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Motorcycle Safety and Awareness
Welcome to Think Bike, the podcast about all things motorcycle and the voice of motorcycle safety and awareness in Alberta. Your host is Liane Langlois.
Liane:Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Think Bike. I am super excited for this one. I met this lady last year setting when I was setting world records down in Utah. Introduced her by none other than Erin Sills, one of the fastest women on earth.
Liane:Her name is Liza Miller and she is the CEO of one of the CEOs of Women Rider World Relay. Welcome to the show, Liza.
Liza:Hey, thank you very much.
Liane:How have you been? Haven't seen you for a while.
Liza:I know. I'm getting I'm I'm already planning for next year on the on the salt. Awesome. I'm so excited. That was my first time there.
Liza:Was great to meet you and to learn about the world in which you live in.
Liane:Well, thank you. So let's get into the world that you live in Liza. Like you're a writer, longtime writer. Who are you and what got you into writing?
Liza:Well, I was born this way. So I was obsessed with motorcycles as a small child and took every opportunity to talk anyone into giving me a ride or letting me ride. And I started as early as I could. So I don't really have that usual story that people have. I was, I was born this way.
Liane:You're out of the chute onto a bike. Yeah. That's it. He should be in England, I think then. So that's how it is there.
Liane:Where are some of the best places that you've been able to have an adventure?
Liza:Well, you know, one of the first places that I've done many times that I love is actually here in The United States. Riding cross country. There's so much diversity here from mountains and deserts and plains, and endless amounts of cool places to visit from, you know, Route 66 to national parks. So, yeah, something I never get tired of. But, going abroad, the place I frequent the most is Pakistan.
Liza:I lead tours out there in Northern Pakistan. It's a place I love to ride because no one thinks of it as a destination. And most westerners don't have much information other than negative information of what it is, and it's exactly the opposite of that. So it's a great, great time of exploring these mountains and meeting wonderfully nice, accommodating people and having a true adventure. So I love Pakistan, and I recently have had some trips to Vietnam and Peru.
Liza:And the thing that's fun about all these places is riding the little bikes.
Liane:Yes.
Liza:You know? Like, you get put on a one fifty cc that you wouldn't ride here in in North America really and tooting all around and having a blast and it's just so much fun.
Liane:There is something to be said about Minimodo's and the places you can get to on them a little bit easier. So is that typically what you're running when you're running tours in different countries?
Liza:Yeah. In Pakistan, we have CB one fifty f's or we just added the ibex four fifties. And in Vietnam, we rode the the XR XL one fifty. That's really common everywhere. And in Peru, it was with vintage rides and they use a Royal Enfields.
Liza:So we actually rode the Bulleit or I think three fifties or five hundreds around. So all different experiences, but it doesn't have to be on a big touring bike or a big fast bike. Sometimes going places on the small bikes is just even more fun.
Liane:Yeah. I did the foothills out of Missoula, Montana on a little Suzuki t u two fifty x. Yeah. And just bouncing around in in their mountains and I'll use my air codies cause I live near the Rockies. So it's very different, but, you know, it's just, it was the most fun I'd had in quite a while on a motorcycle.
Liane:And so, you know, I hear that. I definitely hear that. One of the reasons, well, the main reason why I wanted to bring you on is, back in 2019, the very first Women Rider World Relay was Writers.
Liza:There's more than one writer.
Liane:That is true. You were involved in that. Yes.
Liza:Was one of the organizers of that.
Liane:How did it where did this idea come from? How did it start before we get into what it was all about?
Liza:So there's this crazy lady over in England named Haley Bell. That's who my my business partner is. And she had gotten an injury on a motorcycle accident because she didn't have the right fitting gear while riding dirt biking because you you can't find it's very hard to find women's gear that fits all the different body types and sizes. And she just had this crazy idea of how do we get the attention of the of the world and the industry and decided, wouldn't it be a crazy idea to do a world relay? And I was one of those crazy people said, sure, why not?
