Female bikers just want to have fun, too, and at top speed.

This motorcyclist has raced a sport bike on a speedway and wound it out on a drag strip, even cracked a few ribs while jumping a dirt bike on an off-road track.

"When you love the sport, nothing like that stops you," she said. That's right, she.

Kay Pratt, an Oklahoma City real estate agent, is part of the fastest growing segment of motorcyclists women riders.

For Pratt and other women bikers, there's nothing like the wind in your hair, or at least in your full-face helmet, leathers and riding boots. At last count and that was four years ago 635,000 American women owned motorcycles, an increase of 36 percent from five years earlier, according to the Motorcycle Industry Council.

More women especially in the 40-and-older age category are finding themselves with more freedom now that children are grown and careers are peaking, Alice Sexton said. And they're rolling with that freedom. Also, said the Torrance, Calif., woman, 49, who is president of the USA division of the Women's International Motorcycle Association, more women have grown up in the era of Title IX. That collegiate mandate made sports more available for females, and that made women more confident and athletic, said Sexton, a former collegiate tennis player.

"I think that has something to do with more women in motorcycling," she said.

Pratt, who has competed in a mountain bike race and enjoys "black diamond" ski slopes, started riding motorcycles for various reasons. First, it was curiosity, then just to be able to do something with her husband, James, a longtime motorcyclist, and the couple's two children. Now, however, it's for the same reason most women ride: girls just want to have fun.

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