Motorcycle Nation Podcast

Recently, there has been a debate heating up about a special design motorcycle. I was staying out of this for the most part but I think I will jump in here because I am now curious. I may feel the wrath of all this later but I find myself in the doghouse on occasion so what the heck?

The subject for the debate revolves around the WildKat, a new motorcycle designed specifically for women. This motorcycle, which is the latest creation of Daytona Beach, FL based ROAR Motorcycles, was unveiled on March 7th at Roar’s HQ by CEO Kathy Tolleson. ROAR calls this a production motorcycle made for women. I had not heard anything about this motorcycle until a Twitter friend did a blog post about it. I saw the pic of the bike and found the manufacturer’s name and I checked it out and was pretty impressed with what I saw. It is a good looking motorcycle. Take a look for yourself.

CEO Kathy Tolleson in the background unveiling the WildKat

Not only was I impressed with the looks of the motorcycle but I was amazed by the specs. The top items that caught my eye were the 1200cc V-Twin motor from Harley Davidson exhaling through a Supertrapp 2 into 1 exhaust for the extra shot of adrenaline. A mark of engineering genius in my opinion is the ability to use the modular frame to adjust seat height from 23.5″ to 29.5″ without the worry of tire scraping as fender gap is unaffected by the adjustment. The foot controls also are adjustable to fit the rider as the WildKat has three positions, petite, medium, and tall. Other items that are impressive to me are the Dakota Digital readouts and the assumed killer stopping power put out by the 4 piston front and rear HHI calipers. I also like the look of the curved swingarm.

So, I came away from the ROAR website expecting to read applause for the design genius of this bike. I navigated back to the blog post that I was on and began to read. What? You don’t like the bike? But, it is a bike built especially for women, how could they go wrong with that? I was blown away that a woman would be offended by this motorcycle. The first sentence slammed me to the ground. “My cookies are frosted right now at all the companies that are trying to cash in on the rising number of women motorcyclists.” I continued in to my education and had to laugh at another observation. It is written, “Seriously, do women really need specially designed motorcycles? Why don’t car manufacturers start building women-specific cars then? Oh wait, they do. It’s the mini-van.” I continued to read the post and there were more things that I found humorous. There were also many things that made great sense as well. Like, women are told to “Learn to ride properly” and “practice”. The author also mentions taking a motorcycle safety course like the MSF course or Rider’s Edge. But, still I was having a hard time believing that a woman would look at this motorcycle built for women in such a negative manner. After all, I would love it if someone would build a motorcycle specially designed for fat, tattooed, ugly bikers like me. Oh, they do. It is called a Harley Davidson.

So, I was confused. I just could not wait to ask my wife Angie if she was offended by someone designing a bike for women. I just knew that my beautiful bride would say the right thing. So, I asked the question and was met with, “I agree. If they can’t ride a real motorcycle then maybe they should not ride.” What? At this point I cleaned my ears and asked, “What?” I had heard her right. She agreed with the author. I tried to plead my case to no avail. My wife was hanging with my twitter friend, @rippenkitten. You need to go read her post. She is an awesome writer and puts out some great stuff. Her blog is named Rippin Kitten A girl and her motorcycle. Any way, back to my wife. She totally agreed and became offended that I was trying to convince her that this bike was great. I was totally shut down.

So, Rippin Kitten, you have provided me with an education. Now, if you would please help me out, how do you unfrost cookies? The garage floor is mighty cold this time of year!