My savage has 19,000 miles on it I see speedometers on e bay with 22,000 miles on but never any more what is the normal life of the savage? Without major surgery

Forrest, I'm just lookin at your signature there, and the whole thing about the saying "going to hell in a handbasket" is something I don't understand.  It has mystified me for years now. Maybe its because I'm a kiwi, maybe its simply because I'm dense, but I don't get it.  Could you, or anyone else, please explain what that saying is all about, if anything?
Taa.

Welcome to the board Max, going to hell in a handbasket is an old and commonly used American expression that means everything is going to Hell.
See below for some insight into this saying.

GOING TO HELL IN A HANDBASKET
[Q] From Brian Walker: “Can you please tell me anything about the origin of the phrase going to hell in a handbasket?”

[A] This is a weird one. It’s a fairly common American expression, known for much of the twentieth century. But it’s one about which almost no information exists, at least in the two dozen or so reference books I’ve consulted. William and Mary Morris, in their Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins, confess to the same difficulty. A handbasket is just a basket to be carried in the hand (my thanks to the Oxford English Dictionary for that gem of definition). The Dictionary of American Regional English records to go to heaven in a handbasket rather earlier than the alternative, which doesn’t appear in print until the 1940s (Walt Quader tells me that Burton Stevenson included a citation in his Home Book of Proverbs, Maxims and Familiar Phrases from Bayard Kendrick’s The Odor of Violets, published in 1941). But DARE quotes a related expression from 1714: “A committee brought in something about Piscataqua. Govr said he would give his head in a Handbasket as soon as he would pass it”, which suggests that it, or at least phrases like it, have been around in the spoken language for a long time. For example, there’s an even older expression, to go to heaven in a wheelbarrow, recorded as early as 1629, which also meant “to go to hell”. I can only assume that the alliteration of the hs has had a lot to do with the success of the various phrases, and that perhaps handbasket suggests something easily and speedily done.

In poetry, I believe there is a term that refers to the use of the 2 H's in the phrase, "Going to Hell in a Handbasket".  I don't know if that is relevant to the discussion though.

But since I'm totally lost, I'll just agree.  Yes, you can get more miles on your bike, than you would if you were in a handbasket!

Hey JOG. I'm kinda new to this site, but I've been riding my 2000 Savage since September 2001, started with 632 miles on it, just turned over 52,500. The original motor was still in it when I started having problems at 51,000; tried to do a rebuild but never could get everything right, so I put a salvage 2002 engine in it (2092 miles) and I'm back in the saddle. I never did anything to the original motor except routine maintenance and adjustments. After reading a lot of the posts here, I think my problem was the cam chain adjuster, but I didn't know it at the time. Hope this gives you something to go on.

skatnbnc wrote on 12/31/69 at 16:00:11:

Once again, this proves that the American education system is the best on Earth...

Who would ever have guessed that eggs were inert?  They never seem that way when I eat them

skatnbnc wrote on 12/31/69 at 16:00:11:


You sure don't look that old, Ma'am!  

(But I probably do   )

Chances are that if you, as a person, actually fit in the handbasket, then one must consider that the person carrying the handbasket is big enough to beat the hell out of you too.