Dorothy "Dot" Robinson was a motorcyclist before she was even born. On April 22, 1912, when Dot's mother went into labor, her father, James Goulding loaded her into a sidecar and drove her to the hospital.
Her father was a sidecar designer and an amateur racer. He moved the family from Australia to America in 1918, settling in Saginaw, Michigan where he ran a motorcycle dealership.
Dot was surround by motorcycles her whole life. She grew up around motorcycles, started riding them at a young age and even met her husband, Earl Robinson, while working in her father's motorcycle shop.
“Every day after school, Earl would come to the shop to buy one part or another,” Robinson said. “By the time we were married, Earl probably had enough parts to start his own store.”
The Robinson's married in 1931 and both participated in runs and races. Dot earned her first trophy at the Flint 100 Endurance race in 1930. The couple made a record transcontinental run together in 1935 and afterwards, was asked by Harley-Davidson to run a dealership in Detroit. They ran the dealership until 1971.
In 1940, Dot became the first woman to win an AMA national competition and repeated her victory in 1946.
Also in 1940, Dot helped establish the “Motor Maids,” an organization instrumental in convincing women to try motorcycling. Motor Maids was extensively covered in a monthly feature for years in the American Motorcyclist magazine. In the 1950's Dot began wearing her famous pink outfits. She did not want to wear black traditional outfits after movies of the time portrayed motorcyclist dressed in black as outlaws.
The Robinsons sold their dealership in 1971 and traveled the world by motorcycle. Dot's favorite trip was 6,000 mile trek through Australia. Earl died in 1996, but Dot kept riding until 1998 when knee surgery made it too difficult to get on and off a motorcycle. She guessed she had totaled a million and a half miles in her years of riding.
She died in 1999 at 87 years old. Her accomplishments had earned her nickname "The First Lady of Motorcycling."
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