Let’s be honest, I’m pretty badass.

Though don’t have any tattoos, rocker boyfriends or mug shots to date, I bend the rules in my own sort of way. I skip the occasional I-Hum lecture and bike on the sidewalks. I’ve even said the word “sex” on national television. So when the founder of the Stanford Motorcycle Club picked me up for our interview on the “Cadillac of Motorcycles,” I have to say I wasn’t blown away at the proposition.

My dreams of joining Hell’s Angels with my hair blowing wildly in the wind were further thwarted by an oversized helmet. But in true journalistic fashion, I chivalrously put my rebel-rousing tendencies aside for one ride and realized that, sports bike or not, I was the closest to a Biker Babe that I was ever going to get.

Unfortunately, my biker image trailed far behind that of my driver’s, Chris Pumo, co-term by day and biker by lunch breaks. Pumo’s leather jacket and ripped jeans proved his slight edge on the coolness factor. Also, while I was only trailing along for one Sunday afternoon ride, Pumo can be credited as the founder of the Stanford Motorcycle Club.

Pumo started the organization about a month and a half ago as a way to organize a forum for all of the area’s bikers. Fed up with having to travel to San Jose for a group ride, he posted flyers near motorcycle parking spaces and on parked motorcycles around campus. He received a surge of responses, and thanks to the resurrection of an old motorcycle Stanford e-mail list and word-of-mouth, the club has grown in size to about 30 people.

Members range from senior Robby Ratan, who bought his first motorcycle from eBay three months ago, to 51-year-old Craig Haggart, a Stanford Linear Accelerator Center staff member, who has been riding motorcycles for more than 35 years.

Pumo bought his first bike, a 1980 Kawasaki, three years ago. Since then, the Kawasaki has had two successors. Pumo is now working on putting together a 1970 Harley Davidson, which he bought last summer disassembled in cardboard boxes — and without a frame.

After reading how-to books and talking to mechanics, Pumo said he has been able to complete roughly 60 percent of the job and hopes to finish it entirely by this summer.

“It’s like a giant Lego set for adults, only a little more complicated,” Pumo said.

While Pumo’s parents initially disapproved of his first motorcycle purchase, his dad has since come around, though Pumo says that his mother is still a little more hesitant.

“I don’t know if anyone’s mom would love them riding a motorcycle,” he said.

That said, however, members hardly go on their share of joy rides.

Weekly meetings are Fridays at 11:30 a.m. at the Stanford Driving Range Parking Lot, where the group meets to ride up to Alice’s, on the corner of Skyline and Highway 84, for lunch. On the weekends, members will sometimes take a longer ride, such as the one planned for a Half-Moon Bay mechanic show next Sunday.

In the future, Pumo hopes to plan an overnight for the group, and he is thinking about trying to make the club officially Stanford-affiliated in order to increase publicity. However, the latter is not a huge priority for Pumo.

“I’m not so interested in [making it official],” he said. “I’m more interested in Stanford riders getting together and being able to go for a ride at a moment’s notice.”

For club members such as Haggart, biking gives new meaning to the word passion.

“Riding a motorcycle on a twisty road is sort of a combination of riding a horse and dancing,” Haggart said. “There’s a wonderful fluidity about the skill it takes to do it well, and the machine both responds to your input and moves in a certain way on its own. Even a ‘mild’ motorcycle has an incredible power-to-weight ratio, so the response can be incredibly exhilarating.”

Ratan, who just bought his bike last year, also expressed his enthusiasm for the sport.

“In my first month I put over 1,000 miles on the bike just cruising around the foothills,” he said.

In his second month, he was less lucky.

“I crashed because I hit some gravel while going around a blind turn,” Ratan said. “Luckily it wasn’t too bad, and I learned an important lesson about rider attitude: Never ride in a rush.”

Ratan’s fall is the only one to date for the club.

“I guess accidents happen “ Pumo said. “Motorcycling is not badminton.”

He noted that group traveling, in addition to being more fun, is also safer.

“Safety is a really important thing to me,” Pumo said. “I try to make all club rides, safe rides.”

Pumo said that the club keeps the group pace to the slowest or least experienced member. Other club members agreed this was a good tactic.

“To me, it’s not so much about going fast in an absolute sense, but going fast in a relative sense,” Haggart said. “That is, anyone can go 135 m.p.h. in a straight line on a modern motorcycle; the fun — and, in my opinion, the real skill — comes from going 30 or 40 in a corner where you would normally do 20 or 25.”

Ratan agreed that absolute speed is not his favorite aspect of riding.

“The thing I love most about riding is that you are really part of the landscape — you feel the air temperature and smell the trees — as opposed to a car, where you are a passive observer through a window,” Ratan said.

Ratan pointed out that there was an ever further perk of the job: “Chicks dig guys with bikes.”