I was dumbfounded. “I don’t get it” I admitted. “How come you are here and not at my pain clinic”? This encounter prompted the researcher in me to offer to study the group. I was going to ask how many of these women had pain, how they managed it, if they saw doctors or specialists as well as whether or not they took any medications. My study was not going to end there. I needed to understand what kind of personalities these women had and what drove them to riding, a male sport endowed with a fair amount of risk. Well, my study did not pan out. Since older women are particularly prone to joint problems, statistics made me estimate that at least 1 in 3 of these women would have chronic pain. Upon my first request back in 2004 in the MM monthly newsletter, only one woman ,a single willing research subject, showed even the slightest interest in my study! As you might have guessed, she had serious arthritis in her hands and asked me to “do something, so she could use the clutch and the throttle again”! What you may have not guessed is her age. She was at least 75 years old, and had been aa member of the MMs for nearly 50 good years!
Years later I saw Hildi in a bike swap show. My first question was: “Do you still ride”? “Of course” she replied with a big smile on her white haired face. “Did you expect me not to”? Hildi was by then 72 years old and going strong.
A couple of years ago, I once again joined the group for another Mother’s Day Brunch. By then I had changed my regular two wheel motorcycle to a trike. A bad surgery to my left foot and a serious injury to my right knee had made my surgeon give me stern warnings: “One more injury to this knee, and you go for total knee replacement. You have near-terminal knee damage”. I could not take the slightest chance to maybe lose balance and drop my bike, something that is nearly inevitable when you ride motorcycles (in the bikers’ circles we know there are two kinds of bikers: those “who have dropped their bike” and those who “will”)! I could take no chances, so my trike came handy. My trike is a monstrous Harley Davidson Fat Boy with the back wheel converted to a two wheels for major balance and stability. It is loaded with chrome parts and heavy in custom painting and I am very proud of it. So I drove my “1250 pound girl’ to the brunch and started chatting with other fellow riders. An older slim woman approached me admiring my machine.
As is natural, I asked her about herself and her bike. She took me proudly to her large two colour street bike, sparkling under the mid-day sun. “She is the one I have here” she explained. “I have another one in Arizona where I spend 7 months of the year”. In short, this woman was travelling back and forth between Toronto and her other place in Arizona. She was a widow and when in Toronto, she would spend the time babysitting her two grand children (not forgetting of course to ride with her fellow MMs). She only bought her second bike recently, because after many years of riding her bike back and forth between USA and Canada, she felt it was time to “take it easy”. “Wow” I exclaimed. “You mean, you have been riding thousands of km on your own twice a year until recently? Were you not a little worried”? “What for” she replied. “I am enjoying it thoroughly and I have lived a good life. By the way, I only got my bike 10 years ago, after my husband died”. “”How old are you?” I asked . “68” she replied with a smile. Which meant, she laid her hands and feet on a bike for the very first time at the tender age of 58!
