Her website section "Ghost Town" begins, "My name is Elena. I run this website and I don't have anything to sell. What I do have is my motorbike and the absolute freedom to ride it wherever curiosity and the speed demon take me. This page is maintained by the author, but when internet traffic is heavy it may be down occasionally.

Her story is an amazing one, of riding her motorcycle through the Chernobyl "dead zone", the site of the 1986 nuclear disaster. It's several pages long, and is riviting. Plan to spend some time reading it.

It turns out that this story was a hoax. In New York Times article about tourism in Chernobyl they mention:

One group came for a hoax. About two years ago, Mr. Tatarchuk said, a Ukrainian woman booked a tour, wore a leather biker jacket and posed for pictures. Soon there appeared a Web site in which the woman, using the name Elena, claimed that she had been given an unlimited pass by her father, a nuclear physicist and Chernobyl researcher ("Thank you, Daddy!" she wrote) and now roamed the ruins at will on her Kawasaki Big Ninja.

The site, www.kiddofspeed.com, billed as a tale "where one can ride with no stoplights, no police, no danger to hit some cage or some dog," was a sensation, duping uncountable viewers before being discredited.

They certainly duped me.

Posted by terrie at June 3, 2005 07:33 PM