Fathers take their sons fishing, or maybe to the ballpark. Mothers and daughters go shopping, or perhaps get their nails done. Such is modern life.

Wrong! In today’s world, generalizations about family life just aren’t realistic. Take the case of Frank and Kerry Smith.

“I swear, I was born riding in the womb,” Kerry says. “My friends think it’s crazy, but all I know is, I went to Bike Week in Daytona when I was 6 months old. So I guess it’s safe to say that, with me, motorcycling kind of stuck.” When it comes to motorcycles, it’s clear from her laughter and the excitement in her voice that Kerry relishes her role as the odd girl out.

Her father, Frank, a truck driver from Hillsborough, New Jersey, has been riding bikes for over 30 years. Frank started vintage road racing back in the ’80s, and he’s always had a thing for European bikes. When his baby girl came along, he didn’t waste any time putting her in the saddle.

“When Kerry was about 3 or 4 years old, I bought her one of those mini Montessa motocrossers,” he says. “Well, after we picked her out of the bushes a few times, my wife and I decided we’d better put that one away. As she got a little older, she’d ride my Go-Ped around. I just couldn’t keep her off the two-wheelers.”

Growing up around her father’s collection of bikes and going to weekend road races with her parents (mom Cathy is an enthusiast and rider, too) ensured that the motorcycle bug bit Kerry hard. She began riding on her own when she was 16 and finally bought her own bike, a Suzuki SV650, a couple of years ago.

But that’s not the gist of our story. Our story today concerns Motogiro USA, the North American version of the famous road trials that have taken place in Italy every year since the 1950s. Frank Smith has run the Motogiro d’Italia three or four times, and when the US Classic Racing Association (USCRA) brought a version of the event to America a few years ago, he was already waiting at the starting line, revving his vintage engine.

“I was all excited after the USCRA announced they were gonna do a Motogiro here, and I was telling Kerry about it, and she wanted to do it with me,” Frank says. “There was just no way I was going to talk her out of it.”

A combination of endurance riding and special trials, the event features two days of riding, with small-displacement vintage bikes piloted by enthusiasts on local roads. (In RoadBike’s December/January issue, Editor Jessica wrote about her experiences at last year’s Motogiro USA.) Most entrants say the event is won or lost in the special test sections. After each timed loop, there’s a short cone course that a rider must navigate in a specified time. The test requires balance and finesse, as the object is to ride at an incredibly slow pace. Entrants are electronically timed to 1/100th of a second and penalized for being early or late, knocking over a cone, going off course, or touching down a foot. “It’s not so much hard as it is tricky,” Frank says. “The whole event isn’t really about how fast you can go; it’s more like he who screws up the least wins! But, gosh, it’s a lot of fun.”

“Oh, it’s all about the people and the fun, really,” Kerry agrees. Easy to say for a girl who took second place in her class the first time out. She was with a larger group — “I have, like, 20 dads out there. It’s just a big family,” she says — tooling along on her 160cc Honda. “I was just following the group, and my dad was behind me, or so I thought. At one point, the person who was in the lead realized he’d made a wrong turn, so he turned around, and so did the rest of us. It was only then that I realized my dad wasn’t in the rear anymore.” Frank’s bike had broken down a while back. But Kerry, with motor oil in her veins, didn’t even slow down. “What was I going to do, stop?” she asks incredulously. “I had to keep going!” Her perseverance paid off, as did her skills in the special test sections, and she wound up second in her class in 2004.

Last year, Frank took an unfortunate spill that kept him out of the Motogiro. (Kerry, once again, couldn’t be kept out of the race and rode her Honda 160.) But even though Frank couldn’t ride for a while, he definitely could shop. So, he picked up the vintage Pirella you see here, which he plans to run at this year’s Giro. Kerry, already revved up for the event, hopes to move up from the Honda and test her skills on this classic Ducati.

And so, like the Cunninghams and Cleavers of classic TV fame, the Smiths of New Jersey are just your typical American family. Except that rather than spending their quality time at Arnold’s having milkshakes, they spend it on two wheels. Just like the Fonz. RB