I Have Nothing to Prove

I love riding motorcycles.

Apparently, that answer is suspiciously simple.

Surely there must be more to it. I must be proving something. Rebelling against something. Seeking attention. Having a midlife crisis. Trying to show the boys I can keep up. Maybe I am fiercely independent. Maybe I'm secretly masculine. Maybe there's some deep psychological explanation for why a woman would willingly climb onto a thousand-pound Harley and disappear for the afternoon.

Or, and stay with me here…. I just love riding motorcycles.

Motorcycles have been around me for most of my life. My dad loved Nortons and had a couple when I was growing up. He wasn't an avid rider, but he rode enough that I remember being on the back while my mother was presumably imagining every possible way we could die. My dad was a smaller guy, the motorcycles were a little big for him, and none of that concerned me nearly as much as it concerned her. I remember the wind. I remember how different everything looked. Mostly, I remember feeling like I was flying.

That feeling stuck.

I rode dirt bikes. I loved snowmobiles. In my teenage years, sport bikes were cool as hell, and there weren't nearly as many women riding them. I won't pretend there wasn't some satisfaction in pulling off a helmet, letting my hair down, and watching people realize there was a girl under there. I was young. It was fun. Sue me.

I was also a dancer. Tap, Jazz, Lyrical, Ballet, pointe shoes, the whole thing. I liked pretty things. I liked being feminine. I also liked dirt, engines, speed, and machines.

Apparently, we're allowed to contain multitudes.

Who knew?

Life got busy. My husband and I raised our family, and motorcycles weren't a major part of it for a while. We eventually came back to riding in our forties because it was something we both enjoyed and could do together.

There was just one small issue.

I wasn't getting on the back of his.

Not because I was afraid of motorcycles. I was afraid of being on a motorcycle I wasn't controlling.

Thankfully, my husband wasn't particularly interested in being responsible for me either. His position was simple: I drive like an asshole. I only want to be responsible for me. If you want to ride with me, you're going to have to learn to ride your own.

Romance is alive and well after twenty-five years, ladies…. So I learned.

He also didn't think I would love it nearly as much as I did.

He was spectacularly wrong.

These days, I ride a Harley-Davidson Road Glide. It's roughly a thousand pounds of motorcycle, which has apparently made it public property for commentary.

That's an awfully big bike for you.

Is it?

Because I seem to be riding it.

When I first got it, people would occasionally see me sitting on it and tell me to tell my husband he had a beautiful bike.

Absolutely. I'll mention it to him when I get home. I'm sure he'll be thrilled.

I've had men pull up next to me at stoplights, realize I'm a woman, and suddenly decide we're participating in an event I don't remember registering for. I've had a stranger roll down his window to yell that I don't belong on a bike that big. I've had a man become so offended by my existence on a motorcycle that he aggressively chased me down the road.

I still don't know what I did to that guy. Perhaps I rode a motorcycle near him too aggressively.

Men have also ridden with me and been genuinely surprised when they discover that I can actually ride.

Holy hell. You can really ride that thing.

Yes.

That's why I'm on it.

The assumption seems to be that there must be some larger reason a woman rides her own motorcycle. People have called me a badass more times than I can count. That's flattering, and I am a total badass, but I'm not sure riding makes me one. I've been told it makes me masculine, which is particularly funny if you've ever seen the rest of my closet. I've been called attention-seeking, which might be my favorite because most of the time I'm on the bike specifically because I would like the rest of the world to leave me alone.

I'm not making a statement.

I'm going for a ride.

And God, do I love the ride.

I love the sound of my bike. I love the rumble underneath me. I love the heat from the engine. I love speed. I love leaning into a curve and feeling the motorcycle move underneath me like we're one thing instead of two. I love loud music and singing at the top of my lungs because my pipes are loud enough that nobody has to suffer through my performance.

I still feel like I'm flying.

There is something wonderful about saying, I'm going for a ride, and having absolutely no idea what that means.

Thirty minutes? Thirteen hours? Who knows. That's the plan.

