Bessie was the world’s first African American woman pilot, and the first African American to earn an international pilot’s license. Born in January of 1892, she entered our world with an innate yearning to “amount to something,” no matter the odds stacked against her. And those odds stood substantially against her, both as an African/Native American and a female of the South before the era of Civil Rights in America.

As a machine, motorcycles themselves bare no ego. Motorcycles have no explicit beauty, beyond the beauty that humans impose upon them. A motorcycle is essentially a slew of parts joined together to perform or serve a function, yet people inevitably attach deeper meanings to these bundles of parts. Each person in their own right has at one point in their life developed an attachment to a machine, which led them to dig deeper. How can this conglomeration of bearings, gears, and wires create a social movement? How can it cause a desire, and a feeling of escape from the monotony of life? 

I had grown up idolizing women, like Amelia [Earhart], that had infiltrated male-dominated fields, all while preserving their femininity. She was a pilot, a record-breaker, a fashion designer, an author, and much much more. But little did I know that the concept was groundbreaking in itself in context of our society. I just thought they were rad people doing rad things, and it was even cooler that they looked like me. I grew to aspire to be just like them.

For those of us who lived an observed life, we often draw many lessons from life on the road into life in general. IVV picked up this great article by Kristen Lassen who shares four essential motorcycling tips from her military father, beautifully laced into larger life lessons found by a girl navigating her way through life while strengthening a relationship with her hero.