Motorcycle Quote of the Day

[Biggles]

I walked a fine line as I taught. I loved my classroom and my students, but it was often mentally exhausting work. On the bike, however, out there with Rosie between the fields and the forests, I could leave the restrictions of my classroom behind. Out there, with four hundred pounds of machinery humming beneath me, my thoughts would center on what was immediate - the road and the surrounding environment - and my mind would relax and renew. Out there, hundreds of miles of secondary road riding later, I came to know, and to love, a region that was not my own.
Breaking The Limit   Karen Larsen  p xv

[Biggles]

It was on the way back to campus that I saw a motorcycle parked on someone's front lawn with a sale sign tucked between the handlebars and the windshield. I pulled over and walked across the grass to look at a piece of machinery that somehow had just started a song playing inside my mind. She was a Harley-Davidson 1200 Sportster, red with chrome accessories, black leather saddlebags and seat, custom straight pipes, a peanut tank, and less than three thousand miles on the odometer. I wrapped my right hand around the throttle and immediately realized that this motorcycle was something I recognized. Maybe she could teach me - as Rosie had taught me - love for, and connection with, a region that was not my own. Maybe this motorcycle could, as Rosie had done years ago, open a whole new landscape of thought and motion.
Lucy, as I came to know that Sportster, did all of that and more.
Breaking The Limit   Karen Larsen  p3

[Biggles]

The man behind the register had steady eyes, brown skin, and a sweet smile. He took my five-dollar bill and, looking through the window at the bags on Lucy, asked me where I was going. I almost didn't believe the unnatural squeak of my own voice when I heard the word "Alaska." Two minutes later, out on the pavement by the pumps, I was wedging my water bottle between theT-bag and the backpack when the attendant appeared.
"Here," he said, pressing a tiny tiger-tail keychain into my hand. "You should collect something from each state that you go through." He cast no judgment on my destination or choice of vehicle and in that gift, a promotional Exxon key chain, and the small suggestion to gather mementos along the way, was the implicit statement that such a journey was possible. My mind quieted and my confidence returned as he shook my hand and wished me luck.
Breaking The Limit   Karen Larsen  p11

[Biggles]

The metal grating that formed the roadbed of the arch was like that of the bridges that I had driven many times before across the Delaware River between New Jersey and Pennsylvania, but the span was longer, and not flat. I can understand why bridge builders like metal grating: it's relatively cheap, strong, and will not collect pooled water, or ice and snow, like solid surfaces. The problem with metal grating, however, is that its rough corrugations pull the wheels of motorcycles from side to side. It's an unnerving feeling to have a bike shift unbidden beneath you, and for a moment, coming over the uphill slope toward the apex of that bridge over the Mississippi, I felt the hairs rise on the back of my neck as Lucy slid toward the guardrail. In the shift of the bike one must consciously control the instinctive reaction to set a foot down hard to correct an unexpected sideslip. I know people who have done this on metal grate bridges and have had broken ankles to show for it. Feet on the pegs, feet on the pegs. The words ran through my mind, a self-repeating mantra, and I tried to consciously relax and let Lucy run between my hands, guided yet loose, slow enough to keep control, yet fast enough to keep a driving forward momentum. We passed into Iowa without incident and I stopped to take a picture of that Mississippi River bridge: the divide between the eastern and western United States as well as a tiny personal victory.
Breaking The Limit   Karen Larsen  p30-1

[Biggles]

A tiny woman, sitting with her husband at a sparkling white Formica table onto which sandwiches had just been deposited, stood up.
"C mon, honey, Til take you down to the pump and you can use my card."
"No, I'm interrupting. Please, sit down, finish your lunch, I can wait."
"No, no, it's not going anywheres. C'mon, I've done this for others before, and I can certainly do it for you." Pat was in her late fifties with twinkling green eyes, carefully arranged hair, green slacks, and a white sweater so spotless it glowed in the misty afternoon light. At five feet three inches I towered a good head above her, but she seemed a woman who, for whatever she lacked in stature, more than made up for it in warmth and kindness. At the pump she ran her card through and we talked about her part of Kansas and my desire to see the country as I ran a little less than two dollars' worth of gas into Lucy's tank. I asked if she had ever done any travelling around the States.
"No," Pat said. "I'm not one of those travelling folks, going here and there. I like it here, the furthest I been away from Logan is Colby, and I don't want to go anywheres else. Some people they go here, they go there, but me, I like to stay home, and I've never really wanted to go and see... you know... the Grand Canyon ... or Las Vegas." The pump stopped. I screwed the cap back on the tank and reached for my wallet.
"Now you put that away," Pat said. "What is it, all of two dollars? I'm not going to take that from you." She wished me good luck, told me to be careful, stepped back into her white Cutlass to drive up the street to where her lunch waited. I pulled my driving gloves back on, watching her taillights and thinking about the people who spent years, and sometimes their entire lives, searching the world for what Pat knew she had in Logan, Kansas: an understanding of place, a sense of belonging.
Breaking The Limit   Karen Larsen  p46-7

