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WIMA GOES TO
THE USA!
By Sheonagh
"What are the police like here?" I asked. "Are they tough on bikes speeding?"
Gary (the utterly gorgeous advertising manager of Ducati USA) replied "I suggest you stick to the speed limit." Then in the next breath, he told us "this Ducati gets into its power range at about 6000 revs".
He was talking about the shiny red bike outside - the ST4s - latest model which Ducati USA very kindly lent me for a week in June. So Pat and I travelled from New Jersey to West Virginia to attend the 3rd Women in Motorcycling Conference - in style!
We thought that a combination of sticking to the speed limit and 6000 revs sounded very strange, but we set off at the speed limit. We were immediately overtaken by enormous trucks doing 90-100 miles an hour in a 65 miles per hour speed limit. So we decided to ride in the power band of the Ducati - and after that we kept up with the traffic and forgot about speed limits!
This was the beginning of a week of surprises for us as we had never ridden in the US before. The highways are huge (for us English) with up to 5 lanes and nobody sticks to the speed limit. Everybody also overtakes both on the inside and the outside which can make life confusing. Off the highways, every single bend is marked with a speed limit - which is much lower than necessary, so you have to learn to ignore these! The first town we came to off the highway was called Accident - we never found out how it got its name. So we rode very carefully through the town!
Over 600 women from all over the USA came to the conference. We met some women whose husbands had insisted they come, and lots of people who had brought their bikes in a trailer. Apart from that it felt quite like a WIMA rally! Bikes of all sizes though the majority were Harleys and other customs. Women of all levels of experience, young and old. And everybody was really friendly. Pat and I were the only two from England so we attracted a lot of attention because of our strange accents and the fact that we were the only women there on a Ducati! Amongst the great women we met was Mariola who is travelling round the world on her bike while her husband sits patiently waiting for her in Chicago - see her website: www.rideoftheheart.com and read her amazing adventures to date.
The Conference was fascinating with lots of good workshops on Advanced Riding, First Aid on the Road, How to Pick your Bike Up, Riding Off Road, Racing (track racing, drag racing, trials) - in fact there was too much to manage to see. One big distraction was that Honda, Kawasaki, Yamaha, BMW, Harley Davidson (of course!) and a strange manufacturer called Ridley were there with test bikes for us to ride. I've never been a Harley fan - but... they had the fabulous new Harley V-Rod there and we just had to ride it. It is absolutely gorgeous to look at - it's all silver and just gleams in the sun. We waited one and a half hours in the boiling sun with no shade and no water provided to ride it. And I've never done that before for a bike! What about the ride? The wheelbase is very long and I had difficulty reaching the footpegs out in front of me, so I wondered if I would make it out of the car park without dropping it - fortunately I didn't. Would I buy one? Yes if I had a spare $25,000 but apart from that our Dorset roads are much too small for it!
The reason we went to the Conference was of course to try and get WIMA USA going again. It was great to meet up with the Presidents of Women on Wheels and Motor Maids (WIMA founder Louise Sherbyn was originally a Motor Maid), and we look forward to co-operating with them in the future.
And the great thing is that we've found our new American Captain who is building a team - see the new USA website: www.wimausa.org.
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