There are no errands involved because motorcycles are actually a terrible way to accomplish most errands. I'm not trying to maximize the afternoon. I'm not efficiently combining stops. I'm not picking up groceries on the way home.

I'm riding my motorcycle.

Sometimes I ride alone. Sometimes I ride with my husband. When we ride together, we're usually right beside each other. I can look over and see the man I've spent more than twenty-five years with cruising down the road next to me, and there is something strangely intimate about it.

It's basically our weird version of foreplay.

I said what I said.

Our riding season is painfully short, so we spend a ridiculous amount of time talking about motorcycles when we cannot actually ride them. We compete over who puts on more miles each year. Vacations have started including the question, Where haven't we ridden yet? We want to see as much of this country from motorcycles as we possibly can.

You see things differently from a motorcycle. You also smell things differently, which is occasionally unfortunate. Nobody puts that part in the sexy motorcycle advertisements.

Nobody mentions the helmet hair either. Or the sweat. Or the fact that on a really hot day, everything you are wearing eventually becomes attached to your body. Nobody mentions freezing fingers, sudden rainstorms, or raindrops hitting exposed skin at highway speeds like tiny angry needles.

And bugs. Good God, the bugs.

I love singing on my motorcycle. Every once in a while, the universe responds by throwing a reasonably sized insect directly into my mouth.

There are very few graceful choices available to you at seventy miles an hour with a bug in your throat.

Motorcycle riding will humble you.

So will realizing you have to pee on a country road approximately forty miles from civilization. You look left. You look right. You make decisions. We're all adults here.

It isn't always glamorous. That's part of why I love it.

One of the strangest questions I get from men is whether I will convince their wives to ride.

My answer is always the same.

Does she want to?

If she doesn't, leave that woman alone. I don't believe every woman needs to ride a motorcycle. I don't even believe every woman should ride a motorcycle. If motorcycles scare the hell out of you, there are approximately eight billion other hobbies available. Pick one.

Riding is my thing. It doesn't need to be yours.

I think that's where I've changed the most.

Ten years ago, I probably would have explained myself. I would have wanted you to understand why I ride. I might have defended the risk or tried to convince you that I'm careful, capable, experienced, or whatever else I thought would make my choice more acceptable.

At forty-seven, I just don't care.

Not in an angry way. In a gloriously freeing way. You don't have to understand it. You don't even have to like it. I have nothing to prove.

When someone learns I ride and immediately tells me about a motorcycle accident involving someone they vaguely know, I don't argue anymore either.

Yes, motorcycles are dangerous.

I'm aware.

I was there when I bought one.

Life is full of risk, and I get to decide which risks are worth taking in mine.

If something ever happens to me on a motorcycle, heaven forbid, I want the people who love me to know something. There is a very good chance that ten seconds before it happened, I had the biggest smile on my face. I was probably singing badly. I might have been riding next to my husband. I might have been alone. I was almost certainly completely present.

And I was happy. Really fucking happy.

Riding has taught me things. The road has healed parts of me. It has challenged me, empowered me, and made me better in ways I probably don't completely understand yet. I'm drawn to symbolism, and there is no shortage of it when you're sitting on a machine with an open road in front of you.

But that's not why I ride. I don't need to turn everything I love into something useful. I don't need my joy to have a résumé. I don't need motorcycles to make me a better leader, a stronger woman, a deeper thinker, or a more interesting person. They can teach me things without becoming the reason I love them.

The reason is much simpler.

I love the bike in my garage. I love the sound of an engine starting. I love hearing another motorcycle somewhere in town and immediately wondering who it is. I love the people I've met because of motorcycles. I love the ridiculous little biker wave. I love the kids who motion for me to rev the engine. I love talking to complete strangers about seats, pipes, handlebars, and where they're headed.

I love being next to my husband.

I love being alone.

I love having nowhere to go.

I love going fast.

I love feeling like I'm flying.

Maybe somebody somewhere still thinks I'm trying to prove something.

That's fine.

They can think about that while I'm out riding my motorcycle.

Your Grit is Gorgeous. 🖤

— Maven