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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Between finishing graduate school and starting a new job, Canadian-born but American-bred Larsen decided it was time for a major motorcycle expedition. She wasn't trying to "find herself"—at 31, she figured she knew herself. Nor was she one of those infamous " 'biker babes,' 'fender bunnies,' or 'biker chicks,' " out looking for guys. She just wanted to see more of America. For Larsen, who fell in love with motorcycles when she was 15, motorcycle touring is the perfect way to experience both scenery and people: she smells the fields, she feels the storms, she meets the curious. Departing from New Jersey in June 2000, Larsen drove her Harley-Davidson 1200 Sportster clear across the continent to Washington State, then north through British Columbia and Alaska—and back. While there was one emotional high point in the trip (meeting her father's family in Canada) and one mildly low point (breaking up with her already uninterested boyfriend over the phone), Larsen is not given to wild mood swings—she mainly describes road conditions, landscape, her campgrounds and her limited contact with people along the way. Buried in the daily details, however, are some inviting questions about the travel experience: why do so many tourists wander into risky situations believing themselves immune to disaster? And why do we believe our chosen mode of travel is more authentic than someone else's, just because it's more arduous?
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Product Description
reaking the Limit is one woman's account of riding her motorcycle from New Jersey to Alaska and back. Realizing that years of work and travel in other people's countries made her a stranger in her own, and with an invitation to meet her biological father for the first time, Karen Larsen set out on a fifteen-thousand-mile trip with nothing but her motorcycle and the barest of essentials. Larsen's journey tests the limits of her own endurance, challenges her long-held beliefs and values, and asks what it means to belong to a family. Through the the fields of Iowa and the deserts of the Southwest, over the Rockies and across Alaska's Kenai Peninsula, Larsen confronts questions of femininity, family, independence, and personal identity. Her journey speaks to the immense space and over-whelming beauty of North America, as well as to the diversity and vitality of the people she meets along the way. Breaking the Limit invites you to join her as she braces against the wind, trades security for freedom, sacrifices stability for motion, and opens herself up to the vast canopy of a continent.
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› Visit Amazon's Karen Larsen Page
› Visit Amazon's Karen Larsen Page
Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
WE SAT ON THE OUTDOOR TERRACE of a Chinese restaurant that overlooked the broad, tree-shaded boulevard of Princeton's main street. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
pilot car, passing showers Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New Jersey, British Columbia, South Dakota, New York, Black Hills, Bear Tooth, Prince George, Alcan Highway, Arctic Circle, Electra Glide, Icefields Parkway, Lake Louise, Prince Rupert, Prudhoe Bay, Aid Society, Broken Spoke, Continental Divide, Cuisson Lake, Destruction Bay, Glenwood Springs, Grande Cache, North America, Saskatchewan Crossing, Smith Center, Appalachian Trail New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Front Flap | First Pages | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
WE SAT ON THE OUTDOOR TERRACE of a Chinese restaurant that overlooked the broad, tree-shaded boulevard of Princeton's main street. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
pilot car, passing showers Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New Jersey, British Columbia, South Dakota, New York, Black Hills, Bear Tooth, Prince George, Alcan Highway, Arctic Circle, Electra Glide, Icefields Parkway, Lake Louise, Prince Rupert, Prudhoe Bay, Aid Society, Broken Spoke, Continental Divide, Cuisson Lake, Destruction Bay, Glenwood Springs, Grande Cache, North America, Saskatchewan Crossing, Smith Center, Appalachian Trail New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Front Flap | First Pages | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 4
books:
- The Imp of The Perverse by Edgar Allan Poe on page 18, and page 69
- Leaves of Grass (Bantam Classics) by Walt Whitman in Front Matter, and page 8
- Hey Jerry by A. E. Williams on page 296
- Remington and Russell by Leonard Everett Fisher on page 299
Books on Related Topics
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What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?
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59% buy the item featured on this page: Breaking the Limit: One Woman's Motorcycle Journey Through North America $23.96 |
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19% buy The American Motorcycle Girls: A Photographic History Of Early Women Motorcyclists $31.50 |
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10% buy American Borders: A Solo Circumnavigation of the United States on a Russian Sidecar Motorcycle $13.22 |
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7% buy Lois on the Loose: One Woman, One Motorcycle, 20,000 Miles Across the Americas |
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