RUST magazine: RUST #44

adventure
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0-12,000 IN 30 DAYS
So I’d bought the bike and I rode it
for about a month or so – scared! I
remember when I opened the garage
door that next morning and I looked at
that thing parked in the garage, I took
like five steps back and put my face in
my hands and was thinking, what the
heck did I do? How am I gonna do this?
But I remembered the story of the little
boy and the lady and decided I was
going to figure it out.
I went for my first trail ride about
four months into it, then I went down
to RawHyde Adventure and took a
Next Step class. I had no idea how I
compared as a rider. But at the end of
the class, they asked me if I would be an
instructor and I thought well, I must be
okay!
That kind of inspired me and so I took
off to Alaska! I rode 12,000 miles in 30
days. I did the Backcountry Discovery
Routes up in Washington, Oregon, up
through Idaho. Canada was amazing.
And yeah, a month later I knew this
had changed my life. I’d thrown myself
into this adventure riding and camping
off the bike, meeting strangers and just
kind of putting myself out there. I had to
think, where am I going to eat? Where
am I going to sleep? And am I going to
find gas? I was hooked.
And I had figured out the bike, and
found some tricks to get it off the
kickstand and balance it and that was
it. I came home and I started telling all
my friends about adventure bikes and
the ultimate freedom where you can
go down any road, you can go for long
distance, you can go camping, you can
take a dirt trail. There are no limits, and I
just love a life without limits.
GS TROPHY
A year in, one of my new adventure
friends said to me that if I liked
adventure riding then I needed to go do
the GS Trophy. I hadn’t heard of it.
– Explain, what is that?
So he explained, adding that the latest
qualifiers were coming up in two
months. My brain was ticking over
real fast. Yeah, no, I’m not done with
competition. I used to do all that racing
stuff, but... And he went on
– Well, let me tell you something, last
year was the first year they allowed
women into the GS Trophy.
And that got my attention real fast.
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