[Biggles]

I pulled Lucy up and onto the narrow concrete porch that fronted the motel and tied her tarp down. There, under the overhang, she was partially sheltered and I could see her through my room's picture window. Perhaps three minutes after closing the door on the dust devils in the parking lot, the rain began in opaque slanting sheets and hazelnut-sized hail pelted down in a snare drum of noise on the metal roof. There are few things so blissful as to be dry and safe and sheltered when storm rages just inches away. With Lucy parked just outside the window, shedding rain and out of the worst of the weather, country music videos on the television, and a can of chili for dinner eaten cold with a spoon, I was content.
Breaking The Limit   Karen Larsen  p52

[Biggles]

Most motorcycle trips are olfactory experiences. I think it's true what I've heard said: that only bikers genuinely understand why it is that dogs like to ride with their heads, tongues lolling, ears flapping, and noses sniffing, out the windows of cars. The wind carries with it a thousand observations of the land that it brushes over. I had spent the last eleven days breathing the continent in. The forests and lakes of the east left the perception of dying pine and soft wet leaf mould in the air. Corn, springing from the black earth of Iowa and  Missouri, had a heady, fecund scent. The smell of growing wheat is different when a cool breeze shakes the heavy dew from its golden heads early in the morning and when it bakes in the sun late in the afternoon. It is the same plant but each scent is entirely different. In Colorado, what filled the air in the climb up toward the central ridge of the Rockies were the clean dry scents of meadow grasses in the sun, sage at roadside, and the upwelling of fir trees from the valleys.
Breaking The Limit   Karen Larsen  p55

[Biggles]

Route 82 continued in a long sloping drop that followed the Roaring Fork Glenwood Springs. At the Harley dealership the mechanics replaced my rear directional signal. They also suggested that my oil leak problems were due to failing umbrella valves. They could fix the valves, they said, if I left Lucy and a few hundred dollars in the repair bays on the following day.
"Could I use your phone to call my mechanic in New Jersey?" They were surprised by my question but graciously let me call from the office. Steve Scherer was in the shop when the call went through to Trenton, but he left what he was doing to come and talk with me. Five-foot-eight, all attitude and lean muscle, heavy on tattoos and light on patience for casual chatter, Steve had overhauled Lucy before I left. He was a good mechanic and I trusted him implicitly. I explained the oil, Independence Pass, and what the mechanics had said about the umbrella valves.
"Oh shit, Karen, them guys are just trying to make a buck. How high did you say that pass was? It's the pressure change, man, not the valves. Have them drain off some oil, change the filter, and if you're still having problems in a couple of days, then do the valves. Unless you want to spend a shitload of money and time? No? All right then. How's the trip, good? Good. Now put those assholes on the phone and call me back if you have problems."
I turned to the mechanic with a smile. "Steve would like to speak to you.”
Breaking The Limit   Karen Larsen  p61-2

[Biggles]

