Heels To Wheels By Leticia Cline

My name is Leticia. It’s not most typical of names but then again I’m not the most typical of girls. All my life I have been a walking contradiction, having simultaneous careers in both modeling and riding motorcycles. Most people who see a woman never think that she would throw her leg over a two wheeled beast of a machine, and they have an even harder time imagining a woman who makes a living from her appearance doing it. Don’t get me wrong I’m not complaining, I’m just setting up the story on how difficult the journey has been to be taken seriously in this mostly male dominated industry.

From an early age I had a fascination with motorcycles. My father who built them in the living room of our house thought that once I reached the age of four it was time for me to have a bike of my own. He put me on a Honda 50; off I went and never looked back. Over the years there have been many things that have become pivotal points in my love of motorcycles and the reason why I own more bikes than hours in a day.

Beside the fact that motorbikes are the greatest connection I have with my father, one of the most influential moments are watching Bruce Brown’s “On Any Sunday” when I was 11 years-old. To describe this movie is nearly impossible since I would pretty much sound like a cliché, every zen-like adjective has already been used in the 1971 documentary, not to mention I’m sure anyone who reads this magazine has already seen it and will say it influenced them in the same way. If they haven’t then they need to visit a psychiatrist to cure their identity crisis.

This movie was a major advocate in introducing motorcycling to the world as a community, where riders, enthusiasts and racers were more of family men than the crazy and outlawed rule breakers they were stereotyped as before. It help pave the way for AMA racing to become more mainstream and brought motorcycles into the backyards of people across the world. No longer were they becoming a nuisance but instead being accepted by those who had never ridden a day in their lives.

The older we get the harder it is to get as impressed and amazed as we did when we were children, and especially when it’s seeing it for the second time. But that’s not the case when On Any Sunday / The Next Chapter was released (US and Spain) last week. Thousands flocked from all around to see what amazement the Brown family had come up with this time, and they were not disappointed. As I sat there in the darkened theater, my eyes were wide and fixed on the screen the same way as when I was 11. It was hard not to get emotional at parts like when Doug Henry talks about how much he loves riding and how being paralyzed hasn’t stopped him from getting on a bike. Or when WMA racer Ashley Fiolek and her father ride side by side on mountain tops in British Columbia. I found myself getting nervous when Robbie Maddison goes to do another one of his ridiculously long jumps, and even yelling out loud when it came down to the very last Moto GP race in Spain. Periodically, I would look over to my 12 year-old son and see what my father must have seen when he took me to the first movie so long ago, a kid who walked into that theatre already in love with two wheels but who would walk out with them imprinted on his soul.

When the credits rolled and the house lights came on we slowly filed out of the theatre, not wanting it to be over but at the same time wanting to hurry up and jump on our bikes to ride. That day my head was held a little higher and I felt a new sense of pride for what I do. I wanted to tell strangers on the street that there’s a new movie out and it’s about me, it’s about all of us. Sure we may not have had a role in it and our names may not be in the credits, but we ride, we live and breathe it. Even though the reasons of why or how differ, the point is that we do it and somehow it connects us all in a way that only those who dare to be a part of motorcycling can understand. Sunday is only one day on the calendar but it’s every day to us.