Liza:Let's do it. And it was it was really one of those type of things where we didn't really even think about the logistics and the probability and just went, sure. And within six months, we had put together this idea and launched it. And it started in the February 2019 in Jonagroet, Scotland with a wooden baton that I have right here.
Liane:Nobody nobody could see that, but let me tell you, it is a very glossy wooden baton. And from what I understand, there are so scroll of names inside.
Liza:There is.
Liane:Yes.
Liza:There's paper inside and people's signatures. So, we sent this around the world and we signed up, women in all different countries. Had, I think it was about actually 72 or 74 countries we went through. And, myself and Michelle Lamphere, we were in charge of the world route. We had to create this world route of everyday baton moving.
Liza:But it was really, we gave it to the ambassadors of each country and to the women riders to like see it through. Like we just said, you have this many days to get from this side of your country to this side of the country and to meet some women from the other country and you guys gotta coordinate it and they did. And it was one of these amazing things where women like rose to the occasion. It wasn't extremely well planned. It was let's do this thing and everyone's gotta pitch in and make it work.
Liza:And that was what was incredible. And there were times where it had kind of disappeared for a couple days. We didn't know where it was, and then it surface and we'd see women posting at the border between two borders doing crossings. And it was amazing. And it took an entire year, went around the world.
Liza:It ended up back in, Dubai where Haley flew down and picked it up and brought it back to England where we had a big finale party. And, yeah, it was, it was incredible. And a lot of women's lives were changed, including our own. The amount of women that challenged themselves to ride lengths, they'd never ridden to the women that they met and bonded with, to just rising to the occasion. And and it's amazing how many stories came out of that of women who also found their confidence and were empowered by it.
Liane:Yeah. Absolutely. I remember when the baton was coming through Canada and specifically through Alberta, there was a stop in Calgary at the Cane's Motorcycle Diner. And I got a phone call a few weeks before from one of my girlfriends in Calgary asking if I would come down and speak to the group of ladies back in 2019. I was reminded of this recently at a bike show earlier this year that I had done that.
Liane:I totally forgot about it until it was brought up. And I went down and spoke to the ladies about, you know, strong women in motorcycling, creating AMSS, going to the Salt Flats, running a triumph event in BC, just we can do this too. It's not just a man's world, you know, and getting that attention out there for us. And yeah, it was really cool to be there for that little like small experience. I didn't have the ability to be a part of the physical ride due to work and stuff like that.
Liane:But to have that small little piece of that was incredible. And so what are some of like the biggest successes that came out of the 2019?
Liza:Oh, there's so many. In fact, I have some friends here with me right now, in my house. Have you heard of Wendy Crockett? She's a long distance rider. She carried, we actually had some little side, relays that happened off of the main relay, they were called ripple relays.
Liza:So for instance, as the baton's going around the world, there was also a baton, going around every state in The United States and there was a coin that went around all of the provinces in Canada. So we had these ripples going off. Well, Wendy carried the, that baton when she won the Iron Button twenty nineteen. And then Oh, wow. Another friend of mine here, Joe, she discovered, like, kind of her calling and kind of quit her job and became a motorcycle instructor and devoted her life to instruction.
Liza:And now she trains trainers. Like, there are so many people who really found their place and their community through it, if that makes sense.
Liane:Yeah. Absolutely.
Liza:Oh, and can I share one of the best stories?
Liane:Yes, please.
Liza:Because this will tie into what we're doing right now because we haven't even announced that we have started the relay again. Yeah. And just to give you some some background, we for all these years, people kept saying, when when are you gonna do the relay again? Wow. Like, it sucked a year and a half of our lives out of us.
Liza:There were relationships lost, jobs lost. I mean, it was a huge undertaking. None of us were paid for it. We knew we couldn't do it, but we also knew we wanted to include more people because we weren't able to include racers and dirt bike riders and people had to work on the day that it came through their part of their country. And it'd been sitting with us for a long time.
Liza:And I finally had this idea. What if we create an app and a digital baton? So in rather than, whereas before we had this actual baton that you would pass on and it would leave. And after it had left, you're done unless your country was doing one of these ripple relays and continued. How can we get everyone to include them and keep it going?
