Sisterhood of Chrome and Steel

HAGERSTOWN, Md. -- The motorcycle gang sauntered out of a hotel on the Dual Highway, wearing eye shadow, rouge and, in at least one case, a hairnet. The bikers slugged down coffee from lipstick-stained cups, flaunting their sleeveless, baby-blue vests as they waited for the Big Run to begin.

North America's oldest motorcycle club for women, the Motor Maids, rolled into Maryland for its 65th anniversary convention this week -- a gang of young singles, mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers united by their love of chrome-splashed, loud but sensibly outfitted, two-wheeled roadsters.

Here among the sisterhood for the three-day event was Betty Noss, 87 years old and 5 feet 3 inches from the soles of her red shoes to the tip of her white-haired head. She came from Jackson, Mich., having tucked herself into the BMW sidecar attached to her 64-year-old daughter's motorcycle.

That's how Margaret Wilson came, too. Wilson, 85, had wanted to fire up her blue and silver Harley-Davidson FXRS and motor here on her own. But a broken hip from a fall on her basement stairs in January forced her to make the run from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in her husband's sidecar. She was the one in the hairnet, to keep her blond curls from getting mussed by the helmet.

"Everybody teases me about that," Wilson admitted.

There's no telling what can happen on these annual runs -- like the time Susan Kennedy, under cover of darkness, spun toilet paper around a pair of Harley Electra Glides that belonged to her club president and the president's husband. That was two years ago, and a whiff of possible retaliation hung over this year's convention.

"I was told yesterday afternoon by our president's husband that he had not forgotten me," Kennedy, a 48-year-old truck driver from College Grove, Tenn., said Wednesday. "I think he's laying in wait."

When Motor Maids go wild, they have been known to roam hotels all night long, singing. And, Kennedy said, there was the time the club's co-founder, Dot Robinson -- then in her 60s, a woman who prided herself on her lady-like demeanor, her pink riding leathers and her pink motorcycle's lipstick holder -- astounded everyone by jumping into a pool, fully clothed, hat, high-heels and all, during a convention in Panama City, Fla.

The club, chartered in 1940 with 50 members, was started by Robinson, of Detroit, and Linda Dugeau, of Providence, R.I. Both have since died, but there are now about 775 members in the United States and Canada. More than 200 attended the Hagerstown convention.

Some began riding when all motorcyclists seemed like outlaws, and many tell stories of men who sneered at their interest in motorcycles.

When Debbie Waltz, 49, a surgical technician from Monroe, Mich., bought her first road bike in the 1970s, the Honda salesman challenged her ability to handle it.

"He told me if I could lay the bike down and pick it back up again, he'd give me a helmet, a T-shirt and half off a jacket," Waltz said. So she did. "Every man stood outside that shop to make sure I could ride the bike out," she said.