Angela Hinkley’s Ladies Offroad Challenge Experience

How the adventure began.
On the last night that applications were being accepted, Joe Kennedy from Iron Rock Offroad who is a dear friend and huge advocate for women and wheeling, mentioned me in a comment about the Ladies Offroad Challenge. I wanted to submit my application, but was concerned about finances. Then, Charlene Bower herself commented on my response and said “There is always a way…”. I thought, she’s right! I stayed up late and got my application in before midnight. I never thought for a minute that she would actually choose me for the Top 10! It was a good reminder that you should always try, apply for that job, get behind that wheel, take that test, whatever it is, just try.

It’s not all pillow fights and mud wrestling.
It was a challenging weekend for me. You are pushed to your limits and the weekend is a real life example of what the winning opportunities will be. Lack of sleep, uncomfortable living and sleeping conditions, lunches on the go, and not knowing what was going to happen next. On top of that, you are put on the spot several times a day with little to no time to prepare with no formal training in media to interview, be interviewed, and speak about your experiences, all live. Did I mention that you are sleep deprived while interviewing, which is not easy. The back to back, fast pace of the day is physical and mentally exhausting. Emotionally, you are on a roller coaster; so happy you are there, grateful, scared and anxious, literally on the verge of tears all the time. Communication and teamwork was the moral of almost every activity we did. It may have taken us a while, but in the end, we always figured out a way to communicate effectively and work as team to get the task done.

The best part.
My favorite part of the Top 10 weekend: okay, so I could only narrow it down to the top two favorite things of the weekend. The Trophy Trucks! I never thought in my lifetime I would see real Trophy Trucks! I really enjoyed our time with Brad and Conor at Geiser Bros. The other thing that I really appreciated was our time with Charlene Bower. She was very real and honest with us sharing many of her experiences in the off-road community. The truth is that Charlene is just like us and faces many of the same challenges that we do on the local level. I learned many things from her lessons learned and left seeing some solutions for my challenges and a different perspective of some past situations I was in. Getting that type of knowledge and sharing life experience from Charlene was invaluable.

Grand finale.
I left stronger a person than I was coming into the weekend. While I learned many things, the most valuable was the social media experience. Charlene talked to us throughout the entire weekend about the importance of social media, and provided tips and tricks about successful social media. We also tracked out stats on social media and talked about why some videos received more visibility. This experience and knowledge was of great value to me and I was able to come home and implement what I learned. I just received my first 1,300 views for a live video! Awesome!

I am filled with gratitude. Thank you Charlene for offering this amazing opportunity to ladies in the offroad community. I appreciate all that you do with the Ladies Offroad Network to advocate education and promote women and wheeling. To all of my family, friends, and local off-road community, thank you for your continued support of my off-roading dreams.

Click here to read more about Angela.

Photo Credit: Lori Palmer, The Adventure Portal