Liza:So the idea is that we have every country that has signed up. We have an ambassador right now. We're at, think about sixty, sixty countries and we're growing. So many, so many countries involved that everyone gets a baton and it starts with one person and then they start sharing it and everyone they share it with then has it and continue sharing so that if that first person gives it to 10 and then they those 10 women give it to 10, now you have a thousand women and it keeps growing incrementally. So that was the idea.
Liza:And that way you could include everybody.
Liane:I love it.
Liza:And every time you pass the baton, it lights up on the globe. So the globe is just getting brighter and brighter and brighter. And you see all these shining lights and that's how we could reach everyone. So we had this idea and we built it, we're doing it, we're in the middle of it. We're taking the whole year to try and count every woman writer in the world.
Liza:Going back to one of my favorite stories, One of the things we also learn is what, what it is to be a woman writer in each country and it's different. Yes.
Liane:Yes. There are some countries that are a little more difficult.
Liza:Yes. It's different struggles. And one of those countries that we had signed up, was Iran and our ambassador Ben Oz Shafay. Now Ben Oz is this amazing story. She's a woman who is raised in a country where motorcycling is illegal for women.
Liza:It's actually not illegal to ride, but they won't issue women licenses to ride. So any woman who rides is riding illegally, But Ben Oz did not let that stop her. She wanted to ride so much, much like I did as a kid. I asked everyone who I met to give me a ride and she learned how to ride dirt and track and became a racer and would go off to other countries and race and stuff like that. And she had asked in her own country, could she, could she host a race?
Liza:And they're like, well, you know, you can't race with the men, but you know, if you teach other women to race, you can have a women's race. She's like, okay, she's got all these women together. She taught them how to race. She comes back, Hey, we're ready to have a race. And they're like, okay, but when we're doing the women's race, we're gonna have to get all the men out of the stadium and you're gonna have to provide women to be all the track marshals.
Liza:And she did all of this just to have a race because it meant the world to her, but she still couldn't ride on the street. And when it came time for the baton to come to Iran, it was coming from Turkey, then it was going on to Pakistan. We couldn't get any of the ambassadors, any of the women on either side to go through the border crossing to actually pass a baton. Banas couldn't go. No one could get a visa to go across.
Liza:Banas couldn't ride to the border. And we ended up having to fly the baton over Iran. And it really disappointed us because what an amazing woman who's persisted and triumphed. Well, this year, she came back to Iran, and she started passing the baton to other women riders in Iran. And they have passed a new law that women can now get licenses.
Liane:Awesome.
Liza:A lot of that is because she set that precedent and other women started following suit. And there were so many women just riding illegally and and, like, saying, like, deal with it. Give me a ticket. Whatever. I'll pay the fine that she created change in her country.
Liza:And now we're so proud that, you know, that Iran is lit up because every country that participate lights up on the globe. And that was one of those triumphs in women's motorcycling that a lot of people in the world wouldn't know if there weren't people like us sharing those stories.
Liane:Absolutely. That one, I remember reading that one, closer to the start of the of this year's rally, which let's get to that. So this apps created 01/01/2026, the new Women Riders World Relay starts and it's like this tech evolution to to get more people together. For those of us in Canada, our ambassador is Elle West. People know her.
Liane:She's an instructor in, in for one of the schools in Calgary, her partner writes amazing book. She went to the center of Canada on January 2 to kick off this whole year. People in, I remember people in my own country, like we can't ride a swim turn. That's not the point. The point is connection.
Liane:Right. And I was able to connect with Elle, towards the January at our bike show, our annual bike show, where she passed me her golden baton and I have regular batons to now pass forward. And I'm like connecting with as many women as I can at all the different events that I go to. And then those women are connecting with more women and we're watching this, like, as you said, the globe light up.
Liza:I
Liane:mean, really out of everything, like the biggest goal of women Women Riders World Relay is what? Like the biggest because there's challenges. There's like there's so much going on this year with the app.
Liza:Right. So our motto our motto is connect, challenge, change. So first off, to try and connect every woman rider in the world. And like one question people ask is, well, do I have to ride to go get the baton? My question is, are you a rider when you're not on the bike?
