Email Marjorie
First motorcycle: 1963 Honda C100 50-cc blue Super Cub with step-through frame and centrifugal clutch
Current motorcycles: 2007 BMW F 650GS-P, 2007 BMW F800S (I’m an F-bike grrl; never thought that would happen!)
Favorite Bikes: Any Beemer with a Type 259 or later Boxer engine. There is no bike that can carve the canyons better.
Favorite place to ride: Anywhere in the Pacific Northwest—the North Cascades, Mt. Rainier, the Palouse (WA/ID/OR), John Day in Oregon, Hell’s Canyon, the Olympic Peninsula…
Riding since: 1967, my sophomore year in college
- 1967 Honda S90, purchased new for $409 in Syracuse, NY.
- Black 1965 Triumph Bonneville
- Gold 1971 Honda CB175
- Burgundy 1978 Honda CB 550K (the seat was too high, I dropped it all the time, and didn’t know about high-soled boots back then!)
- Black 1981 Yamaha 750 Virago (the first V-Twin-powered cruiser-style motorcycleproduced by a Japanese manufacturer, as well as one of the earliest mass-produced motorcycles with a mono-shock rear suspension; it supposedly had a seat height of 28.1 inches, which is why I bought it, but you could bet me!…it was still too tall and I had long legs for someone under five feet tall! I went to a women’s poetry reading in Brooklyn and someone said, “How did you get a bike with the name of Virago? Do you know what that means?” “No,” I said, and went home and looked it up. It means two things: a loud, overbearing woman, a termagant, a shrew, and a woman of strong qualities of body and mind. I chose the second definition and have had the email handle ever since!
- Custom-paint 1984 Yamaha XV1000 Virago
- 1979 BMW R65
- 1999 BMW R1100S
Not a lot of bikes for all those years but I rode a lot of rental bikes, other people’s bikes, and worked for a bike company for 11 years so had my pick of the stable: BMW R11RS, R11R, R11S, R1150S, K12RS, K13S, F800S, F650GS, K12LT (yup! believe it!) and many more.
OMG, my Gerbing’s electric jacket liner, by far!