Five Questions with Lissa Arsenault

Jerryland

Five Questions with Lissa Arsenault
FAHQ Racing’s West Virginia Rep

by Jerry Bernardo

JB: The main reason I wanted to interview you is you are the epitome of ‘make boys cry’ out on the racetrack. One does not have to be a well-known name to get the respect not many female off roaders get. If it is an easy race, you are not interested, is this true?

LM:   I was always attracted to tight woods, like cut your bars down to 26” inches and let’s bang pine bark. That affinity early on is what's always driven me towards learning to be proficient in all terrains, even so far as having done the NE24HR as a two-man team and the hard enduro. Tough Like RORR, with zero trials experience. Just old school, no course splits, no spotters, gnarly rocky and stick farm enduro’s as my teacher. I need to be challenged and I like figuring out line selection or dragging my bike.

JB: When you competed in the ISDE down in Brazil, did that week of enduro ass beating satiate your desire for a challenge?

LM:  The challenge with Brazil, besides the sun riding shotgun on our backs, was the fuel for the club teams. No one could have predicted just how bad the fuel was. What we pre-tested on before impounding, I had to shove a rag in the filler to catch the metallic flake from. Add in the change in fuel quality during the event, which of course changed the jetting to where the bike wouldn't run above the pilot. A lot of lessons were learned (like American’s don't dance, Italian's wear loud shoes and Brazilian fuel is sugar ping juice).

JB: I know there are a few all female motorcycle schools out there. You don’t subscribe to that. I get that some women need riding instruction, but can you explain to me why that battle of the sexes fires you up a bit.

LM: I wasn't expecting this one! I started riding/racing off-road when it wasn't super common for women to be out there. Heck, the first Hare Scramble I did, they ran the Powder Puff class with the kids on 50cc’s. I never looked at it from a gender standpoint, or most things in life from that genderized view. You don't have to help me, but you also don't have to hinder me either. I've only more recently realized that a lot of women, especially from my era and older, didn't get the kind of supportive upbringing I did, as in playing street hockey with all my guy cousins and adult uncles and getting my ass slammed into the boards as a kid. I had my Opa encouraging me and spent hours conversing about cars. I subscribed to Popular Hot Rodding at 11, went to car shows by myself as a teen and bought my first dirt bike with babysitting money.

No one ever told me in my family that I couldn't do something because I was a girl. Because of that, I always did whatever I liked, put myself in male spaces, was almost always welcomed because I came in like I belonged, and I do. That's not to say early on racing I didn't have some pushback. I understand the premise behind these guy's only ADV rides and women's only dirt bike get togethers, but I don't subscribe to it. We're all people, we all share the love of dirt. Besides I'm not doing shit without my favourite riding buddy, my husband Rob. If he has to stay home, I'm staying home too.

JB: When you worked in the bike shop, guys would come in and just see the ‘girl behind the counter.’ Little did they know, you are a vault of moto information, not just a pretty face. How many times did you send them back out with a different mindset?

LM: Every day. I got assholes occasionally, because somehow tits make my feeble female mind incapable of understanding mechanical complexities that they can't when I'm explaining it to them. My favourite was when a father would bring his son in with him to drop off a dirt bike tire to get changed and I was the one changing it. Not going to lie, I always got a chuckle from that, but I also get it. If I could afford to pay someone one else to change my tires, I would but then again, I don't trust anyone to work on my own bikes besides myself.

JB: You and your husband Rob moved from New Jersey down to West Virginia. Was that a result of off-road land use shrinking up north at every turn?

LM: Living in New Jersey, dating back over twenty years ago already, the constant barrage of environmental group attacks on not just legal public land use but also private property access, that's only ramped up in verocity over the years, literally made me miserable. To be an off-road rider or racer in the Northeast, which is a literal battle ground, you must also be politically active because doing nothing is just contributing to our demise. And in NJ, not to be defeatist, but it's a losing battle. A death by a million cuts, by “appointed for life” public paycheck suckers who've discovered they can't be voted out and that if they just say “No” or “Because I can” when asked to elaborate, they keep their lofty positions while doing less work. These people are the bane of my existence.

On the other hand, West Virginia just announced this past year that they're opening-up for this coming Memorial Day weekend (2026) a 100k+ acre single track riding area, on top of the existing Hurricane single track riding area and Hatfield McCoy trailheads throughout the southern part of the state. They have a whole OHV weekend at the Capitol building in Charleston where the state government goes out wheelin’ with local groups. You don't get much more off-road friendly on the East Coast than WV, it is literally almost heaven.