Liane:Yes, I am. Still
Liza:it. Exactly. Are you a rider when you're not on the track? You know, are you a rider when you're not on the dirt? Yes, we are all.
Liza:So you don't have to ride to go get the baton. You meet other women riders and you connect. So that's the connection part, connecting women riders. Challenge. One of the things we always wanted to do and we're able to put into this is to put challenges in there and challenge women to be better riders, better renters, just better overall Ambassadors.
Liza:Ambassadors to riding. One of the challenges is help a biker in need, you know, things like change your oil oil or install an accessory. We're trying to get women to break out of their comfort zone who aren't used to renting to try that. Ride a triumph, ride a Harley, ride something you've not ridden before, rent a scooter, you know, try things. We're just trying to challenge them to do different things.
Liane:Start a ride, promote an event.
Liza:Yeah. We've gamified it and you get points for every challenge you do. And we have leaderboards. You can see where you're standing. You also get points for passing batons.
Liza:You're encouraged to pass as many batons as you can. And again, those go on leaderboards by individual and by country. You're adding to your country's total. So that's the challenge part and then change. We're trying to change two things.
Liza:We're trying to change the world's perception of what a woman biker is. When I say the world, I mean sometimes even women themselves, because sometimes women themselves don't know that that's an option for them to be a biker or that they could be a better biker and do more and ride further and longer than they thought they could. But we're also trying to change the industry's perception of what a woman rider is and tell the industry from one voice what women want. So how we're doing that is we have like the virtual garage where you can list all your bikes, you can list your gear, you can review it. So we're collectively collecting data to give to the industry to say, this is what women use and this is what women want.
Liza:Cause there's not a lot of studies about that. They don't really know. So we're trying to help them out. So that's the connect challenge change, for what the, the, we call it WRR, the WRR app is on there.
Liane:The WRR app. I I keep saying WRRR. That's a lot of syllables. Yeah. WRRR.
Liane:WRRR. I've also noticed in the app, there's these collector cards and there's like a woman attached to each of these cards. Can you tell me a little bit about that?
Liza:Yeah. That's another thing we wanted to do in that there's a lot of women who are inspirational in what they do. Like Bennoch Chaffet, who is a collector card. Like Erin Sills, who you know, who's a collector card. There's many women out there dead and alive who's been inspirations, but their stories aren't often shared.
Liza:So every time you complete a task, you get to turn over a collector card and learn about one of the women in the card. I was actually excited because one of the women that, whose card I've I've I've turned over, was this woman named, Iqra Hamid, who is a she's her family's from Pakistan, but she lives in UK and she's an engineer who works at the Triumph factory and she designs the drive train for the race bikes. Oh, how cool. Well, I was recently over in UK and I got to meet her in person and I was excited because I have her card. But you know what's really cool is we went to the Triumph factory to see her and kinda see where she works.
Liza:And she introduced me to two other women engineers who also worked there designing components for Triumph that even I didn't know.
Liane:That's super cool.
Liza:These are the kind of things we're using collector cards to share with the world.
Liane:Yeah. I yeah. I've been looking at the ones that I've turned over as well. It's just really it's such a cool feature in there because you learn more about all these women I would have never known about. I mean, it's hard enough being counted as first female land speed racer.
Liane:Nobody understanding what that is and what that means. Right? The last thing I want to bring up about the app that I that I think is super cool is you kind of mentioned the garage and in the garage, I, you know, in on my profile, I've uploaded both my bikes that I own.
Liza:Well,
Liane:actually all three of the bikes, the two for the street and the race bike for the salt. But there's also a place to upload accessories and your gear and to review it. That's like part of that knowledge, right?
Liza:You all, and here's some, I don't know if you know that you could do, but you can go into the community and you can find friends and you can search. There's different filters. One of the searches you can do is by bike. So you can find other women who ride the same bike as you.
Liane:That's pretty cool. That's as long as everybody's uploading their info into their garage. Exactly. Yep. I've been getting women I didn't even know asking to connect with me and I think that's amazing.
