For Cris Sommer Simmons, riding and preserving history belong together. She first rode a motorcycle solo at fourteen. In 1985 she co-founded Harley Women, a magazine devoted to women motorcyclists. It gave space to experiences that had long received little attention in mainstream motorcycle culture.
Simmons went on to write for other publications and produced a book on early American women motorcyclists. Her interest was never limited to archives. In 2010 she completed the inaugural Motorcycle Cannonball endurance ride on a 1915 motorcycle. She named it Effie after Effie Hotchkiss, who crossed the United States in 1915 with her mother Avis on a sidecar-equipped motorcycle.
The journey did not end there. Simmons rode the same historic machine in long-distance events again in 2016 and 2018. Keeping old machinery moving across a continent demands patience as well as practical mechanical knowledge. Her example shows that motorcycling history is more than a line of objects in a display case: it continues when riders care for the machines, take them on the road and share the stories of those who rode before them.