Sisterhood of Chrome and Steel

Noss began riding well before Hollywood gave the world "The Wild Ones" or "Easy Rider" -- even before there was push-button ignition, and the only way to start a motorcycle was to rare back on the kick starter. When she stalled out her future husband's 1929 Harley in the flatlands of Iowa, she didn't know that she had to hold in the clutch to get it going again. But she figured it out, returned to her beau with the bike in one piece and never looked back. They eloped a year later.

"Married in my boots and britches," she said.

Their life was filled with adventure: skiing, hunting, flying, not to mention his and hers competition in 500-mile races in Michigan. Not so long ago, Noss had one of her closest brushes with disaster while piloting her motorcycle to a Motor Maid convention in Wisconsin: A cement berm caught her by surprise, and she landed in a muddy cornfield.

"Being a gymnastic coach, I knew how to tuck and roll," Noss said. "So I just tucked and rolled." She was 77.

But at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, Noss sat out as other women revved their bikes for the Dot Robinson Run, a timed road competition in which it is better to go too slow rather than too fast.

With directions taped to their gas tanks, the women headed out one by one on a 50-mile course through the back roads of Washington County and West Virginia. The object was to go about 30 miles an hour, to stay within the law.

Hugging the yellow line, the string of motorcyclists traveled roads fringed with blue chicory blossoms and yellow spikes of mullein; past Funkstown's statue of a charging World War I doughboy; along Antietam National Battlefield's zigzagging worm-rail fences; through pastures of horses, cows and even a few donkeys; past a farm where a woman with a baby in her arms waved hello; past Ernie's junkyard; past a carnival with a sign asking, "Where would you be if Jesus came back five minutes ago?"; past self-serve roadside stands offering homegrown tomatoes; and, finally, into Williamsport as the bells of the Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church peeled the hour at noon.

At Byron Memorial Park, a few husbands waited for stragglers while others feasted on two barbecued pigs, cole slaw and potato salad. Among the last was Waltz, who had lost her way several times, but to no effect on her high spirits.

"I would live on my bike if I could," she said. "I get bike fever so bad in the winter I can't stand myself."