Liane:I'm like first, how did you hear me and why me? And I think part of it might have been from a video that Ellen and I did back in January but which is great. Cause I don't mind connecting with a bunch of women. That's how we grow our community. Where can people, I mean, we're a few months into this now, there's maybe some women that still haven't, you know, heard of this yet or gotten involved in it yet.
Liane:Where do they go to get involved?
Liza:Well, download the app from your app store. It's WRWR app. It's as simple as that. It's free, free to everyone. So download it and create your profile, and then you can look at that globe and you can see where the baton has been, see if it's near you, see if it's if it's not in your country, you can reach out to us and maybe we'll make you an ambassador so that you can start it in your country.
Liza:You can also go to the find friends or find people near you. There's a lot of different ways to connect with other women riders. You can also go to the events feed and you can see what events people are going to so that you can arrange to meet them to get the baton there. We really want everyone, I mean, when I say we wanna count every woman writer in the world, it sounds like an impossible task. But when everyone keeps sharing and spreading and passing, it's actually possible as it keeps growing incrementally.
Liza:And there's been nothing like this ever done in the world. And when we try to explain this to people, a lot of people are like, what? Because there's no precedent. Yeah. So what we are doing is exactly what we did the first time in 2019.
Liza:It had never been done. And a lot of people didn't even understand what we were doing. And now we're doing it again. We're doing something big and showing the world what women writers can do. We're showing ourselves what we can do as well.
Liza:It's pretty incredible.
Liane:It is. And just a little heads up when you sign up for the app, yes, it is gonna make you validate who you are. The information that you use is not kept by the app, correct?
Liza:So two things. There is an ID verify that is not required. Okay. It's recommended. It's optional.
Liza:You can just say no. What this is, is if you are going to be meeting up with other people that you're meeting on the app and you want to know they are who they say they are, you look for somebody who's got the blue check that they've used to put their ID in to be verified, but it is not required.
Liane:But I do know that the app doesn't keep that information and it needs to verify you as a
Liza:human Yeah. We're actually paying out of pocket for an ID verification service. That is a secure service. We don't have access to that information just to give women that security to know who they're meeting.
Liane:Yep. It is a weird world out there. That's for sure. Yeah. Liza, I this time just flew by.
Liane:I really appreciate having you on. You know, I will be updating through the AMSS page some updates on where we're at with that. Also, wherever I am at events, the baton is there, come stop by the AMSS booth, get a baton for me. Keep passing that forward. Liza, any last thoughts?
Liza:Just one more plug if I can. Another hat that I wear is I'm the host and producer of the Motorcycles and Misfits podcast. So if you like podcasts, come and check, check mine out.
Liane:That'd be awesome. I gotta get on to that for sure. And I look forward to reconnecting with you in person someday soon. That's assault.
Liza:Exactly.
Liane:All right. Take care, Eliza. Again, reach out through the WRWR app. We will have the link and stuff in the show notes to the website and an email that you can get in contact with Eliza or the rest of the organizing committee. Stay tuned for the mailbag.
213 Heath Road NW:Hey, riders. This Kirk from Moto Instincts, and here's another helpful tip. We're going to talk about intersection awareness. Statistically, intersections are one of the most dangerous places for a motorcyclist. Even if you have the green light, remember to check both ways before crossing the street.
213 Heath Road NW:Look for vehicles who could pull across your direction of travel. Those drivers waiting to cross your path might misjudge your speed or not see you coming at all. A sobering take on intersection danger comes from the definition of intersect, to pierce or divide by traveling through or across. No thanks, not for me and my motorcycle. Stay sharp at intersections and always be ready to yield.
213 Heath Road NW:And I'm Kirk from Moto Instincts.
Liane:And that's it for another episode of Think Bike hosted by me, Leanne Langlois, produced by Bryn Griffiths at Mighty Mouth Communications. If you have an idea or a question for the show, reach out to info@ab-amss.org or find us on all the socials. Always remember to ride smart, ride safe, and think bike. We'll see you out on the road.