Sep 09, 2008 - 04:05:17 CDT
KILLDEER — Toody Haugen of Killdeer zips into her black leathers like a woman half her age.She drives a Honda Goldwing like a woman half her age, too.
The number “83” tacked on to her years lived is practically irrelevant. Age is only an attitude when she’s cruising down the highway, the sun on her face, the breeze brushing by. The white hair under her helmet only adds to the surprise.
Haugen is the oldest member of the Free Spirit Trikers Club, open to three-wheeled motorcyclists, as well as the two-wheeled kind.
She puts hundreds of miles on her trike every summer, with the group, or off on joy rides all by herself, for her own pleasure.
“She’s an inspiration to all of us, that there’s a full, enjoyable life ahead,” said Deb Jose of Dickinson, who heads up the trikers club. “She outgoes all of us.”
Well, why not.
She’s in good shape and can climb up and down that trike like — OK, already — a woman half her age.
She can, to her passenger’s wide eyes, put that trike through its 0-to-70 mph paces like nobody’s business, too, blowing around the curve into Killdeer fast enough to make that passenger’s eyes water.
It’s clear she loves it.
“It’s real exhilarating,” she said. Oh, yeah.
She got her cream-colored Goldwing several years ago, after taking a test ride down at Sturgis, S.D., during the August rally. A widow, she loved to ride with her then-companion, now deceased.
But she didn’t trust herself to hold the weight of a bike on her own when she was ready to move beyond being a passenger.
Around the corner she came on that first trike test, throwing both arms up and hollering, “Yee-haw!”
She’d found her wheels, the “third” one offering the stability she knew needed. “I laughed out loud, and I decided, ‘I’m gonna have one of these things’,” she said.
Her Goldwing has what’s called a “layman’s conversion,” meaning everything up to and over the back hub is original, until the back wheel, the one replaced with two. The conversion cost more than the bike, but it’s been worth every penny.
Jose, of the Free Spirit Trikers, said Haugen keeps up with the best of them out on the highway on the club’s occasional overnights. “She’s pretty much up for anything and a lot of fun to be around,” Jose said.
Her daughter, Deane, came home from Seattle in 2002 and found her small, blue-eyed mom, of an age when plenty of women are in a nursing home, all tricked out in black leather and heading down the road with a backward wave.
“I’m getting older, too, and I thought, ‘I could do that,’ so I went for it,” Deane Haugen said Now, when she’s home, the two go on day trips together, taking turns driving and enjoying the companionship of the road.
“Mom told me she knows I’d rather ride than eat, but one of us needed to cook,” said Deane Haugen, who was home visiting last week. It was with some reluctance that she fired up the stove. Depending on the weather, they rode nearly every day to places like the Enchanted Highway, or up through Watford City.
Toody Haugen has always liked the adrenaline rush of air on her face, riding a moped, bicycle and three-wheelers back on the farm. She finally sold her snowmobile last winter.
She’s a “burned out” quilter and embroiderer, who still reads a lot and shakes dice for coffee every morning down at the coffee shop. She heads down to the community recreation center in Dickinson a couple times a week for water aerobics.
“Whenever someone says, ‘Let’s go,’ I don’t ask where,” she said. “I’m very flexible.”
Toody Haugen said she’s resigned to spending time alone, though, since friends her age don’t share the same interests.
She said she’s learned to love the solitude she finds out on her Goldwing, clicking through the gears, settling into road speed on cruise control.
“It’s like meditation. I do a lot of thinking and enjoy the different smells, the change in temperature when I go down a dip in the road, all the wildlife. I see things I wouldn’t normally see,” she said.
The irony is, she’s a bit of octogenarian “wildlife” no one else expects to see either.
(Reach reporter Lauren Donovan at 888-303-5511, or lauren@westriv.com.)
dakota wrote on Sep 9, 2008 10:12 PM:
and did you know she removed her baffles from her mufflers....loud pipes do save lives and they do make you live longer...l.o.l. "
Killdeer Guy wrote on Sep 9, 2008 8:52 PM:
Don Julio wrote on Sep 9, 2008 7:52 PM:
Oprah wrote on Sep 9, 2008 5:05 PM:
WD wrote on Sep 9, 2008 1:12 PM:
TrekGirl wrote on Sep 9, 2008 11:48 AM:
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