The embodiment of his business, and a possible character out of a gunslinger paperback, Dave wore a black cowboy hat low atop his ears. Broad, gray mustaches swept across his face and joined forces with the substantial sideburns descending from his hat brim. His legs and hips were slim within dark blue jeans, and a huge "Dave" belt buckle sat at the bottom of a line of neat pearl buttons that closed his blue-green shirt. I handed him two dollars for the gas.
"Would you pour me a cup of coffee? I'm just going to go out and move the bike. I'll be right back.
"Sit down," he growled, not unkindly. "It can stay where it is." There was one pump and Lucy was blocking it. I mentioned this to Dave. It was the wrong thing to say. Bushy gray eyebrows dropped over narrowed eyes. "This is my place, ain't it? If I say it can stay where it is, it can stay where it is. Sit down!"
"OK," I squeaked and dropped onto a stool. Dave poured my coffee. I reached for one of the spoons bundled in a mug near the register and looked down to see a fund-raising letter from the National Rifle Association. The return envelope was sealed and stamped.
From the overhead beams hung a collection of hard-used baseball and cowboy hats. Most were ragged, sweat-stained, misshapen, and frankly filthy, mute testimony to the lives of 
the men who once wore them. He collected them from his patrons, Dave explained, sometimes forcibly removing the hats from their heads once he deemed them to have enough "character" to hang beside the rest of the collection. Five were nailed slightly lower than the rest: the headgear of deceased, but not forgotten, friends. Dave was gruff, yet warm, 
concerned, and curious about my trip. We talked for a while about my route through Utah and where I was going next. Then he reached behind the register and his hand reemerged holding an enormous heavy pistol. Crafted from solid steel, it was an evil-looking thing, a six-shooter with a long barrel and bone inlay grips.
"You carry one of these?"
"No." I thought it might not be prudent to mention how much I disliked firearms and how I thought that carrying one tucked away in a saddlebag would be one of the more useless things that I could do.
"You should. I don't leave home without it."
Breaking The Limit   Karen Larsen  p78-9

[Biggles]

Charlie Hunt had the top-of-the-line blue BMW R1150RT, complete with CD player, and was the best-looking septuagenarian that I have ever seen. Only a few gray streaks peppered his thick auburn hair and the muscles of his chest and shoulders moved visibly beneath his tight black T-shirt. Charlie Applebaum had a Honda ST1100 ABS with sleek lines and a candy-apple red finish. A decade younger than his friend, Honda Charlie was no slouch either, and although he claimed that BMW Charlie could out-ride and outrun him, he seemed to be holding his own.
We rode out of Delta together, bounding over the open expanses of the flats and the hill country approaching the Nevada border at speeds in excess of eighty miles an hour. It was a glorious run; the roads wide and straight across the flats, banked and well turned up through the hills.
Breaking The Limit   Karen Larsen  p80

[Biggles]

It was a slow drive back to Cave Lake. A full moon was rising and the dark, open landscape began to shift and streak with long, nickel-plated washes of light. A combination of the night's beauty and my concern about the browsing elk that I had seen at roadside earlier in the day kept my hand on Lucy's throttle light. By the time I got back to my tent the moon was huge and full, a shining sphere that shimmered like mercury in the soft clear air and brushed the landscape with silver.
Months later, a letter from BMW Charlie arrived in New Jersey and, looking back on that evening in Ely, that conversation took on extra importance. As each of us attempted to articulate what it was that brought us to ride that high, hot, desert country, as we agreed that moving across America with the flow of the land beneath our wheels was an awakening of sorts, we did not know that their friend, riding Route 66, had been killed that afternoon. He had crossed an intersection and did not see the oncoming truck.
Breaking The Limit   Karen Larsen  p82

[Biggles]

I stopped at one of the gas stations on the main strip. A barrel-chested man dressed in full leathers was fuelling up a powerful new Kawasaki. The bike had Pennsylvania plates.
"Morning," I said. He nodded wordlessly and gave me a tight smile. "Nice day for it." I gestured at his bike. Something that sounded like a snort was his reply before he launched into a monologue of just how miserable he was riding his motorcycle, across Nevada particularly, and America generally. This was his first cross-country trip and he had planned it to spend time on his new machine, to visit with his family in California, and to be able to tell his friends that he had ridden all the way across the country. The last reason was a bad  one and he was not happy. He'd been riding interstates as rapidly as possible for the last six days and had seen nothing but wind, miles, highway embankments, and the taillights of trucks in his hustle to get from one coast to the other. He had found the previous day's storms as unnerving as I had, and he had little that was good to say about the enormous landscape that let wind roar unchecked across its incredibly open spaces. Not even to his destination, he dreaded the trip home.
He shook his head in utter disgust. "So where've you been?" I gave him a synopsis of my winding route of the previous three weeks and watched as his face took on a sickened aspect. "God, that's even worse!" he croaked. He paid for his gas and was gone, riding hard out of town before I finished pulling my gloves back on.
I thought about the unhappiness of that biker from Pennsylvania for a long time and wondered why, despite the occasional rough stretch of road or weather, my own experience had been so positive. It was late in the afternoon before I finally figured it out. Although both of us were going coast-to-coast and back again, we had vastly different agendas: I had no real destination, just a journey; he had no journey, just a destination.
Breaking The Limit   Karen Larsen  p89

