Free-spirited biker granny circles the globe
Edmonton’s Doris Maron put faith in her Honda Magna 750 - and in the kindness of strangers
Leah Lawrence for Calgary Herald
Adventure tourist. Iron Butt endurance rider. Grandmother. Doris Maron travelled around the world on her motorcycle - solo.
The 58-year old mother of three and grandmother of five voyaged from Fairbanks, Alaska, to Kathmandu, Nepal, and Oslo, Norway, and then on to La Paz, Bolivia, from 2001 to 2004.
Unlike the overhyped vanity ride taken by Scottish actor Ewan McGregor and his friend Charley Boorman, the Edmonton woman sold everything she owned to finance her trip.
Maron bought a 2001 Honda Magna 750 and put her faith in whatever she could pack in her saddlebags and the goodwill of people she’d meet on the road. (McGregor and Boorman had their bikes donated by BMW and were accompanied by cameramen, producers, numerous assistants and a truck or two full of supplies.)
Maron has had the “biking bug” all her life, but didn’t start riding until 1989. That fall, she took a motorcycle training course through the Edmonton branch of the Canada Safety Council and bought her first bike - a 1984 Honda Shadow 500.
In 1990, she travelled more than 11,000 kilometres, winning the annual mileage award of the Edmonton chapter of the Women in the Wind motorcycle club.
The idea to travel the world came when a friend told her to check out Benka Pulko’s website (www.benkapulko.com). Pulko is a Slovenian woman who spent 2,000 days travelling through 73 countries.
“I started by looking at her (Pulko’s) website, and that just made me want to do it more,” says Maron.
The two women exchanged e-mails, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Maron asked Pulko how to go about planning her adventure. Pulko’s advice? Just pack your bike and go.
“We think we have to plan everything, but things change. I had a plan, but it changed before I left Canada. There are so many things that happen in life, you just have to get on your bike and go,” says Maron.
The day she left Edmonton, Maron headed northwest, from the Yukon to Alaska and then south to British Columbia. On Sept. 10, 2001, she dropped her bike off at the port of Vancouver for shipping to Australia. The next day she awoke to the headlines “America Under Attack” and the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York. A person of lesser courage might have turned back. “Life must go on, and we do what we must,” wrote Maron in her diary.
After visiting Australia and New Zealand, Maron travelled through Southeast Asia to Nepal, where she had her first motorcycle accident. Four blocks from her guest house in Kathmandu, a woman dressed in a flowing red skirt and shawl walked out in front of her. She hit the brakes, narrowly missing the woman and laid the bike down on the pavement. It was over in an instant, but “I still have the scar to show for that one,” says Maron.
After Nepal, Maron made her way through India and Pakistan, the latter against the advice of the Canadian High Commission. Ten days later, she entered Iran, a single woman travelling in an Islamic nation. At the border, Maron had no scarf to cover her head when she entered the immigration building. With no other alternative close at hand, she put on her helmet. The agent stamped her passport, slapped it on the table and turned back to his computer.
Maron says Iran “had the nicest highways and the smoothest pavement.” Highway signs were easy to follow and, often written in English.
At the border town of Astara (between Russia and Iran on the Caspian Sea), Maron stopped for a break at a small café. Her bike caught the attention of the local constabulary, and a contingent soon arrived and demanded she accompany them to the police station. One officer motioned Maron towards the police car, hand outstretched for the keys of the motorcycle. “You are not riding my bike!” she replied. The standoff went on for several minutes before the officer finally relented.
Maron was held for about half an hour at the station and then told she could leave, but the officer who demanded her keys would not return her passport, saying he would drop it off later at her hotel. Maron with a mixture of angst and anger, refused to leave. A standoff threatened once again, but suddenly the officer marched around the desk and led her to her hotel, where the passport was transferred to the hotel clerk.
After Iran, Maron’s travels took her through Turkey, across Europe, then on to South and Central America, until she returned home via Mexico and the United States.
Since returning, Maron hasn’t slowed down. She continues to average 20,000 and 30,000 kilometres on her bike per year. As you read this, she is en route from Edmonton to Athens, Ga. There, she will take part in the fourth annual American Motorcyclist Association’s Women in Motorcycling Conference.
Her next adventure is to undertake the Iron Butt USA Four Corners Ride. Riders have 21 days to travel to four corners of the United State. Destination cities are Blaine, Wash., Madawaska, Me., Key West, Fla., and San Ysidro, Calif. If she starts out in Edmonton, the trip will cover some 16,000 kilometres.
Go, Granny, go.
Doris Maron’s 2001 Honda Magna 750 can be seen as part of the Reynolds-Alberta Museum’s feature exhibit Life & Times of the Motorcycle, until Sept. 17 in Wetaskawin.
