Moto Mavens

At age 8, Gevin Fax didn’t have many friends. Growing up in L.A., she would ride her bicycle with her two brothers. That year, her father entered her in a mini-motorbike competition and she won her race—taking the podium amongst all boys. She felt awkward and out of place as the only girl who had competed. As an African-American girl interested in motorbikes, she was different, but she was also hooked. She got her first moped at 10 years old, moved on to street bikes as an adolescent, and then bigger bikes as an adult. She rode alone most of the time. But riding motorcycles gave her something that she says people, at the time, couldn’t—a unique identity.

When social media took off, Fax started engaging more on different platforms. She quickly found more women like her. She found a community.

Can a bike really help you find your identity? For Fax and many other womxn bikers, identity is where the rubber meets the road.

Identity is not just who we are, but who we aspire to be. Identity is fluid and requires us to continually define and affirm; re-define and re-affirm who we are as we age. How do we do this? Through symbols and culture.

Culture makes the world meaningful to ourselves and ourselves meaningful to the world. Symbols are the vehicles through which culture is expressed—and you can probably guess what the main symbol is in biker culture.

Gevin Fax, 63

“Two wheels and an engine. It gave me something that—at the time—people couldn’t give me,” says Fax in the short film The Litas. The film, released in 2018, profiles Fax and her membership to The Litas—the world’s largest female biking collective.

“When I tapped into The Litas, I got lucky and I got picked up by a production company who wanted to do a story on a veteran motorcyclist,” says Fax. “I ended up being the Litas’ poster child—or poster old-lady,” laughs Fax, motorcycles revving in the background. She’s calling from Mountain Springs Saloon, a biker bar about 40 miles outside of Las Vegas.

The Litas from Stept Studios on Vimeo.

Fax divides her time between her properties in Lake Balboa and Pine Mountain, California. The L.A. native is an accomplished actor and musician. Between acting and music gigs, she puts her MA in Physical Education to good use and works as a teacher. Her resume is peppered with motorcycle pursuits: mechanic and test rider, moto-magazine cover model, motorcycle stunt-double, and more. Fax is fit. Her aesthetic combines dreadlocks, sunglasses, bandanas, Southwest jewelry, a helmet and goggles—radiating ageless cool.

Lindsey Hagen, the film’s executive producer, met a Litas member while backpacking in Costa Rica. When she got back to the U.S., she was introduced to Fax and was inspired by her “unapologetic ability to follow her heart, while empowering others to do the same.” Hagen credits the film’s popularity to its protagonist: “She exemplifies strength, kindness and good will,” writes Hagen in an email. “I know the reason this film did so well was because Gevin’s story is the one we were aching to hear.”

Although not her first time performing, Fax’s leading role in The Litas film propelled her to new levels of notoriety. “It just blossomed into this movement, and I got boosted along with The Litas world-wide, and that was kind of like my claim to fame in the younger sect,” explains Fax.

“Now that I’m tapped into this younger crew, and understand the inner-workings of Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok, I have this window and this path into a different world.”

Self-identifying is just as much about who you are, as who you’re not. In this new world of younger riders, Fax’s identity was put in a new perspective.

“I ended up riding more with these kids that are 20s, 30s, and 40s, and nobody is in my age category at all,” she laughs. “So, I’ve become this bridge between the two worlds.”

Avory Allman, 29

Photographer Avory Allman lives in Colorado. She met Fax a couple of years ago at the Blacktop Ramble, a Litas weekend camping event in Torrey, Utah. “The moment I saw her, I was drawn to her and introduced myself,” says Allman. “I was like, ‘Oh my gawd, that lady looks so cool, I wanna’ do a photoshoot with her … We did a little photoshoot and bonded,” she says. The two became fast friends.

Like Fax, Allman’s mom grew up around boys, riding dirt bikes and mini-bikes. Her mom’s brother owned a motorcycle shop. However, unlike Fax, Allman’s mom didn’t immediately graduate to motorcycles.

Allman’s uncle died unexpectedly in 2001. The motorcycle shop was sold and, in his memory, her mom wanted to own one of the bikes from his shop: a Honda Shadow 750. “That was her first real road bike,” says Allman, “that’s when she really started getting back into riding.” Her mom was 38.  

