Mom and Daughter MXers
August 26, 2005 – ATV racers Michele "Mickey" Ellis and her daughter, Taylor, live on an 800-acre farm in Dunnsville, Virginia, complete with a motocross track, 6.5-acre woods course, and hundreds of cowpies, which make for some entertaining times when unsuspecting friends come over to ride.
"We are always polite and let our guests go first over a cow pasture jump," Mickey says. "The cows seem to take great delight in backing up to the landing and letting loose. So a friend takes a jump, lands nice, comes up to us with mud all over his bike and face and, with a straight face, he asks: 'Why do you have corn in your mud?'
"He was a city boy and didn't pay attention to the fact that cows eat corn!"
When Mickey, Taylor, and Mickey's husband, William, have friends over to ride, safety is their top concern.
"We follow all the safety rules—especially riding with proper gear, buddies, and sober,'' Mickey says. ``In fact, when people come to my farm to ride I don't allow any alcohol even if you aren't riding because I can't be there to trust that the person drinking won't give some to a rider."
When not riding on their own land, Mickey, 47, and Taylor, 20, are racing their almost-identical Yamaha YFZ450s. They have been racing for a little more than a year, and say that being women racers has some advantages but also raises a few eyebrows.
One advantage is that it's easy to get guys to help them in the pits, when needed, although they usually don't need help because they've become pretty competent at taking care of their own machines.
Sometimes, though, help from guys can backfire.
"It's kind of funny," Mickey says. "All you have to do is go up to a guy and ask for a socket—oh my gosh—they are bound by some male instinct to come and fix our bike. We laugh.
"Sometimes we just have to let them help," she says. "But I did learn my lesson at the National letting someone wash my bike—he left the air box lid on for the race, he has a stock bike so he didn't know any different. I could tell I was missing some power."
The gals do take some good-natured ribbing, though, especially since they show up at each race with more than 20 full sets of riding gear.
"The guys tease us about the number of times we change our clothes at a race," Mickey says. "Our comeback is that we are girls and we have to match and be clean.
"You will never see us race in dirty gear or on a dirty bike," she adds. "I like a clean bike in between motos just to check for missing and loose bolts. The only time we didn't have enough time to wash Taylor's bike, she dropped a nerf bar on the track due to a loose bolt. Lesson learned."
Even though Mickey and Taylor have only been racing a little more than a year, they're fanatical about it. In fact, sometimes they'll go race at one track and then make it to another track for racing in the same day.
Mickey's husband is a dirtbiker, and sometimes joins his wife and daughter at the ATV races. But most of the time it's mother and daughter on the track, having a good time.
"Now, just the smell of race fuel gets our blood pumping," she says. "It is a great family sport."