[Biggles]

From Detroit, Oregon it was sixty miles of deep woods through the Mount Hood National Forest, following first the Breitenbush and then the Clackamas River. The road moved over low ridges, sometimes dropping with the rush and fall of the river, sometimes shooting into green-tunneled, dense-foliaged avenues, where shafts ot sunshine scattered like gold pieces over the road. Lucy sang and lifted easily over the rises, and my speed crept up as I watched the flash of light and shadow and breathed in the wet leaf mould and warming fir-needles smell of the forest. Oregon. The Greenest State. Maybe one day I would come back here, too.
Breaking The Limit   Karen Larsen  p107

[Biggles]

As the weeks and then months passed, I should have gotten used to the comments about women and motorcycles, as well as other people's perceptions about what "girls on bikes" were supposedly capable- or not capable- of doing, but I never did. It happened every day, without exception, that someone at a gas station, a parking lot, a diner, or a stop sign would make a comment about how surprised, delighted, shocked, irritated, or inspired they were to see a woman traveling alone on a motorcycle. Sometimes I appreciated it. Comments like A. J.'s earlier that morning were an affirmation and would have meant the same thing and carried the same weight if the word "man" was substituted. I was fully aware that not many people of either gender had the time, the opportunity, or the inclination to do what I did, and if people noticed, appreciated, or commented on that fact, I was delighted to hear it. It was, however, the purely gender-related negative commentary, offered simply because I was "a girl," that raised my hackles. People will question men on motorcycles about the power and safety of the machines they ride, their destination and the distances they drive in a single day, and whether they travel with companions for safety or company, but no one, ever, will question the fundamental abilities of a man to ride a motorcycle. It happens all the time to women.
Breaking The Limit   Karen Larsen  p113-4

[Biggles]

People always say that you cannot run from your problems. I have not found that to be entirely true. Especially with Lucy, and the intensity of focus required when negotiating two wheels through tight corners, problems are- at the very least- tucked away for a time. There they rest, back and out of immediate potential for damage, until the bike stops. With the cessation of motion they emerge again, but often with greatest circumspection and objectivity.
The diminishment of pain was not immediate, however, and in my loneliness I talked to Lucy and to myself as we crested the rolling hills coming out of Prince George. In the low rumble of her engine, she seemed to respond. "Shhhhh ...it doesn't matter. Let him go. Let's just disappear. There's nothing to regret except that he didn't love you as you loved him. I'll take care of you and you we care of me. We'll run together, far and fast, and everything will be all right. Lose this thing in the road." I was crying again inside my helmet, big slow tears. I thought about stopping, just sitting and watching the dissolved landscape for a while, but the desire to get away from Prince George, away from the pay phone at the Esso, and away from Dave was stronger.
Breaking The Limit   Karen Larsen  p139

[Biggles]

"How much rain did you get?" I removed my helmet, hung it with care on one mirror, took my earplugs out, and stared at him for a long moment. For some odd and perverse reason, looking at the mudless bikes just off the ferry from Seattle, at the women in their carefully applied coral pink and burgundy red lipsticks and their patches embroidered with roses twined into the Harley logo, I took grim pleasure in what I told him.
"Two days. Folks up in the Cariboo say it's not supposed to clear until Wednesday." For their sake I did hope that this assessment was pessimistic, but they were riding west, up and into challenging country and heavy weather. Their brand-new leathers would be pristine for about another hour. They were RUBs- Rich Urban Bikers- with the maximum of expensive gear, new bikes, and minimal experience. This was their first road trip, they said, and their plan was to ride into Jasper and then head south, down the Icefields Parkway and back to Seattle. I wished them luck and drier weather as they stepped onto their bikes, the women riding on the back, the straight pipes roaring. No one put in earplugs and no one put on rain gear. They would be considerably deafer and wetter by the end of the day.
Breaking The Limit   Karen Larsen  p140

[Biggles]

