I don't know how much trouble she'd have with it, but if she can get the bike onto the center stand she might be able to spin it around on the stand. On a rough or uneven surface it's tricky and you have to keep a handle on the bike, but I use that to do quick turnarounds in the garage or other weird predicaments I get into. You just put it on the center stand, lean the weight a little more onto one side than the other, and just rotate it on the leg that has more weight. Slow and smooth and it'll come right around. Your results may vary, try it at home before doing it out and about

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Have you shaved the seat any? Just another way to lower her to the ground.
As for the dogbones, if you know someone (or can do it yourself), the bones for the new bikes are just two flat pieces of metal with holes drilled in them. You might even be able to just grab a pair of dogbones for another bike off ebay with the holes drilled at the proper distance and save a few bucks that way. $70 sounds like highway robbery to me, but I have the means to come up with something cheaper, so whether it's worth it is up to you.
And if you decide to cut down the front springs at all, the hardest part of the whole job was getting the clips out of the top of the forks on my '90. But I don't know the rules about shortening them, just stiffening them.