Finding the Right Group

My love of riding motorcycles started when I was in my teens riding a friend’s Honda Trail 90 and continued until I got married and had a 2-year-old son, when some thief stole my Kawasaki 175 Enduro.

After that, I had to hang up my helmet while trying to maintain a growing family. But my love of two wheels never faded. It only simmered on the back burner, until one day after I turned 50.

I saw a large group of motorcycles roll by me on a beautiful spring day, with their gleaming chrome and shiny paint, and a voice inside me said, “If you’re ever going to ride a motorcycle again, you need to do it before your body won’t let you throw your leg over the seat of one.”

The next thing I knew, I was putting my name on the dotted line for a beautiful new Kawasaki Ninja 600.

Riding a street bike was a new experience for me, and the power—compared to the little dirt bikes and enduros I was used to—was intoxicating.

I bought my youngest son a helmet, jacket and gloves, threw him on the back of the bike and began to explore some of the backroads around the San Francisco Bay area.

One day, as we wandered around looking for some new places to ride, we ran into a huge group of bikes I later found out was a ride called “Sac to Bay,” which included hundreds of bikes traveling from Sacramento to San Francisco making stops to pick up more riders along the way.

Those events were large enough to have California Highway Patrol escorts. At one of the stops where I met up with the group, I asked someone if it was some kind of club. I got a very vague answer from someone who didn’t know. But it spurred me to start researching clubs I might ride with.

I started looking for an all-women’s club, because I felt a club with a bunch of guys might be too aggressive for my fairly new “street riding” skills. I Googled “Women’s Motorcycle Club” and found Curve Unit, an AMA-chartered Bay Area women’s riding group that is more sport bikes than cruisers. I began to hang out with them and found they were a very welcoming group with an inclination toward philanthropy. I became a member in September 2004 and have been with them ever since.

Our club numbers eight active members, two emerita members and one who moved to Georgia and hopes to launch an East Coast chapter.

Two requirements to be a club member are AMA membership and first-aid certification.
We organize a ride every month, sometimes limited to girls only and sometimes open to all, as we ride the twisty roads from Monterey to north of Santa Rosa and all over the Gold Country.

Normally, we organize fundraisers for the charity we support (Ride for Kids), but with COVID-19 putting a damper on getting large groups of people together, our monthly rides have just been members- or girls-only to keep the numbers low, as we practice social distancing and wear masks.

We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that gives 100 percent of the money we raise to the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation through the Northern California Ride for Kids event.

Curve Unit also concentrates its efforts on improving female motorcycle riding skills. Although a number of our members have owned cruisers, we’ve mainly been focused on improving our riding skills by attending the Women’s VIP Day that Zoom Zoom Track Days hosts at Thunderhill Raceway Park in Willows, Calif.

A few years back, a couple of our girls brought tutus to wear while riding the track. The next year, all of our girls wore them, and we noticed a few others began to show up with their own tutus. The year after that, even the instructors were wearing them, including the male instructors.

Some of our girls are very fast and ride in the A and B groups, and I can only imagine the expressions on the faces of the guys in those groups when some tutu-wearing girl passes them on the track.

I retired this year after more than 30 years working in the Bay Area as an animator/illustrator.

Although I plan on moving out of the area, my love for this club and these girls is staggering. I know I’m leaving the club in the hands of an incredible group of women who will maintain the reputation we’ve polished during the past 16 years.

Sabrina Fletcher, an AMA member from Patterson, Calif., is the vice president of the Curve Unit.