There was something odd about those bikers, however, they looked too ... clean ... and where was all their gear? None of the five bikers carried anything more than a single set of modestly sized saddlebags.
"Guys, where's your stuff?" I was genuinely impressed that they had managed to travel this lightly and hoped that they might be able to suggest ways that I could cut down on the bulky gear I carried. Not one of them seemed to be packing as much as an extra sweater. Now this was efficiency.
"Uh... well..." One of the tougher-looking men suddenly appeared sheepish. He rubbed the back of his hand across ten days of stubble. "... the girls came, too."
"The girls?"
Yeah, our wives. They're in one of the motorhomes back there." He jerked a thumb toward the line of the convoy. "They carry all the gear and we get a shower at the end of the day."  Ah, I get it now. This was not a bad deal; these men didn't even have to carry rain gear, and they could ride all day without having to worry about where to find spare parts, tools, or a dry place to sleep at night. From the women's perspective, if they did not drive bikes themselves, I could well imagine that taking turns piloting a motorhome, while still having a vacation with their husbands, would be far preferable to bouncing around on the passenger seat of a motorcycle all the way to Alaska and back from Pennsylvania.
Breaking The Limit   Karen Larsen  p161-2

[Biggles]

"You want to ride point?" The thought of leading five men on heavy bikes plus twenty or more other vehicles through the construction zone did not appeal to me. Riding point meant that the leader was responsible for finding a solid line through soft corners and for setting a pace that was safe for all concerned. It was always easier to watch and follow someone else's line and pace when going through such areas. Unlike many riders who learned to drive motorcycles as children, rocketing through sandpits and woods roads on dirt bikes, I had started driving relatively late, at sixteen, and had never learned to be comfortable riding gravel or soft surfaces.
"No, if you've gotten this far on your own we trust you to lead." The other four men nodded in agreement. Ah shit. Too embarrassed or too macho or too something to admit that I did not want to ride point, I pulled on my helmet, fired up Lucy, and grimly swung into the saddle. At the flagger's signal I moved feeling very much like a tugboat leading a line of tankers into treacherous waters.
Breaking The Limit   Karen Larsen  p162

[Biggles]

Sometimes, at the end of a long, cold, wet ride, when hands lock in frozen claws around the throttle and every downshift is a conscious effort to break and move paralytic muscles in the hands, lower legs, and feet, reaching the immediate destination- getting off the bike, finding food and shelter- becomes an animalistic need. Vision narrows, the mind slows, and the body assumes whatever position or mechanized function will best achieve speed and the terminus of the day. In the intensity of that focus, there is a temporary loss of some of what it means to be human; weather and pain become tangible, and internal conversations about anything other than the immediate cease.
Breaking The Limit   Karen Larsen  p169

[Biggles]

"I saw your bike outside." His tone was more aggressive than friendly and the smile dropped from my face. "It has New Jersey plates."
"Yes, it does."
His eyes narrowed and his voice became loud and challenging. "Do you mean to tell me that you rode that bike all the way from New Jersey?
Conversation at the counter stopped and the cashier and other customers were silent, staring at us.
"Yes."
He considered me for a long moment. "Are you on drugs?"
I laughed.  A skeptical eyebrow raised itself above the right lens of his glasses. I took a long swallow of coffee. "However, on days like this" - I motioned to the rain buffeting solidly against the plate glass, sheets of water coming in directly off the Cook Inlet- "I really think they might be helpful."
There was silence and then a giggle from the grinning cashier. Ultimately the man gave an amused snort and told me that he and his wife were from Pennsylvania and were, like me, spending the summer on the road. He asked about Lucy, how I chose my route, where I put my tent at night, and when I expected to return back East. His wife re-emerged from the ladies' room, the gas bill was paid, and he moved toward the exit. Nearly at the door he stopped and turned back to me.
"What a great trip ... I envy you."
Breaking The Limit   Karen Larsen  p186-7

[Biggles]

There was more rain in the early grayish light, but it was diminishing, lighter than the torrents that had swept through the village hours before. Lucy's engine, as always, turned over with a low rumble as soon as I pressed the electric start and we rolled out onto the Alcan as the last of the rain fell. The bare, mineralized slopes of Sheep Mountain glowed copper red and sulphur yellow, and gravel-bedded streams channelled the snowmelt from thousands of feet above toward the topaz waters of Kluane Lake. With the wet road, new snow on the peaks, and winds howling down the slopes of the mountains, it was a dramatic ride; primal and bleakly beautiful, yet bitterly cold and damp. Ninety miles later, pulling into Haines Junction for coffee, chocolate, and gas, I stepped off Lucy, half frozen and feeling much less than half human. It was incredible how physically draining prolonged cold could be. I could ride ninety miles in a single shot on a clear warm day and never feel a hint of weariness. That same ninety miles, in the teeth of a freezing wind that chewed the sensation out of hands and feet, was an exercise in agony and exhaustion.
Breaking The Limit   Karen Larsen  p207

