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LADY BIKERS: HEAR THEM ROAR By Carmen M. Henderson Cox News Service They are women. Hear them roar. No, not the women, their motorcycles. The allure of women riding Sportsters sometimes causes men do a double-take from their vehicles. At a glance they look like a gang. Four ladies riding through town, as their hair blows in the wind, to get to the back roads of Butler County. Their quest: to unwind and feel free again. Wearing broken-in jeans, black boots, sunglasses, red lipstick and black Harley-Davidson T-shirts and leather jackets on cool nights or halter tops on a hot June day, their attitudes seem unpredictable as any male biker. Instead of responding to the guy who asked to see parts of their anatomy or gesture at a male biker who told them to get off the road, they continue their destination as they discuss life's happenings and the best route to take. "The men break their neck (to look at us)," Michelle Gazzara said. "It's not as bad as it used to be. Just little comments from men are not so warm and fuzzy." |
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These longtime biker friends Gazzara, Charlene Jenkins, Robin Martin and Carleen Ingram said being a lady motorcyclist is all about image, acceptance as a biker and feeling free to fly.
"I like everything fast ... horses, dirt bikes," said Avon representative Gazzara of Hamilton, who has been riding motorcycles all of her life. "It feels like I'm flying without wings." Jenkins, a legal secretary who lives in Trenton, has been riding her Harley for the past year, said she likes the independence riding brings. "I don't have to wait for a man to take me for a ride," she said. Instead of riding behind her man on his bike, she said they take rides after work and on weekends together. Martin, 44, became hooked on motorcycles during her seven-year marriage. After the divorce, the Ross Township resident, who is a dispatcher for Watson Gravel, said riding her Harley helped beat her "mid-life crisis.""You're just out there and you go," she said. According to the Ohio Department of Public Safety, there are 312,161 registered motorcyclists statewide. Of that total, 52,437 are women throughout the state; 9,040 are men and women in Butler County, of which just 1,326 are women in the county. Of the four friends, Ingram has the longest tenure for riding motorcycles. Ingram, 47, has been riding for more than 25 years. As an investigator for the Butler County Children Service Board, Ingram not only rides motorcycles but can dismantle and rebuild one. She and her husband of 12 years, Doug, own Ingram's Panhead Specialists next to their home in Oxford. "I was the only woman I knew (during the late 1970s)," she said. "I didn't ride with anybody. Men used to give me a hard time about it." Ingram remembered when Hamilton City Council tried to pass a motorcycle helmet ordinance in the early 1980s. "I had a police officer tell me he didn't think women should ride and would pull me over every time he saw me," she said. Perhaps one of the biggest challenges for many female bikers is their small stature — to be seen on the roads by other motorists compared to male riders. Being a biker means driving defensively. As a lady biker, they have to be all the more cautious, they said. The four friends advise women to become a motorcyclist only if that's what they want, not what the husband or boyfriend wants. |
