Moto Woman - 100+ Years Later

One of the top luminaries of the community of fans of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS), Leslie McKenzie Boruff is also an avid enthusiast of First Super Speedway (FSS). This woman is so committed to the Brickyard she has the Wing & Wheel logo tattooed on her left shoulder blade - and it covers it! Check out her Facebook page and a picture she has showing it off. She regularly contributes - with refreshing candor - to the market conversation about motorsports as an advocate for fans everywhere.
 
An avid biker, Leslie saw an FSS image from events surrounding the 1909 Federation of American Motorcyclists (FAM) race meet at the Speedway and it spoke to her. One of the events during the week of the race meet - the first motorized competition at IMS - was a bike ride through the Hoosier capital city. Keep in mind given the date all these riders - some 200 of them - were pioneers of motoring. Many if not most ordinary Americans were still using horse-drawn conveyances to get around. Not these people, they were leading edge; they broke with convention.
 
Okay, now here's what's really cool. Please note that this picture of Leslie on her 2009 Yamaha V-Star Tourer 1300 was taken on April 18, 2015 in front of one of the world's great limestone structures: the Soldiers & Sailors Monument at the center of Monument Circle in glorious downton Indianapolis - just where Virginia was when her photo was captured on August 13, 1909. Virginia was clearly a person who dared to march to her own bongo beat.
 
Leslie is cut of that cloth. The reason she found the FSS image so intriguing is that it was of Virginia Heatley, the only woman to take part in the ride. Leslie called Virginia her hero and rode her bike by Virginia's old home, which still stands. She has even considered if Virginia wasn't somehow a part of her family tree - or maybe Leslie is Virginia's reincarnate?! Regardless, hats off to Leslie for being, like Viginia, her own woman and a true "motohead."