Mother and daughter on their way to the Pan Pacific World's Expo, across the country, from Brooklyn to San Fran... when do you think was the last time a mom and daughter rode a side car together? Probably not since these two, in 1915
When 26-year-old Effie Hotchkiss set off from her home in Brooklyn, New York, in May 1915 for the Panama Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, on her 3-speed Harley-Davidson, she was bound to raise a few eyebrows—even if she hadn’t stuffed her 52-year-old mother Avis in a sidecar. Effie was first and foremost a motorcycle fanatic tired of her banking clerical job on Wall Street and eager to see the world, she would recount in an unpublished memoir written some 25 years later. In the summer of 1914 Effie and her siblings acquired equal shares of their father’s estate, she knew exactly what to do with hers: buy a new Harley-Davidson and head for California. She had a sidecar attached to her motocycle, loaded it with her mom, and supplies, and headed for California They headed up the Hudson valley to Albany, turning west toward Buffalo, then on to Chicago, averaging 150 miles a day. They drew large crowds of curious onlookers wherever they stopped. They would typically rent rooms from ...