Riding With The Queen
Snap, click, click, snap.
An FM photographer circled in search of the next shot of his model, Marah C. Stith ’02, who repositioned herself again and again hoping to strike the perfect stance for the camera.
To be precise, Stith was sitting. On a motorcycle, in fact.
“I want my bike to look beautiful,” Stith said as she lowered the kickstand, bringing the motorcycle to rest in a spot that offered the right amount of natural light to fully bring out all of her chopper’s delicate beauty.
FM had recruited Stith, the head of the new Harvard Motorcycle Club, to take me on my first motorcycle ride ever, to see if a gutless yuppie-in-the-making could be transformed into a card-carrying member of the Hell’s Angels.
As I watched Stith slip on her weathered biking gloves, lower the tinted visor of her helmet into place and then close the heavy zipper of her black leather jacket, its metal studs gleaming in the sunlight, my highly developed journalist’s eye told me that this was no run-of-the-mill Harvard woman.
In a two-way contest for macho supremacy, I knew I could not hold par with this Amazonian motorcycle high priestess. For God’s sake, Stith was donning a real motorcycle jacket, whose tough black leather had been worn rugged by a thousand rides, whereas the clubby leather jacket I was sporting had barely a crease to show for its one-time trek halfway across the world from some Sri Lankan factory to my dorm room closet.
So I accepted defeat right then and there.
I was about to get a motorcycle lesson from a girl. Rather, I was about to get schooled (by a girl).
SPEED: 0 mph
Stith purchased her bike, a black Suzuki Intruder 800 with blue flames and everything, in the fall, after responding to a want ad in a Boston paper. She had tried to purchase her bike from a dealer but discovered that such a plan would not be feasible on her limited budget.
So instead, she bought the bike off a Northeastern student living in one of Boston’s more unsavory ghettoes.
“When I went to pick the bike up, he was telling me that some college students had been killed in the area, like last year,” Stith reminisced.
In successfully riding her bike out of Southie that fateful day last fall, Stith fulfilled a childhood dream.
Having just informed me, her eager and naïve first-time rider, that she had aggressively searched for the cheapest motorcycle in the Greater Boston metro area, Stith then proceeded to travel further back down motorcycle memory lane. She recounted the learning curve she faced last summer as she herself rode a motorcycle for the first time while on assignment for Let’s Go in Germany.
“At first, I definitely had some problems with tipping the bike over,” she recalled.
Stith assured me that during a training course she took as part of her successful bid to get her bike license, she had mastered the art of not tipping the motorcycle over.
In the span of 90 seconds, I learned two very important things about the world of motorcycles:
1. It is never wise to assume that the pursuit of craftsmanship always takes precedence over bare-bones economics in the purchase of a bike.
2. The box marked “maintains motorcycle in upright position well” need not necessarily be checked on a driving evaluation form for a license to be granted.
After summarizing her motorcycle biography—which felt more like a camouflaged warning or a “proceed at your own risk” disclaimer—Stith motioned for me to hop onto the back seat of her Suzuki, and we sped up Plympton Street, first to Somerville and then on to Boston.
SPEED: 20 mph
Clearly, I had underestimated my virility and overall worthiness as a man. Riding a motorcycle is easy. Very easy.
As we coasted down the back streets of Cambridge at 20 to 25 mph, I could not have felt more at home on Stith’s Suzuki or more in control of my situation.
In fact, at that moment, I was convinced I really didn’t even Stith’s assistance at all. I was tempted to make her take the back seat as I rightly reclaimed the throne of man.
“Look over there,” she cried as she pointed her right hand across her waist to draw my attention to some spectacle on the other side of the street.
With great expectation, I commenced the laborious exercise of turning my helmet-burdened head so as maybe to catch a moment’s glimpse of the landmark to which she was referring.
“That’s the Saucony outlet,” she cried over the thundering motor, “I shop there for all my running gear.”
Stith may or may not be more of a man than I am, but she is most certainly still a woman.
SPEED: 30 mph
“Perhaps you could point me out your favorite biker/leather bar?” I asked. The motorcycle jerked as Stith clutched and released the brake. The engine revved and we began an abrupt acceleration. Stith quickly informed me that she was deeply opposed to many of the common practices of motorcycle culture—most of all the entire notion of the biker bar, which she believes brings drinking and driving into uncomfortably close proximity.
“Some of the bikers on the road are clearly of below-average intelligence,” Stith lamented. “They can’t see that things like [the biker bars] are what make riding motorcycles so dangerous.”
As the head of the Harvard Motorcycle Club, Stith takes safety issues very seriously. In fact, she intends for the club to serve as a way to help people prepare for their license tests and learn motorcycle safety.
While Stith may not approve of all aspects of motorcycle culture, she faithfully upholds the unwritten code of respect that exists between all bikers when on the road.
