This is a reflection on a vehicle that has dominated the author's life. It is associated intimately with her successes and failures. Melissa Holbrook Pierson tells readers of the passionate devotion of bikers to their particular machines - Harleys, Moto Guzzis, BMWs - and explains the loyalty of motorcyclists to each other, which results in astonishing acts of kindness on wet highways and mountain roads. As a woman, she destroys the myth of the Hell's Angels that dogs every leather-clad rider in the world.