Biker girls are increasingly taking to the open roads

When Rose Hyer was diagnosed with breast cancer so advanced that doctors gave her only a month to live, the unmarried mom decided to finally initiate living. The spunky hairdresser, then 39, was tired of "being a passenger" in life. She moved to Florida, took up body building and bought her own motorcycle - a metallic blue Suzuki Intruder 800.

Hyer is one of thousands of women across the kingdom finding camaraderie in women's motorcycle clubs. From the Chrome Divas in Columbia, S.C., and the Women on Wheels in Lincoln, Neb., to the Throttle Queens in Landover, Md., and the Motor Maids in Erie, Mich., women are more and more taking to the ajar roads.

"I didn't have ascendancy of the cancer, there's nothing you can do, so riding is something you hog control of," said Hyer, now 54.

Women bikers aren't your stereotypical bar-brawling, tattooed, leather jacket biker chicks. The just out wave of female riders are soccer moms, even grandmas, corporate attorneys and nurses with an morals way of $55,850, according to the Motorcycle Production Council.

The unit of women who own their own bikes is on the rise - jumping 36% to 635,000 between 1998 to 2003, according to the most latest numbers from the Motorcycle Industry Council, a trade group based in Irvine, Calif.

At the famous online biker website Biker Girls On Wheels, it has exceeding than 320,000 female riders. Sixty percent of the members are women riders.

Manufacturers such as Harley-Davidson and Ultra Motorcycles are capitalizing on the trend, designing bikes with lighter frames, custom fit gears and lower seats.

"It's dishy much been a men's market, however a lot of ladies really like riding motorcycles and I think they feel left out so that's why we created something honest for women," Ultra Motorcycles sales director Dan Houston said of his company's Groundpounder and California Kid models.

At Harley-Davidson, motorcycles sales to women are at an all-time high, jumping from 600 in 1980 to 30,000 in 2005. Women make up approximately half of new-rider classes on the research track at Harley-Davidson Orlando, said Tony Cianciotto, marketing administrator at Harley Orlando.

"I credit for so great women retain ridden on the back, on the other hand these days women are very independent," Cianciotto said.

The winding roads offer women an escape from crying babies, stressful jobs and high-maintenance relationships. Many female riders plan this week to roll up to Daytona Beach's annual Bike Week, to gab with the thousands of individual bikers from around the country who gather to scope gone the merchandise and impel the evaluation tracks.

"We're definitely seeing a trend in more female riders" showing up at Bike Week, said Kevin Kilian, official for Daytona's chamber of commerce.

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