EVERYTHING HAPPENS FAST in the desert. Day becomes night, night becomes day, still air kicks up a sandstorm in seconds. On a recent Saturday on a private plot of land in Johnson Valley, California, a cinnamon sunset disappears into darkness as a day-old supermoon rises from behind a craggy mountain range.
Beneath it, a film projector hums to life, shooting a beam of light that fills the side of a white box truck with a six-by-nine screen, and illuminates this corner of the Mojave Desert to reveal hundreds of women, many clad in riding gear, sitting on dirt bikes at this makeshift theater. Others sit cross-legged in the sand, cuddled together for warmth. Temperatures drop fast in the desert.
The movie starts. An old woman’s face fills the screen.
She’s seated in a garage, a workbench and a modern-day enduro motorcycle blurred in the background. She’s wearing a purple turtleneck, frameless glasses and a touch of blush. Her hair is wispy and white, her face rutted deeply by time.
“By the way,” the woman says, lifting her eyes to the camera. “I brought my Hall of Fame ring.” She holds it up and pushes it into focus. It’s gold and engraved with a rider on a retro motorcycle. “There’s an inscription,” she says. Her voice is high and steady as she stares mischievously into the lens. “It says, ‘Drinks gas. Spits nails.'” She smiles. The crowd roars.
That smile belongs to Mary McGee, the first woman in America to race motorcycles and the first woman to hold an International Motorcycling Federation license, which she received in 1960 at age 24. She is the first woman to finish the grueling Baja 1000, which she did driving a Datsun pickup, and remarkably, the first person, man or woman, to solo the Baja 500 on a motorcycle. She did that in 1975, at 38, but received little recognition at the time. Instead, throughout her career, the racing community was largely unwilling to acknowledge her groundbreaking achievements.
“I didn’t pay any attention to it,” McGee says in the film. “I was having too much fun.”
Nearly 50 years later, McGee is the subject of a 22-minute documentary, “Motorcycle Mary,”…
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