3 minute read
PERSPECTIVES
THE FEMALE FACTOR
By Mitch Boehm
It’s true. Ladies have joined motorcycling in a big way over the last decade or so, and it’s a great thing. But for me, the female factor has been a factor for as long as I’ve been riding – and I’ve been riding for 50 years. (Sheesh… how did that happen?)
I remember those You Meet The Nicest People Honda ads in magazines back when I was just a wee lad in the 1960s. Plenty of ladies riding and passengering there. But it didn’t take long for a female much nearer and dearer – my late mother Elaine – to have a far larger and longer-lasting motorcycle-oriented impact.
When my dad mentioned sometime in 1971 that young Mitch should maybe have a minibike to ride on the trails and in the woods surrounding our Cleveland-suburb home, she obviously didn’t object, and a shiny red Honda SL70 in the garage on Christmas morning was the result.
When I began racing motocross on an XR75 in 1974 and ’75, she’d come along on occasion – and while too nervous to watch the starts, she packed a mean lunch and took care of all the little things my spoiled little persona felt it was too important to do.
When I took up motocross again in 1983 during college, she and I probably did 75 percent of the races together – and had a total blast, packing, driving, racing and trekking home. While I was working for Motorcyclist in the late 1980s, she and I rode to Willow Springs on a Kawasaki Concours for the WERA 24-hour West, which the team I was riding for – Vance & Hines – ended up winning. She stayed up all night, helped with scoring, watched me ride four or five stints, and then rode home with me the next day on that Concours, both of us totally exhausted. Such a trooper! RIP, mom. And Happy Mother’s Day.
My wife Susie has serious motorcycle-industry roots, too, having done scooter and motorcycle advertising for American Honda during the 1980s and ’90s. That’s where we met, as I worked in AH’s product planning department for a few years between gigs at Motorcyclist and Cycle World.
Since joining the AMA as Editorial Director in early February, I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the number of women on staff here, as has Managing Editor Joy Burgess. “When I took the job I received lots of congratulations,” Joy told me recently, “but there were also plenty of comments like, ‘We’re so happy because [the AMA] has always seemed like the old guy’s club!’ I heard this from both older and younger women.”
“But as I dove into my AMA work I realized it just wasn’t true,” Joy added, “as nearly a third of folks at the AMA are women. Every time I sit in on a meeting, women are well represented, and it’s just not like that around much of the industry today. That’s the primary reason I felt we had to write about some of the amazing ladies of the AMA in this Women Riders Rock issue!”
And that we have done, along with a long list of female Trailblazers, Racers, Builders and Hall of Famers. We were only able to cover a small sliver of significant ladies of our sport, but there’s always next year, right? Enjoy the issue!
Mitch Boehm is the Editorial Director of the AMA.