As a child, Allman would ride on the back of her mom’s bike. “I always admired it, and I loved riding with her. I was like, ‘Oh I want to get a bike someday,’ but then I just kind of lost track of that. I stopped thinking about it through highschool and college.”

A couple of years ago, Allman started to think about it again. First, she got a dirt bike, to get more familiar with a bike’s controls. Then, when a friend’s grandfather was clearing out his garage, she was offered a Kawasaki Eliminator—free. Allman took it as a sign.

“I’m a little self-conscious about it,” she says, “the engine sounds like a sewing machine.” 

But on that learner bike, Allman started to stitch together her identity as a biker. 

For her mother’s 58th birthday, Allman invited her mom to fly out for a visit. As a birthday gift, Allman rented her an Indian Scout. Riding with her mom though the canyons of Colorado was a gift for Allman too.

“It was just so cool to finally ride next to her—even though I’m on my little bike.” 

Despite coming by riding honestly, Allman is still on the learning curve. And so is her identity.

“I don’t want to put on this act that I’m a biker and I know what I’m doing—because I’m not,” she says, “but that’s my goal. And I still feel like I have a lot of time.“

It takes time to settle into an identity, and it takes time to get comfortable riding a motorcycle. Thanks to examples like Fax, new riders don’t have to feel pressured to become that young biker chick from Instagram.

“I’m just looking forward to continuing to break past my barriers of fear and self-consciousness so I can continue to ride with [my mom] and go on more trips with her,” says Allman. 

Being on a learning curve in an Instagram-TikTok-performative generation isn’t easy. The learner identity is a vulnerable one and quitting is always an option, especially as an adult trying something new.

“[A] lot of people feel like, ‘Oh, I’m too old to be riding motorcycles’,” says Allman. She points to examples from social media of women in their early 20s riding 1200 cubic centimetre Harley Davidsons. “And I’m like, ‘Oh man, I feel kind of lame showing up and I just have this little bike’,” she says. “But it doesn’t really matter, as long as you’re out there learning … I think everyone should accept that, and accept that everyone is …  at a different stage in their learning.”

“I want to make my mom proud and I want to ride alongside her, so that’s something that I’ve always kind of wanted to be my identity, and I just don’t want to come across as someone who’s faking it.”

Shelli Anderson, 35 

“My mom was very scared, she didn’t want me to get on motorcycles, not even dirt bikes,” says Shelli Anderson. “I think it made me want to do it a little more.”

Like Allman, Anderson grew up around dirt bikes. Her dad rode dirt bikes, which her mom sheltered her from, but it only ignited Anderson’s curiosity for the sport.

“I wish my mom rode, so it was really cool when I met my husband and his mom rode because that got me even more excited,” she says on a phone call from her home in San Diego.

Anderson met her husband in high-school. As a teenager, she watched him graduate from dirt bikes to Harley Davidsons. Anderson never wanted to ride on the back of his Harley—she wanted her own.

A few years later, Anderson’s mother-in-law found a group of women on social media organizing an all-women motorcycle camping event called ‘Babes Ride Out.’ According to the event webpage, Babes Ride Out started as a girls weekend between friends in California who were “fairly new to street riding” and wanted to meet with all the other women riders they were “starting to connect with on social media.” 

“My mother-in-law reached out and said, ‘Let’s go to Babes Ride Out.’ So I got my permit and I learned on my husband’s Harley, and ever since then I was obsessed,” says Anderson.

Anderson and her husband now have three children—two girls and a baby boy. She says it’s only natural her kids would be drawn to motorbikes—and that Anderson would encourage her girls (Scarlet, 11 and Penny, 8) to ride.

“I’m really stoked that my girls have a mom that does ride. So maybe that’s why I’m doing it with my girls—because it’s something I always wanted.”

Anderson says she signed them up for all kinds of extra curriculars, “but they always gravitated to motorcycles because they see how much my husband and I love it. It’s pretty awesome; they just love riding,” she says. “My oldest was 3 or 4 when she got on her first dirt bike,” she says.

With a recent increase in the production of electric bike options for junior riders, more kids are getting exposed to the sport and at younger ages. According to Anderson, neighbours and friends say she has inspired them to let their kids try motorbikes. She thinks these changes will impact generations to come.