“When you see a fellow biker, you should always nod,” Stith advised me. I eventually picked up on this custom and began gesturing to other bikers as they passed by.
At first, I tried to downplay the awkward spectacle of a bulky six-foot male riding shotgun to a female eight inches shorter and roughly half his body weight, giving our fellow riders the “I’m just letting the li’l lady take my chopper for a spin” nod. Detecting a measure of disbelief on the part of our fellow riders, I soon reverted to the more readily believed “I’ve misplaced my penis and she’s helping me to locate it” nod.
As we reached a stretch of open road and Stith became a little more liberal with her use of the accelerator, I came to look less like a passenger and more like a freakishly large papoose slung across her back. A nod was no longer needed to alert bikers and non-bikers alike that we were on a mission to find my manhood.
SPEED: 45 mph…20 mph…0 mph…5 mph…0 mph…0 mph…5 mph…0 mph…
I peeked over Stith’s shoulder to watch in absolute horror as the speedometer crept passed 40 mph. The wind in our faces was growing—it wanted to pick me off the bike and flick me away like a troublesome booger at the end of its fingertip.
Flipping the left-turn signal on, Stith looked back at me.
“I’m not sure that this is the right way, but we’ll try it,” she announced as she pointed the bike toward an entrance to the freeway. “Is that okay?”
She asked my approval as if I were somehow in any position to question her authority over any aspect of our ride together. Had she slowed the motorcycle to a halt in the middle of the freeway and asked me to step off and perform the closing routine from her favorite Broadway musical for the amusement of all passersby, I would have instantly obliged.
We rode up the sharp curve of the spiraling on-ramp. And, then, we stopped.
Ahead of us, stretched out for miles and miles, was traffic. Beautiful, sweet and (thankfully) reliable Boston traffic.
Sitting motionless on that dusty strip of asphalt road cutting across an industrial zone outside downtown Boston seemed to me like a second lease on life handed down from the heavens.
“This isn’t fun,” bemoaned Stith as she redirected us to the Storrow Drive exit, just a few yards ahead.
“What is not fun about this?” I thought to myself. We were not moving and we were still alive—what more could a person ask for? If you are a speed-hungry biker, apparently, a lot.
SPEED: ~890 mph
We shot down Storrow Drive like a beam of light coursing from a laser.
Though the speedometer read 80 mph, the painful and eerily audible heart murmur which I had suddenly developed suggested to me that we were traveling at five or 20 times that speed.
With death now seeming to me like a certainty, I clung to Stith tighter than ever—less out of a concern for safety than to ensure that if I was going to be thrown from the bike to my grim demise, at least I would have some company. Undoubtedly, Stith and I would have plenty to discuss standing outside of the pearly gates, such as the subtle distinctions between Storrow Drive and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
But Stith would pay a price for her eagerness to subject me to such ungodly speeds. As I fought an endless battle with the wind to keep my head from snapping backwards, I found myself often overcompensating and sending my head lunging forward into Stith’s. Resembling some sort of primitive form of Neanderthal communication, this inane head-banging ritual continued the entire length of Storrow Drive.
Maybe it was the multiple concussions I had likely suffered from my involuntary cranial thrusts, but, as the warp speed portion of my ride progressed, I began to relax and enjoy myself. I cannot lie; the whirl of the engine, the rush of the wind and the feel of speed was unbelievably (unbearably?) exhilarating and—discounting my perpetual fear of death or serious injury—really, really, really fun.
On a motorcycle and on the open road, I found myself suddenly at peace.
Death be damned, I was going to sit back—not too far back—and enjoy the ride.
I eased my hold on Stith’s waist, unclenched my teeth and even permitted my head to pivot 30 or 40 degrees to either side to see what the world looks like from atop a speeding motorcycle. Apparently, the world looks like a splatter painting rushing by at 80 mph from atop a speeding motorcycle—I would have to content myself with the whirl of the engine and the rush of the wind.
Then, in the distance, the outline of fair—and gloriously stationary—Harvard came into full view. I had survived my first motorcycle ride.
SPEED: 0 mph
We reached the gate of Quincy House, the point of our departure and the point of our sad return.
As my feet touched firm Mother Earth once again, I gave thanks both for the laws of physics, which worked unseen to keep me planted on the back seat of that bike, and for having Marah Carter Stith—the patron saint of motorcycle virgins—as my guide.
Coincidentally, Stith informed me that her short-term plan for after graduation includes heading off to India next year to work for Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta. She has no plans to bring her motorcycle with her to India.
With a firm handshake, Stith and I congratulated each other on a ride well-driven and a ride well-passengered.
Stith then rode off into the sunset (read: walked through some shadows into Quincy House) and I set off to scour my Unofficial Guide for any female pilot clubs on campus—I think it’s time for flying lessons.