Rating: 
Summary: Gifted writer tackles unusual subject
Review: The writer often reminds us her avocation is poet. And she certainly writes like it, tossing in obscure words--argot, benighted--with ease. But it's her self-deprecating sense of humor that makes the book, and she's good for a chuckle every few pages.She is an apologist for the group as a whole. She reserves her criticism for the American Iron riders, observing their interest in "freedom" rarely goes beyond loutish behavior, and chronicles the many slights suffered by female riders. Her interspersed chapters on motorcycle history are interesting, and makes me wonder whether cyclists, with their gangs, riding groups, events, etc., contrary to the stereotype, are not the most *social* creatures on the planet.
Rating: 
Summary: Read it, but look between the lines.
Review: This book will further your insight into why motorcyclists ride and why they think what they do about their bikes, motorcycling, and each other. But by the time Pierson is on to her second bike mechanic boyfriend, you will realize that you're going to have to see the truth for yourself, because the author has her hands so full with her own issues -- anxiety, delusion, hypocrisy -- that she can hardly help herself or her endlessly sick bike, let alone help you, the questing reader.
She does give you all the clues you will need, so don't despair. It's just that you're on your own in figuring out what the clues mean.
The Fallen Bike Incident is a good example of Pierson's lack of self-knowledge, and why this book is accused of male-bashing.
In the rain, Pierson's bike has fallen over due to the soft, wet surface she has planted her side stand in. This is a classic blunder. It's in the curriculum of the motorcycle safety course (of which Pierson is a graduate) and she even mentions elsewhere in the book how, for this very reason, wooden blocks were passed out in the dirt parking lot of a motorcycle rally. You can easily conclude that it is her own damn fault her bike fell over, but you won't read her admitting it in so many words, and this lack of personal accountability is everywhere in The Perfect Vehicle.
In her motorcycle class she has been taught how even a grandmother can lift up even a fallen Honda GoldWing (800+ pounds of bike), but for reasons unexplained, she is unable to lift her sub-400 pound Moto Guzzi. Again, no admission that she failed to learn the very thing she was specifically taught to do; you just read that it didn't work out and draw your own conclusion. So she asks a driver in an idling van for help, and he stares at her blankly, as she frantically begs "Quickly!" Finally the nice man gets out of his dry van, into the rain, and helps her right her fallen bike, to her eternal non-gratitude.
Reflecting later, Pierson intuits, and apparently comes to believe, that the reason her benefactor didn't instantly leap into the downpour to assist her was because he was thinking that since she is a woman, she wanted help lifting a bicycle, not a motorcycle, and so she was once again the victim of rampant sexism. She will shortly use this incident as a springboard to launch into one of many catalogs of undeniably valid examples of cruel and unfair treatment women have suffered in the history of motorcycling. This stuff is good to know and you'll be glad you read about it, but keep in mind, these terrible things happened to other women, not Pierson.
In several place we read explanations of her attraction to the woefully unreliable Moto Guzzi bikes, namely that they're stylish, sexy, and that fixing your bike all the time gives you a deep sense of self-sufficiency and personal identification with your machine.
It's a fair characterization of the series of Moto Guzzi enthusiasts Pierson repeatedly enlists to fix her broken-down bike for her, gratis, but this admirable, self-reliant, hands-on individualist ain't Melissa Pierson. She apparently never begins to master bike mechanics in her 35,000 miles of riding. She's more the damsel in distress with delusions of rugged independence. You would feel some pity if she had left out all the haughty, off-hand dismissals of Japanese motorcycles for the crime of providing exactly what Pierson and millions just like her really need: an affordable and reliable bike, albeit one that lacks "character."
She at least respects BMW and Harley-Davidson enough to give us fully-cardboard-cutout stereotypes of those riders, but those bland, bloodless Japanese aren't even worth the time. Oh, and in case you didn't know, "rice burner" is not really an epithet of derision. I bet "broad" is, though.
It's an all-purpose snobbery. When in France she finds herself at a hotel that dares offer exactly what Pierson and millions like her really need (it's affordable and they've got a room), she sniffs "Holiday Inn, of all places!"
So while the author only grows a little in the course of this book, you the reader will have the opportunity to learn much more in the ugly truth behind Pierson's inadvertent revelations, as well as benefit from the several places where she is actually on to something real and manages to convey it without getting hung up on her own issues. The florid descriptions of what it feels like to ride are quite fine if you accept them outside the context of the neurotic author's world of prejudice and denial.
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