Tag: editor

I was thrilled when Sheonagh told me about her work on the WIMA history book project. The resilience, bravery, and tenacity of WIMA members has been consistently amazing me (to name just a few of the shining qualities), both past and present. However, it saddened me that I often learned about these remarkable women only through their obituaries. This realisation fuelled my passion for editing the WIMA GB newsletter. It became my way of contributing to the preservation of WIMA’s legacy, capturing the stories of its members and their achievements. I envisioned each newsletter not just as a resource for current members, but as a historical document that someone like me might read 50-75 years from now, pondering the thoughts and experiences of WIMA members.

The world has recently become aware of numerous instances where the contributions of women have been rediscovered after being largely forgotten or even erased from historical records. If we don’t take the initiative to document our own history, evidence suggests that the rest of the world is unlikely to do it for us.

When Sheonagh and Åsa accepted my offer to assist with the book, I wasn’t sure at first how I could contribute. However, when you believe in something happening and have the chance to help, you find a way. I began by translating mostly German articles and reports, digging through decades of newsletters entrusted to me by Sheila Whittingham for information, and compiling rally reports from records, reports, and invitations we uncovered. For the finished diamond jubilee edition, I researched and created timelines of national divisions and former officers, to complete those sections. I was also entrusted with the art of weaving the new national divisions, sections, and additional officer introductions into the book design created by Louise. 

My hope for the next major edition is that it will be a lot quicker to put together, because we will have continued to collect and record, to preserve our legacy.

Motorcycles have always been a huge part of my life – I had my first at 16. Growing up in rural Cornwall, my little Yamaha DT50 was not only my transport but also my ticket to fun, freedom and independence.

In 1999 I became art editor/designer for Motorcycle Sport and Leisure. This was an absolutely dream job because not only was I able to redesign the magazine but I became their female bike tester, so I rode everything from Hondas to Harleys. It really was a case of ‘Lou, we need some miles put on this bike. Can you have it over the weekend and tell us what you think of it on Monday’. The testing led on to my own ‘Challenge Lou’ series’, one of the highlights of which was training with the Royal Signal White Helmets and jumping through fire – that made the cover! 

Sadly, Motorcycle Sport & Leisure was later sold and relocated to Cambridgeshire. So I then went travelling with my partner, both of us on Honda Dominator NX650s. Complete with tent, we rode all over the world (the USA, South and Central America, Australia, India, Europe and North Africa). 

That wasn’t the end of my travels, as I also took a solo trip to Eastern Europe on a Triumph Bonnie and Watsonian Monza sidecar outfit – that was an eye opener, as I’d hardly ridden an outfit before. Still, with Sprocket my dog in the sidecar, I explored Europe on my own and camped all the way, covering 7500 miles – riding an outfit does wonders for your biceps!

I’m still designing motorcycle magazines, producing the monthly mag for the VMCC, and taking on the BMF’s magazine as a result of working with Sheonagh, who asked if I would join her on a project to design a book on WIMA’s history. I didn’t realise how big a project it would turn out to be and three years later the book was finished.  

I am proud, very proud of it, and it’s great to see the WIMA’s history so well documented.

I’ve been a member of WIMA since 2004. I actually found the organisation when looking for local women to ride with as I didn’t know anyone in Gothenburg, where I had moved after university. While WIMA didn’t give me local female riding friends, I soon found the international aspect and got hooked. In 2005, I worked at the European rally hosted in Sweden and the same autumn I travelled to New Zealand for the international rally and after that over to Australia connecting with WIMA members there. The international rallies became addictive, and I try my best to attend every year. In 2016, I even quit my job to be able to attend in Estonia, but that is another story. The essence, though, is that I love the international friendship that I have through WIMA and the possibilities to see and explore places I might never have gone to otherwise. 

My ethos is that if I benefit from an organisation, I want to give back, contribute and help the organisation grow. That is why I stood for international vice president in 2015, and later for international president. To give back and contribute to an organisation, that is very important to me and to help more people benefit from it.

When I passed on the leadership to Zara in autumn 2020, it was in order to use my spare time to pursue a career in linguistics. As a linguist, I love working with texts, so in December 2020 when Sheonagh asked if I could help her a bit with the editing for the book, I got really excited about this new way of contributing to WIMA. In addition, I was also naïve; I thought that if I took a three-month study break, we could finish the book before the second half of the spring term started. Not only has the project grown over time, but the task proved to be far more difficult than first anticipated. 

The rallies section has proved to be especially difficult. We are not only editors; we are also researchers, writers and detectives trying to find material from old motorcycle magazines and other archives since there are many rallies that are not recorded in our own divisional histories. Hundreds of hours have gone into this project, and it has been much more rewarding than I could ever imagine. I’ve learned so much, especially about the early years and the old rallies, and I am excited about the prospect of WIMA members all over the world reading about this soon too. 

When I joined WIMA back in 1982 I was fascinated to discover that in 1950, the year after I was born, the American motorcyclist, Louise Scherbyn, had set up an international organisation for women motorcyclists, and that in 1980, a GB member, Frances Popley, had researched and edited a history of the first thirty years. 

Popularly known as the Pearl Booklet, this first history is available here https://bit.ly/WIMAPearlBooklet and contains a lot of interesting detail we don’t have room to reproduce in this edition.  Frances related, ‘I wrote something in the region of seventy letters to more than ten countries, made numerous telephone calls to all parts of the country and clocked up many happy miles in search of material.’   We’re grateful to her daughters for sending us Frances’s original research material.This edition is dedicated to the memory of Frances.  

My co-editor Åsa and I have had a different journey from Frances. We’ve been able to travel far more internationally, meet more WIMA members personally over the years, and we have the advantage of the internet for research purposes. 

This edition has a wider scope – to capture the essence of every current division, to give a flavour of the history and to feature the personalities who run the organisation today as well as those whom WIMA has honoured for their contribution to us all over the years. It’s a digital edition, so it can be added to in the future.

Why have Åsa and I spent years putting this all together?  I rode for eight years in London, commuting to work, before I met another rider. A chance article in 1981 in the Sunday Times called ‘Sex and the art of motorcycle maintenance’ led me to The Women’s Motorcycle Workshop, run by WIMA member Anna Zee, currently president of FEMA – see her bio in the Ellen Pfeiffer award section. Jennifer Killen, who later became president of WIMA Australia and organised the first Australian international rally in 2000 was also there – see her report in the rally section. I immediately joined WIMA. My first international rally was 1983 in the Netherlands. What an eye opener it was to discover women from many countries, travelling from so far, to join together for a week of motorcycling and camaraderie! 

Over the years, I rose through the ranks, first of WIMA GB, then to becoming the second international president.  Throughout this time, I was conscious of those women who had paved the way for us all, braving indifference and hostility to be themselves and to actively participate in the sport they so loved: motorcycling. I felt my own journey was not so different – motorcycling and WIMA have given me freedom, independence, self-reliance, wonderful friends and travel experiences all over the world and my life partner Pat. This is why I feel it is so important to capture this information for future generations of women motorcyclists. It’s my way of saying thank you.