At 80, she’s still roaring up the road

14/10/2008 by info.

“Here’s someone who should be an inspiration to anyone who calls themselves a biker…….!” Phil 

Age and crashes can’t stop biker

By Keith O’Brien, Globe Staff  |  October 14, 2008

At the scene of her motorcycle crash last week, 80-year-old Margaret “Peggie” Blais, covered in blood, hobbled by broken bones, and laying on her back between two guardrails, made a simple request to the hovering paramedics: Don’t cut off her leather jacket.

It was classic Peggie. The redhead from Danvers, gone a bit gray, has been a rebel on two wheels since the 1950s. She practically raised her nine children in black leather. And from the beginning, Blais was not content to ride on the back of her husband’s bike. She’d have her own.

But there was nothing Blais could say last week to persuade authorities not to cut away her leather jacket; her injuries were too great. In the single-vehicle crash on Route 62 in Danvers last Tuesday afternoon, Blais lost control of her three-wheel bike and was thrown to the ground, smashing her right arm in multiple places, breaking her left leg, and causing severe facial lacerations that initially left her hard to recognize.

Now listed in fair condition at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Blais is talking to family while fellow bikers talk about her. In text messages, e-mails, and phone calls, every biker seems to want to know how the matriarch of Massachusetts motorcycling is doing.

“She embodies the whole spirit of freedom, the ability to take control, to do things your own way,” said Vince Silvia, secretary of the Massachusetts Motorcyclists Survivors Fund. “Not only did she ride with her husband, she wanted to be in control herself. She wanted to ride herself, to step up. ‘I’m woman, hear me roar,’ type of thing. And she did. She roared.”

Blais, the daughter of an electrician and part-time waitress in Marblehead, was not amused when her husband, Robert Blais (pronounced like “blaze”), first brought home a motorcycle in 1949. Women simply didn’t ride motorcycles back then, recalled her oldest son, Larry Blais, now 61. And it wasn’t like the Blais family had money to throw around. Peggie Blais cleaned houses and did others’ laundry to help make ends meet.

But she soon changed her mind about biking. In an interview last year with the Salem News, Peggie Blais said she came to like the feeling of the wind in her hair. Motorcycling became a family hobby. The children were often dressed in matching pink and black outfits and helmets. The youngsters rode in side cars while Peggie Blais cut a striking figure straddling a bike of her own. It was pink and black, too, and adorned with a donkey. The joke was that Blais was as stubborn as a mule.

“She had screaming red hair and she liked to dress us up and parade us around,” said Larry Blais.
“Sometimes, us kids would get bored with it. But I don’t know how many people would stop us and compliment us.”

By the late 1950s, the family was well known at motorcycle rallies, including Laconia Motorcycle Week in New Hampshire, where family members won awards for their matching get-ups. But life soon intervened. Peggie and Robert got divorced. With nine children to raise, Peggie Blais had less and less time for riding. And even though the children kept up the family tradition - each one of them learned how to ride - Peggie essentially stopped.

She grew old, and had a heart attack and two knee-replacement surgeries. Friends died and so did her former husband, in 2006. By then, Landon Blais, Peggie’s youngest son, said his mother seemed ready “to sit around the house and be old.” And that’s when Landon made a decision that not all his siblings agreed with: He gave her a new bike, adding a third wheel to make it safer.

“Some people think I’m crazy for letting my 80-year-old mother ride,” he said. “But you know something? It made her feel 60 again.”

It was pink and black and adorned with a donkey, like her original. It said “Mom” on the side, and Peggie Blais loved it. She rode it around Danvers, in her signature pink and black helmet, and began to recapture a slice of the fame she had known long ago.

In August, she was named marshal of Nelson’s Ride, a motorcycle run to benefit the Massachusetts Motorcyclists Survivors Fund. She led 1,200 riders out of Salisbury Beach, all smiles in a leather vest, and returned to Laconia this year, riding with her children again.

“She’s just a doll,” said Charlie St. Clair, executive director of the Laconia Motorcycle Week Association.

“Just a really, really down-to-earth, nice person. And she’s obviously, like any mother, just thrilled to be with her kids.”

Now her children are trying to determine what happened to her on the road last Tuesday as she drove to a local clinic for a regular check-up. State Police are investigating. But Landon Blais, and some of her other children, say they have no regrets about letting their mother ride again, and they believe she’ll be back on her motorcycle soon.

“She’s a tough old girl,” said Larry Blais.

And, according to family members, she has her priorities in order. In her first conversation with her children after the crash last week, Peggie Blais said she was worried about one thing.

Her bike.

Keith O’Brien can be reached at kobrien@globe.com.

© Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

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