“The generation has totally changed. There’s way more women–let alone moms–riding, and I really hope that more moms introduce it to their kids and it teaches them that they can do it. There’s no separation anymore. [When] you ride, you ride: girl, boy, woman, man … and more kids,” she says.

Like others who self-identify with motorcycle culture, Anderson feels the bike helps her connect to herself: “I feel more connected and in-tune with myself, riding. Your mind is completely wiped clean, but the moment… you’re thinking about just you and that bike.” She identifies as a female rider in juxtaposition to the generation before her of male motorcycle role models: “Where I hear some people say: ‘I’m not just a woman rider, I’m a rider.’ Well, I didn’t grow up in a family where women rode, so it is a bigger deal.”

This gender and age separation is dissolving as more women, moms, kids and older adults get into the sport.

“It should be interesting to see what the future holds … whether the parents ride or not. But I do think it’s important for parents to not give up what they love if it’s riding or whatever it may be, because I hope that it would just inspire kids…” says Anderson. “You get older and you feel like you need to give up your passion and what you love doing, but I just believe in including your kids in it.”

Tana Roller, 50

“My dad basically had me riding before walking,” says Tana Roller. “He’s a biker and a motorsports enthusiast. He used to race rally cars and motorcycles. He had a Yamaha store when I was a kid, so we would get to ride all the new bikes when they came out.”

Roller, a production designer and casting director, has seen many identities within motorcycle culture—especially with the advent of social media.

“It gets very cliquey—a lot [of people] just like to ride to lunch and take pictures of each other, and it’s kind of more about being a part of the scene of it all instead of biking with a mission,” she says. Roller emphasizes this identity is “just different”—not derogatory.

Fax found a bird of the same feather in Roller. “This is why I enjoy riding with Tana,” says Fax, “we fly at the same rate.” The two tour together without agenda or schedule. They enjoy exploring and meeting new people. They ride with purpose: to live their dare, live out loud, and inspire the next generation.

Both hope to retire soon to follow this passion full-time. True to their “live your dare” ethos, Roller, Fax and two other badass women recently formed a new motorcycle project called ‘a qUest cALLed triBE’.

“The reason that’s our name is if you break down A Quest Called Tribe … it’s the words itself: Your life is a quest to find your tribe,” says Roller. 

“I created Quest out of a desire to take control of my future, basically as my retirement plan,” she explains. “I knew that I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life putting together other people’s visions. It was time to take control of my own.” 

The project is a TV series documenting anything and anyone aligning for a great future. Their scope: multi-generational. Their subjects: those helping to create “a place[where] our kids and our grandkids will thrive,” says Roller. Several episodes have already been shot and, as of publishing time, the group is still looking for a network interested in picking up the series. 

“The old days of bikers kind of had a separation to it,” Roller explains. “Like, there’s the old-school vibe [but] nowadays you’ll see anybody riding with anybody. That’s how we are … What we do is travel on our bikes… and in those travels we look for today’s revolutionaries… doing good things for the planet.”

Along the way, the Quest crew is inspiring other female riders. On one shoot, the ladies of Quest really came to know their impact. They were documenting the Veterans Charity Ride – a nine-day motorcycle therapy ride from L.A. to Stugis, South Dakota, for 20 select U.S. military veterans – when one young interviewee turned the tables to put the spotlight on her interviewers.

“She started telling us that she found us on Instagram while she was in Iraq in the most horrific conditions and [that] we inspired her to ride motorcycles—we all just started crying. She was like, ‘You don’t even understand how that saved me,’” says Roller. “[S]he found us … nerds – motorcycle nerds – over here, just happy to be doing what we’re doing, and it changed her, and we got to meet her and hear that story and, I mean, that changed me so much … it was so moving,” says Roller.

“You never know who you inspire—it’s never one person, you know. You think it’s one person; but, they know people [who know] people, and it’s just so powerful. It’s just amazing.”

These womxn bikers show how the biker identity can be pollinated. The identity of a rider is never static. Whether introduced to bikes in childhood or adulthood, inspired on your own, or by a parent, every rider grows with the miles. 

Bikes connect you to the road, and the road connects you to where you came from —as well as to where you’re going.