PERSONALITY

A PROFILE OF CAROL PLANT BOUSON - AVID MOTORCYCLIST, HARD WORKER ...
AND A VERY NICE LADY

Reprinted from Road Rider, Jan. 1979

A couple of years ago at a national gathering of Bavarian motorcycle enthusiasts in Colorado's Rocky Mountains, an adventurous biker walked up to an obviously harried rally official (who appeared to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown) and asked how to get to Pikes Peak.

"I don't know," he was told. "I don't have any idea — I'm going bananas — I don't even know my own name." The official then pointed across the meadowed campground at a tall, trim, attractive, gray-haired woman wearing a straw cowboy hat. She was carrying on an animated conversation with a large group of riders, smiling easily, completely at home in the hubbub of the rally activity. "Go ask Carol," the official told the biker. "She knows everything."

Although the statement was completely valid, Carol Plant Bouson probably would have denied the allegation ... then promptly given the rally goer the instructions he wanted.

Carol is like that. Totally competent, but gently self-effacing at the same time. It's part of the reason she is one of the most respected personalities in motorcycling today.

Which is not to say the lady comes under the "shy, retiring, grandmotherly" category. Far from it. If anything Carol is an effervescent past-mistress in the art of verbal riposte. As a firm believer that age is only a number, signifying nothing in particular, she tends to play down her senior citizenship. Not too long ago a somewhat effusive fellow cyclist — on meeting Carol for the first time — gushed, "But you simply don't look all that old."

Compared to what?" Carol shot back beguilingly.

That, too, is part of what makes Carol, Carol.

She was given her first ride on a motorcycle when she was still in high school ("Long enough ago," she explains, "that they were still calling it a 'pillion passenger.' ") She enjoyed the experience, so she learned to ride — and soloed on a friend's machine in 1937. In 1952 she purchased her first motorcycle — an H-D side-valve 45. It was the first in a long line of various brands leading up to her present solo mount: a BMW R90S. The R90S is her fifth BMW, by the way. She has been an ardent Beastie Buff since the early 1960s.

Her credentials as a biker are impressive. She averages more than 20,000 touring miles annually, including long crosscountry solo treks, innumerable rides in company with her many friends and fellow club members, and share-and-share-alike voyages with her husband Herb in the family sidecar rig — a BMW 750 engine tucked into an R60/2 frame which is lashed to a Bender-Florin hack. (Last summer, Carol and Herb took turns driving and riding in the chair from their home in Santa Clara, California to Rutland, Vermont for the BMWMOA's national rally.)

She is one of the most active and involved people in motorcycling, a "joiner" in the most positive sense of the word. A current list of organizations to which she belongs includes: AMA, BMWMOA (an association for which she has served in a variety of executive positions - from editing the club newsletter to chairing the 1977 national rally committee), the BMW Club of Northern California, the South Coast BMW Club, the Ladies BMW Motorcycle Association, Retreads, Helping Hands, WIMA (Women's International Motorcycle Association), and the California based lobby group MORE (Motorcycle Owners, Riders and Enthusiasts).

But in spite of all her accomplishments and activities, Carol has had a special sort of yen for a number of years. It has been her long time dream to tour through Europe on a motorcycle — something she never expected to happen. But you never know. As always, wonders tend to be performed in mysterious ways.

It started when an article about Carol appeared in the April, 1978 issue of A American Motorcyclist — the journal of the American Motorcyclist Association. A gentleman named Volker Beer, factory motorcycle representative for BMW of North America, Inc., read the article, liked the idea — and subsequently wrote an article about Carol for the factory magazine, BMW Journal, a German publication. The title of Beer's article was, "She Dreams of Touring Europe."

One of the people who read the article was Herr R. Haindl who holds the position of general manager at the Denzel BMW dealership in Salzburg, Austria. Haindl promptly offered to loan Carol a BMW if she could join Bob Beach's European Tour in the fall of 1978.

From that point, things really started rolling as everyone concerned became caught up in the spirit of the idea. Bob Beach made a significant contribution by offering Carol a discount on the tour price. BMW of North America chipped in some expense money. And with one thing and another, Carol suddenly found herself in the enviable position of a person whose dream was actually coming true!