Page 35 - Panama City Living July-August 2019

BARBARA JONES STILL REMEMBERS HER FIRST TRIP TO BIKE WEEK IN DAYTONA BEACH. SHE WAS ON THE BACK OF A RED HARLEY ULTRA GLIDE CLASSIC, WITH HER ARMS AROUND THE WAIST OF HER HUSBAND. THE BACK-SEAT PERSPECTIVES WERE TYPICAL FOR WOMEN BACK THEN.
This was in the 1980s and Bike Week was a man’s world. She Now, three decades later, Jones is 65 and rides her 2015 Indian remembers the huge impression the bikes made on her—there Chieftain as a member of the Panama City Motor Maids, the were thousands of them. Looking back, Jones, a lifelong Panama oldest continuously running ladies’ motorcycle organization in City resident, recalls only a handful of women with their own the United States. Formed in 1940, the Motor Maids came into bikes. “And the female riders were hard core,” she remembers. existence long before the Hell’s Angels.
It’s not to say they weren’t a big part of Bike Week. What they The Motor Maids replace leather jackets with white linen vests lacked in numbers, they made up with a strong presence. She worn over blue mock-turtlenecks. They wear black jeans, black remembers their clothes, or lack thereof. “Some of the women boots, and, of course, white gloves for formal events and parades. were dressed in sexy clothing that I had never seen before—in Nationally they number about 1,350 members, with 135 in Florida outfits that you would never wear to town,” Barbara recalls. And and 15 in the greater Panama City area. Members in Northwest
HOW WE ROLL
there was skin, lots of it, and tattoos, lots of those, too.
THE EXPERIENCE CHANGED HER FOREVER.
Jones, a hairstylist who operated three salons in the Panama City area, no longer wanted to be on the back of the bike. She wanted her own. Mac, her husband of now 30 years, was supportive and got her started with a dirt bike. Next came a Honda Shadow.
Florida call themselves the Panhandle Pearls.
According to a survey conducted by the Motorcycle Industry Council (MIC) in 2018, 19 percent of motorcycle owners are women. That number is up from just 10 percent a decade ago. A large portion of female motorcycle owners are young, with Gen X owners coming in at 22 percent and millennials at 26 percent. The organization predicts the number of female motorcycle owners could reach 25 percent soon.
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