Excerpted from the Fall 2002 issue of Woman Rider magazine
Patrick K. Kinkade /
Rider Report
Deborah Palmer, 8 1/2 months pregnant wearing her Uncle Bob’s chaps. She said riding while pregnant made her feel weightless, like being in a swimming pool.
Motorcyclists of both genders have at least one thing in common. They all ride expectantly. They all know that each time they get on their bike—whether as a rider or a passenger—they can expect their ride, no matter how long or how short, to deliver some major fun along life’s highway. That is why they ride.
That’s also why some riders—those of the female variety—refuse to sever their scoot-roots when they find themselves expecting another one of life’s little pleasures. “Just because you’re pregnant, it doesn’t mean that your life has to end,” says Stephanie Reynolds, a 30-year-old, telecommunications network design capacity planner from Coeur d Alene, Idaho, who recently delivered her first child. Stephanie had been riding motorcycles since her dad stuck her on a three-wheeler as a little girl. So when she met “Mr. Right,” her now-husband of two years, Trevor, she found the two of them shared a love of motorcycling. To celebrate their marriage, the two ordered coordinating, his-and-hers, hot-yellow 2000 American IronHorse Outlaw motorcycles to match the couple’s wildly-yellow Humvee. “What can I say,” shrugs Stephanie. “I’m a yellow-addict.”
But then something decidedly unexpected occurred. Stephanie got pregnant. Enter the other man in Stephanie’s life—obstetrician Christopher Billingslea. “I told her I had no problem with her riding a street bike early on in her pregnancy,” says the doctor who saw no threat in a pregnant woman continuing to do the things her body’s already accustomed to doing. “But when the abdomen gets larger,” he continues, “a woman’s center of balance shifts, and it can be more of a problem to ride then.” He also added that off-road, dirt bike riding would be an entirely different issue and one he’d not recommend for a pregnant woman.
Deborah Palmer’s doctor offered her similar advice regarding her pregnancy. “It was rollerskating and riding a bicycle that he wanted me to steer away from.” The Santa Cruz, California, mother rode rode up into her ninth month of pregnancy.
GiGi Delancy, the 32-year-old on-line parts and accessories manager for Chopper Customs in Lostine, Oregon, got the same recommendation from her doctor when she was pregnant with each of her two boys. “His advice was that since I’d already been riding motorcycles, it was O.K. to continue,” says the diminutive, 5-foot 1-inch mother of two who barely tipped the scales at 140 pounds when nine months pregnant. She smiles mischievously, though, when she admits that she only told her doctor a half-truth when she shared with him she’d be riding a motorcycle occasionally. She was actually riding dozens of bikes, including the kick-start choppers, big twins and cruisers that she was delivering to customers for her husband’s custom bike building business.
Her biggest challenge? “Without a doubt, kick-starting a bike,” chuckles GiGi, who claims that that was the one thing she just couldn’t do as a pregnant motorcyclist. She’d have to carefully time her rides so that there was always someone around to kick-start a motorcycle if it needed it. “And bending over the tank isn’t too easy,” adds Stephanie who, (even though she had a 5-foot 10-inch 171-pound pregnancy-height-weight advantage on GiGi), maintains that the sheer mass of her expanding belly, and her changing center of balance eventually prevented her from riding during the last half of her pregnancy.
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