When Pat Gallacher rolled up outside our office, she was worried about getting a photo of her good side - the good side of her 1300cc Honda VTX. It's important to get the pipes in the shot, and watch out for reflections in the chrome, or the occasional accidental ec/dc staff shot might slip through. Pat has been riding bikes for about five years. During a trip to Boston last summer, she ran into East Coast Biker Chicks club founder Cookie Belcamino. After some chatting back and forth, Pat was convinced to start up a chapter at home in Scranton. The official paperwork was finished in February, and she's been getting the word out since.With the weather trying to improve, lots of people are looking to hop back on their bikes or are thinking about giving it a shot for the first time. The East Coast Biker Chicks Pa. chapter is starting strong with six members and counting. For info visit Eastcoastbikerchicks.

So what's the club all about?

It's an organization for women who ride motorcycles. It's open to any woman over 21, it's not specific to make or model of bike - anyone can join, any model. Anything that's street-legal, you can ride. It's just a group of women who like to ride together. There's a lot of different groups around, and now more and more women are riding. A lot of women might have ridden on the back of their husbands' bikes and now they're getting their own bike, or they've never ridden at all and they're getting a bike and they want to ride in a group. It's nice to ride with other women. ... We're nonprofit and any money that we do raise through charity rides will go to the Women's Resource Center. The group in Boston rides for the Massachusetts Breast Care Foundation.

What kind of events do you organize?

We'll have a lot of informal weekend rides with the group, where members will plan rides and everybody will go. We'd like to, at some point, get our own charity ride organized. Depending on membership, if we get enough people, possibly late this year. If not, we'll definitely have one next year, because it takes quite a few people to do that - to coordinate the ride, pick a weekend, when you're going to have it, the area, map out the route, you have to talk to local authorities to make sure everyone's in cooperation. You can get the roads cleared for you and get police in the local towns and boroughs to help you out with that. So it's quite a bit of work, and right now we're just getting started. We have a half-dozen members right now; once we have a few more, perhaps the end of the year. Otherwise, we sell T-shirts and stickers for fundraisers, we also could have events like Texas Hold 'Em poker night, hoagie sales, things like that.

No riding around with chains busting up cars?

[laughs] No, no, no - we all have day jobs. One statement they have on the East Coast Biker Chicks Web site is, "it's not your grandmother's motorcycle club." But it's also not the typical traditional "biker" image of people with chains and guns and all that.

So it's for all skill levels?

Yes, in fact last week I was at a night for women who were interested in learning about motorcycles and learning about riding. They gave out information about where to take the safety class - I'm a big proponent of the motorcycle-safety class. I took it myself, everybody that's in the group now, I believe, took it. It's a great way to learn - there's one woman who just joined the group who is new, she took the class but doesn't have much road time. So she's looking forward to riding with us a little bit, getting her bike legs under her. It's a great way to learn, because we have different skill levels and we plan rides to have some new people go out with some experienced people to help them out on basic riding in traffic and things like that.

Joining the club would be a great way to start?

I would recommend taking the motorcycle safety course, first and foremost. Once someone has passed the class and/or obtained their license joining our club would be a nice idea, to get used to riding with people and riding around the area, riding through towns and riding on different types of roads. When a ride is organized, one of the things you need to do is make sure that anyone going on the ride is capable of doing that particular ride. So when a member comes up with a ride, and they have a route plan, they need to make sure that everyone who says they're going on the ride is capable of doing that ride. ... If not, we'll do another ride for those members. We don't want anyone to be uncomfortable on any rides, we don't want anyone to be over their skill level on any of the rides.

What kind of routes do you take around here?

There's a lot of different rides you can take - we were talking yesterday, and there's a lot of rides around Paupack, around Honesdale, you can go up to Susquehanna County, Tunkhannock, you can head out toward Dushore, out toward New York, you can take 29 down toward Nanticoke ... you can ride through the Poconos, you can ride down to Jim Thorpe, that's always a popular ride - there's a lot of nice places down there to stop. There's almost limitless local rides in this area. If you'd like to go a little farther you can go up toward the Finger Lakes, you can go down toward Allentown, into Bucks County.

Road trip?

Sometime I would hope, perhaps next year probably, we have some members go up to Boston and meet the Boston group. They're going to try to ride down and meet up with us this year, maybe sometime late August or September. But it would be nice if we could get a group to ride up and meet the Boston group - that'd be a weekend ride; Boston is a good five hours.

Any other big events coming up?

This weekend, April 29, we're going to be at the bike show at the Kingston Armory, which is a Wyoming Valley Children's Association benefit. We will be there, we'll have a table, flyers, membership applications, some of the current members will stop by - I will be there the whole time, so you can meet me and some of the other members of the club. After that, we're going to try to have, weather permitting, a ride the weekend of May 5. There's a ride for Motorcycle Awareness Month, so I'm going to see if some of our members would be able to participate in that ride as well. That's supposed to be a nice ride - motorcycle awareness is something that we're all interested in. There's so many motorcycles on the road nowadays that cars have to keep an eye out for motorcycles. We like to promote motorcycle safety - not only safe riding on our part, but other people being aware of the increasing number of motorcycles on the road to help reduce accidents.

What are your members like?

Right now we have everyone from someone who just got their license to someone who's been riding for years and years. There are all different age groups - 20s, 30s, 40s , "above 40s." So all different age groups, all different skill levels right now, and I'm sure it'll continue to be so in the future.

What would you say to someone thinking about starting to ride?

Just do it. I think it's a lot of fun. I love riding motorcycles. If I didn't like it so much, I wouldn't have started this group - I think having a group to ride with, a group you're comfortable riding with, is very important and very helpful. I know there's a lot of people out there who don't ride much because they don't have anybody to ride with. It's great if you have people to ride with, and maybe our group can help women who are a little scared of riding with the "big tough guys" who have been riding forever. So they can come to our group, it's all women, and we'll help them out. If they're interested in riding and getting their license, they've just got to get out there and do it.