Women Wrenches
04. Sep, 2008 
7 Comments
A few years ago I went to the “Friday the 13th” Rally in Port Dover, Ontario, Canada. The buzz on the streets was that the “Grannies” were in town. I found out that the Grannies were a group of senior citizens who instead of playing bingo wanted to expand their horizons. They did this by taking a basic motorcycle maintenance course at the local junior college and then wrote a book about it. That was their claim to fame. Most of them had never even ridden on a bike. They could change the oil or spark plugs but couldn’t ride. Fast forward a few years and here’s a couple groups of ladies who have kicked it up quite a few notches and taken it several levels higher.
Going alphabetically we have the “Chopper Chicks”; Athena Ransom, Jamie Gray, Katie Oshea, JoAnne Bortels, Gypsy and Katie Putnam. At the House of Harley they assembled 180 parts into a custom bike in under nine hours. Thanks to Shell Oil and House of Harley the bike was donated to the RAACE Foundation. For info www.chopperchickscrew.com or www.houseofharley.com
While that was going on over at Hal’s Harley-Davidson the “Garage Girls” were ripping into their own project bike. Laura Klock, Jody Perewitz, Gina Woods, Kim Jordan and Sara Liberte took part in the XX Chrome All Women Bike Build. Hal’s is selling tickets on that bike for a local New Berlin, Wisconsin Breast Cancer Foundation. For info www.xxchromes.com, http://halshd.com, www.garage-girls.com
These women have it going on but to inspire other ladies to explore their possibilities Genevieve Schmidt gave motivational speeches during the Women’s Day festivities. for more of her words go to www.womenridersnow.com
My special thanks to Sara Liberte for all the help on this blog. www.saraliberte.com
This is great reading. I would like to publish it at my website, Bikeweek.com with a link back to you! Let me know if that’s possible.
Hello MJ, everything on this site is “great reading”. I like the Bike Week website too. Is there any association with Bike Week in Daytona, FL?
Thanks for blogging about us girls but I really wish they had my name write… JODY Perewitz
So sorry about that Jody. It has been corrected. Have a great afternoon and thanks for the heads-up.
Girl Power!
These bright, capable women are an inspiration! It was awesome to watch the Chopper Chicks build the bike for RAACE – no drama, just action. House of Harley and Shell are to be commended for their participation. If you’re not familiar with the RAACE foundation, go to http://www.raace.org – they’re watching out for kids and trying to educate the rest of us to do the same.
I hate to say it – I missed seeing the XX Chromes working on their bike. But Jody and Sara were spot on at House of Harley, working the crowd and getting people to pay attention to their compatriots. It’s all good!
I saw ‘em working hard in Daytona. They really are impressive.