Life Beyond Rampage | Better Rides with Georgia Astle

Yep, here we are. Home sweet home. Middle of summer heat here. So this is half of the bikes. There's another storage room with the other half. Van. And then two of mine are in the van. Oh yeah, the new van. The new van. Yeah, the guy that I got it from, he did everything. Like it's insulated. It has, no wind. Solar, batteries, everything. The rig. Yeah, fully converted, ready to go. I basically already, in the summer, live out of my car. So this way I made it so I can actually live out of my car. And it's got a fan so when I'm riding, all the bikes can be in the back and Chip can just hang out and wait for me. And it's funny, the guy that I bought it from, he drove it to Utah and to the Baja. And I was like, that's exactly where this thing's going to go. It already knows the way. Last night when I was pulling in here, there was a bear right here and I didn't see it except I saw it in the backup camera. It was just like a little teenage bear eating all this stuff. And it freaked me out. I was like, oh, there's a dog behind me. And I looked in the mirror and there was this little bear. Yeah, so this is the inside. So I can have three bikes in the back right now. Front wheel's off, but I'll make the bed higher so then I can fit more in. Yeah, the Corolla. And I noticed such a difference with the carbs. With that one, I feel like I hardly had to snack as much. I have been using electrolytes for a while. I feel like especially after the first year rampage, when it's eight days in a row of digging and you're sweating and you're tired, I realized how insane it was that if you just drink water, you're actually depleting yourself more. So now I'm pretty on it with electrolytes. So it's been really nice because I've tried out a bunch of different ones and I have noticed a difference like with the dust carbs during the enduro. Yeah, it probably saved me like three bars almost. And no gels. I hate gels too. So that's the nice thing too. You don't have to deal with that. The first year, I put in an application and I actually put mine in the day before the deadline because I was so unsure if I wanted to do it or not. And I got in as the third out of four alternates. So the chances of me going felt really low, but I was so happy to be an alternate and watch the first year. And then four weeks before the event, two girls got injured, another girl pulled out and then all of a sudden I was in the event. And I think that was probably the best case for me, mental-wise, that it felt like there was no pressure. And then after that, because I did well enough, I was pre-qualified. I went from having four weeks of notice for rampage to a whole year just knowing that I was going to do it the next year. Yeah, so it's kind of a mental gymnastics of being ready enough, having custom kit, accommodation, everything, thinking about it, training. But then I also don't know if you want to be thinking about it too much. But these are good things. Stuff like this is what I like to practice at Rampage because you are fully blind. So you have to look at it, imagine the speed, your breaking points, the entrance, and then you go up and you're just committed. So that's the stuff that's good to get used to again. It looks like it's less than ideal. There's such low PSI, it doesn't even come up on them. I do sometimes check. I check every two rides on my bike now, but now that I'm not racing as much, I feel like it doesn't matter quite. The beauty of doing something else that's not biking is that I am so ignorant and that's what makes it so fun. I hop on and I don't really care that something's not working perfectly. I'm like my mountain bike, so I feel like it makes it so much more fun when you can just hop on and there's no admin, you just ride the thing. I'm like, oh, fork's leaking a bit, whatever. Whereas if I get on my bike and my fork's leaking, I'm like, ride's over, I gotta go fix this. Ignorance is bliss. Long journey home.