Sunshine Nelson, a native of the Santa Cruz mountains, learned to ride because her mom didn’t want her to be afraid of anything.
Nelson, 68, has been riding motorcycles since she was six months old and appeared at the Hollister Rally in cowboy boots, red fishnets, white shorts and a patriotic halter top decorated in red, white and blue sequins.
Her reason for dressing up?
“Believe it or not, I’m shy and when I dress up, people come and talk with me,” Nelson said.
Over the years, Nelson has logged an impressive 496,000 miles on her bike. Each summer, the psychiatric nurse who works at the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San Jose tries to take a 10,000-mile ride across the country on her bike, going solo on rural back roads where she often stays the night at houses of people she meets along the way.
Nelson and her bike have survived a couple of rough accidents together, and the experiences earned her motorcycle a new name.
“Her name used to be Baby, but we’ve been through so much that I call her girlfriend,” Nelson said.
The motorcycle enthusiast first learned to bike when her uncle took her for a ride on his motorcycle before she was a year old. Nelson’s mother had always been afraid of bikes and didn’t want her daughter to have the same fear.
“She didn’t want us to be afraid of anything, so when my uncle asked if I could ride, she said ‘yes,’” Nelson recalled. “I’ve been riding ever since.”
As Nelson watched the bikes whizz past on San Benito Street, she drank from a large, white water bottle covered in stickers. One read: “For some there’s therapy, for the rest there’s motorcycles.”
Every few minutes, a rally attendee smiled at Nelson and asked to take her picture.
“If I had a penny for every picture that has been taken, I’d be rich,” Nelson said. “Not a dollar – a penny.”