[Biggles]

The voice of Steven, my bicyclist dinner companion in Whitehorse, was in my ears: "I take three days to travel the same road that you do in three hours, but I know that road better than you ever will." Like the RV, I too, was rocketing along, blowing through thousands of miles. Over the previous six weeks I had seen the grandeur of forests, the tracery of coastlines, and the ramparts of great mountain ranges but I had to admit that, save for the occasional roadside stop, I was missing most of the roadside microcosms. Queen Anne's lace nodded on slender green stems, great filigreed heads bowing above the yellow primroses tucked in at their roots. Below, the slow gurgle of the river sang in time with the insects and I felt myself grow drowsy. How much we each missed, but how much we could each see in our different modes of travel, my bicycle acquaintances and I. I got the grand sweep of the continent, they got the intimate examination of a section of the same. Which mode was right? Which was better? I did not know and it did not matter. There was no absolute, each wanderer must find their own way.
Breaking The Limit   Karen Larsen  p214

[Biggles]

Although the Muncho Lake section was perhaps one of the most beautiful on the Alcan, it had also been one of the most difficult to build. In 1942, engineers had blasted the road, yard by yard, into the rocky slopes, hauling the rubble away with horse-drawn sledges. Lucy leaned and swayed into the corners. Nearly ten thousand miles into our journey, we were now less separate entities- rider and machine-  than a single moving being. It was fantasy, but sometimes she seemed to correct for frost heaves in the pavement, for the tightening lean of an accelerating curve, before I consciously realized it. Riding had become as natural as walking or breathing.
Breaking The Limit   Karen Larsen  p219

[Biggles]

The Alcan Highway cuts through the heart of Fort St. John. Although slightly wider in town than on the outskirts, it is still a single lane going in each direction with narrow gravel shoulders and a deep ditch on either side. At 8:30 in the morning, driving on the left side of the southbound lane, there was little warning and less time to react when a blue pickup truck, driven by a boy of no more than seventeen, forced past me on the left at probably double the speed limit. I edged toward the other side of the lane as his bumper barely cleared my front foot peg, but there was nowhere to go; his friend and racing companion was coming by on the right, one set of tires on the pavement, set churning through the gravel on the shoulder. For a heartbreak moment, as the boys jockeyed for position and an oncoming eighteen-wheeler appeared in the distance, I was sandwiched between two half-ton pickup trucks. There was no point in locking up the brakes, it would have done nothing but slide me one way or the other, into the side, or under the wheels, of a truck, from which there were now three to choose. A single clear thought flashed without panic, anger, or avoidance into my consciousness: I am going to die. The only thing to do was to release torque on the throttle, let the forward momentum decrease with deceleration, and hope the boys got past and away from me as quickly as possible. They did, one pulling in behind the other, a corrugated steel bumper narrowly missing my front wheel. The oncoming truck passed and both darted across the opposite lane and into the parking lot that fronted a shopping center. There they raced and circled one another like overgrown, metal-clad, and deadly puppies.
Breaking The Limit   Karen Larsen  p227-8

[Biggles]

Her name, as close to the pronunciation that I can approximate, was Kisiael. She was a university student in her home country (Japan) and had flown to Alberta six weeks earlier than the English course, which she was planning to take in Edmonton, would begin. Carrying two duffel bags and a selection of bungee cords, she had walked into the Edmonton Honda dealership, bought a single piston four-stroke 250cc Savage, bungeed her bags to the frame, and taken off into the Canadian wilderness for a month of solitary riding.
On any machine this took guts, but on the one she had it took more than that. Her bike was tiny, almost toylike, when parked beside the heavy steel contrast of Lucy's frame. It was new certainly, and Honda had a fine reputation for mechanical solidity, but where people often questioned the power and small size of the bike I rode, at 1200ccs Lucy had nearly five times the power and was half again as heavy as the Savage. However, Kisiael told me that for her this was a big bike; at home she was used to driving the 125cc bikes.
Breaking The Limit   Karen Larsen  p141-2