About Roadgypsy

About Me

I am a freelance writer. Although my specialty is motorcycle travel writing, I have also been published in areas totally unrelated to motorcycling. I have two main passions in life: motorcycles and writing. Well, maybe three - music.

Simply, I like bikes. I've liked motorcycles since a very young age - I used to go to the corner store, around age eight or nine I guess and purchase Canadian Biker Mag. Nobody in my family rode..

My First Bike, 1979 185 Honda Twinstar

Bike Number Two, 1984 Honda 250 custom taken 1984

Bike Number Three, 1986 450 Honda Rebel, taken at Smugglers Notch, Vermont in 1989

Bike Number Four, 1986 Harley Davidson 883 Sportster, taken at borderline between New Mexico and Colorado in 1995

Taken Somewhere in New Mexico on my way to Grand Canyon, Arizona , 1998

Bike Number Five, 1997 Harley Davidson FXD Dyna Superglide taken at Lake Louise Area, on my way to Alaska, 2003

Same Superglide, painted Incognito Black - taken at Matchedash during my music album shoot, 2005

My first ride was on the back of my friend Terry's bike, a Yamaha RD 350,and Oh, I had to be around the age of eleven or so. I remember the feeling of freedom and the wind - something about the wind- and we were flying across the railroad tracks - airborne, you might say. When I turned sixteen, I held my dad to his promise of letting me buy a bike from my education fund. And so I did, and it was on that very same Twinstar that I got my license - and strangely enough, shortly before that my mom won a brand new Yamaha Beluga scooter from the local TV station - her summertime postcard had been selected out of thousands of entries for the giveaway. And there we were, all three of us - my mom, dad and myself - doing our road tests together, towards our M license. Back then, all one would need to do to get a bike license was to write a 60-day test, which allowed one to ride legally, a motorbike for 60 days while you learned. After that there was a road test - which consisted of a pylon maneuvering test, followed by a ride around the city blocks using only your hand signals - far from the graduated licensing system in place today.

And so I went on - as did my parents. I soon wanted a bigger bike, as did my dad . And before anyone could stop this foolishness, I had sold my Twinstar (after all, business is business) to my father, and I went out and bought a brand new 1984 Honda 250 Custom. So my father began teaching my mom how to ride a "real" bike, as he called it. As a matter of fact, the both of them were learning how to ride a "real" bike. By now I had grasped the concept of gears and clutches, thanks to the help of my boyfriend, and was well on my way to motorcycledom.

I rode that 250 back and forth to hairstyling school on the 400 series highway of Ontario. After a couple or years of experience, the "fever" (as I call it) overcame me again, and I traded the 250 in for a 1986 Honda 450 Rebel. Following suit, my dad then turned around and bought himself a brand new Honda 250 Custom - yes - the exact same model of bike I traded in. This motorcycle thing had really become infectious! Well, one crazy fever hit after another, and I decided to go on a road trip. By now I had married that boyfriend who taught me to ride, and we struck off for the East Coast. Haven't looked back since... That very first road trip was the beginning of a fever that would never break.

I believe that a true biker has it in their veins - the fever, that is. You just can't be without a bike! A summer without a bike would be like a snowboarder without snow. Or a Canadian winter without Hockey Night In Canada. And we found out the winter of 2004/05 what that was like. I have not been without a bike since my first day riding - and I had that Honda Rebel flamed out eventually, and some extra chrome bits put on it, rode it around the continent for nine years, then one day realized that getting a Harley would broaden my horizons a bit - yes, I had it bad. Custom Chrome magazines, saddlebags, you name it (we all know about parts & accessories, don't we?).

Now, Japanese bikes are great, don't get me wrong. They're dependable, last forever, and today they make 'em look much like the Harleys. Key word here - look like a Harley. However, customizing a Harley is practically endless, compared to a Japanese bike, when it comes down to availability of parts and chrome. And looking like a Harley does not mean sound and vibration. This is where Harley got me by the crotch - literally.

My older Sportster took me to many a destination, reliably so I might add. Then my Dyna took over. So far my Superglide's taken me coast to coast, North and South - several times. In the summer of 2006 she rolled over the 100 000 km mark.

In addition to riding, I also write. I've been writing since age eight - poems, short stories etc. Writing came so naturally that it even found it's way into my music. Playing the piano since age 4, I wrote my first song at age 11. Even as crude as it was, I wrote my first book around age nine. After 21 years of riding, I had decided to write a book about life as a biker chick. That was three years ago. It's still being written - there's just so much to chronicle. In the meantime, this website will have to do for gettin' the message out. It's not fancy. It's intended to be just a general interest, family-friendly website, by a biker, for bikers. However, life as a biker chick is still not quite the same as life as a biker dude...