skyway, which is near or part of the same road system. Racecar river Randy Pobst, who lives near Atlanta, likes that road too, and so I guess the bikers have to share the road with the car racers… everybody be careful! (By now you can tell I’m not a racing kind of gal, I like to sit up and look around me.) Check out his column in Sportscar Magazine, also reprinted on his site.

If you go to Deals Gap, I found a great place to stay — the Iron Horse Motorcycle Lodge — biker friendly and woman friendly, run by John and Charlene Powell. They’re in Robbinsville, NC. Check their website for details. I’m definitely adding them to my list of woman-friendly accomodations across the country. I want to map them all so that women who bike (drive, walk, or bicycle!) across the USA can land for the night at a place they know they’ll be welcomed and safe. If you know of place, please send me the link and why it’s woman friendly, and I’ll look into it.

There were a lot of magazines represented at the show. I talked a while with Andrew Perkins, general manager of a group of publications that owns Motorcycle Classics magazine, which wasn’t on my radar until now. It’s got a lot of nice articles and product updates for you old-bike enthusaists, and their website has a distribution channel for books on motorcycles. You may find American Borders offered there, as well as on the Whitehorse Press site, and of course, the Motorcycle Misadventures site. I was trying to say hi to the Road Runner magazine "Motorcycle Tour and Travel" folks but their booth was so popular I wasn’t able to push my way in. 

I also met with Rusty, the new marketing Manager for the American Motorcyclist Association, who is very actively persuing getting more young motorcyclists and women involved in the AMA, yay!

US Rider News was there with a stack of the free monthlies you can find at your friendly local dealer. They’re always worth reading for a vicarious travel adventure. Scott Cochran, the editor, just finished his book Motorcycle Journeys through the American South. (Hey, don’t you bet the Tail of the Dragon road is in there?)

Between signings, I walked the show with Kristin and she fell in love with a couple of bikes — one was the Moto Guzzi Breva 750 IE that I took Around the Adriatic, and the other was the Harley V-Rod. Petra Lattmann of VTwin Mama came by just then and shot her photo, since she was grinning from ear-to-ear. Petra told us that she was walking the show shooting photos of any woman she saw sitting on a bike and asking her how tall she was and other questions for a summary she’ll be posting on her fabulous website that’s for "sassy classy women motorcyclists (men welcome) that "answers your personal riding-related questions."

Marison (Isis) Coachman, WIMA’s Southeast Regional Rep, was womanning the "Women and Motorcycling" booth that had info about all the different biking organizations women can join for rides and information:

Motor Maids
The Sisters of Scota
Women’s Motorcyclist Foundation
Ladies of Harley
Femmoto
Women On Wheels (WOW)
Women in the Wind
Women’s International Motorcycling Association (WIMA)

They were handing out a sheet with  pointers to organizations of special interest to women, which I’ll also repeat here:

WomenRidersNow.com
EbonyAngelsMC.com
LadySportRiders.com
SpeedyBikeGirls.com
TotalPackageMC.com
FastTrackRiders.com
MovingViolationsMC.com
SpokesWomen.org
SirensNYC.com
SportBikeTrackTime.com
WomensMotocrossAssociation.com
WomensMotorcyclistFoundation.org

Whenever a woman came by to look at my book, I asked her what she rode. There were many "passenger" answers and I often heard this story: the women told me that they hadn’t liked sitting behind  the first bike their boyfriends/husbands put them on, so they went to trade it in for a bike they could feel comfortable on. So listen up, bike manufacturers! Women are not only the fastest growing segment of bikers, but they’re also involved in their men’s buying decisions, like so many other high-priced buying decisions in the household.

Many women had finished their motorcycle training course and were at the show to choose their first bike. When asked, I recommended the following, according to the woman’s height, riding style (cruiser, dual sport, etc.) and perceived athletic ability and willingness to wrench: Ducati Monster, Honda Rebel, Triumph Bonneville, Royal Enfield Bullet, Moto Guzzi Breva 750 IE (I recommended this bike to a tall, athletic woman who knew she wanted a sport touring bike), the Moto Guzzi Nevada Classic 750, the ever-popular Honda CB400, Kawasaki’s Ninja 250R. Many women were hell-bent on buying a new bike, but I always recommend starting with a used bike, preferably with a dent in the tank so they wouldn’t feel bad if (when?) they dropped it in the driveway! Then move up to a new one once they became a confident enough rider to make a real investment.

Harley-Davidson is really going after the women’s market, and almost all their bikes are low-slung enough to make even the less statuesque among us feel comfortable on more bike than they can handle. A lot of people really want Harleys, and the Sportster is the obvious choice for a starter bike, but many believe they want and can handle a more powerful model, I don’t know why. Many times it’s the man in their life pushing them to get the bigger bike so she can keep up with him at high speeds. Guys . . . hear me out. You love her, so take care of her, slow down, and encourage her to practice on a smaller, less powerful machine first. You wouldn’t want her exceeding her riding level, now would you? Tell me if you don’t know a story like this: My friend Jessica and her boyfriend went to Thailand last year, where they rented trailbikes to get around on the mostly dirt roads. Jessica, who had never taken a course but had ridden a little bit on a neighbor’s farm, was trying to keep up with him when she slid on a gravelly curve and landed in a ditch, which resulted in a gash in her leg, a severly scraped hip, and rocks under her skin. Yes, she should have slowed down, but he should have taken the lead on that. Remember, ignore peer-pressure and don’t ride beyond your skill level, and don’t be the peer-pressure that gets your loved one hurt, or worse. Lecture over.

Which brings me to another great organization I just found out about at the Atlanta show, ASMI, or Accident Scene Managment, Inc., which is a true "Crash Course for the Motorcyclist." Everyone please give them a round of applause, because they’ve trained over 8000 people how to respond to a motorcycle crash. One trainee told me he’d learned how to determine when it was preferable to do the big no-no and remove downed motorcyclists full face helmets — if they’re not breathing, for example — and how to do it as safely as possible.

So what bikes was I looking at? Hmmmm, so many bikes, so little time and money! I loved the new configuration of the Kawasaki KLR 650, redesigned for more street ridability and a lower seat height, too. These are the true global travel bikes that have taken people around the world for years. I also had to check out Suzuki’s V-Strom 650, which was second place in my informal  survey on the "best world travel bike."  Very much more a street bike than the KLR, but  if you’re not traveling to developing countries, maybe a better choice. I found it interesting that so many Italians love them. The new Moto Guzzi Norge 1200 was beautiful, comfortable, and powerful. Tempting. Very, very tempting, but then I’m partial to the Guzzi marque.

From my perch at the Ural booth I got to hang out with the knowledgeable and charming Sidney Pollard and all the Ural Owners who came down to evangalize the motorcycle and I must say that after all the years of working on improving the bike, they’ve really, really succeeded. People love these machines . . . I love these machines, and the 2007 Ural retains all the charm of the 1938 design while benefiting from the reliability of quality machining and modern components. American Borders is about my test ride of the 1994 model, which they wanted to improve for mass import to the USA. My trip was rife with problems, all of which were fixed at the factory in Siberia. Now I’m an unabashed evangelist, too, having witnessed the amazing transition, and have no qualms about recommending the bike that I described breaking down all across America in 1995. In fact, I’ll be riding a new one around in the Bay Area starting next month, and am planning a trip down to Mexico for us too. And, like I wrote in American Borders, I really am very proud to have participated in its evolution.