Written by Amy Miles. Sunny portraits of Nina by Lauren MacDonald.

What's your life like normally?

My life is normally very busy! I work full-time for the Los Angeles school district with special needs children and I find so much enjoyment in this job. I was also riding horses three or four times a week at a competitive three-day eventing barn in Moorpark, California. I loved working with a beautiful horse over the last two years, providing improvement in his training and in my riding abilities by working with a horse trainer at the facility.

Weekends were often spent riding motorcycles on or off-road, recently it had been more off-road riding.

How has your routine changed in the last few weeks?

My routine has greatly changed in the last few weeks. Prior to the lockdown I was in transition with my horse and motorcycle riding hobbies due to my first pregnancy. I had my first motorcycle race with the American Retrocross Club at Glenn Helen raceway the week before I found out I was pregnant. After I got the news, I went moto camping in the Joshua Tree with friends, but my riding was greatly reduced in light of carrying my first child! I stopped riding horses at 6 months pregnant.

*Nina and Leila. Photo by Lindsay Lohden *

What are you doing with the time you’d usually spend riding?

During this non-riding period, I'm spending the time working on my dirt bike, which had an oil leak, and getting my Harley (a 1994 FXRP) into storage until I'm able to ride again in the fall.

While moto contact might be reduced, you'll never keep Nina away from bikes completely.

What are you doing that’s providing you comfort or enjoyment at the moment?

At the moment I’m missing the Supercross race season, but was lucky enough to attend the season opener in Anaheim before the world shut down.

Closer to the lockdown I was following along on a very inspiring ladies trip run by Sideburn Magazine in the Sahara Desert with 8 off-road women riders. Since the shutdown, I have been watching Drive to Survive, the Netflix series about Formula One. It’s really great storytelling about all the teams participating in Formula One with some amazing race action shots from the driver’s point of view.

What aspects of this downtime have you found positive and have they made you want to change anything about your routine once ‘normality’ does resume?

Some of the positive influences I’ve found during this downtime have been in my fond memories of trips I've done and the deep longing to get out and camp, and ride off-road again. The planning for these future adventures is constant at the moment. I really want to take a road trip from my home in California over to Idaho, and ride the whole of the state from south to north. I am looking forward to dialing in my camping and off-road set up as well and can’t wait to explore some new areas of off-road riding including Mammoth Bar OHV, Stonyford OHV, and other areas in Northern CA. One of my favorite places to ride off-road is Mammoth Mountain, I love being on the trail and in the trees and am hoping to do some exploring this winter when I’m hopefully able to start riding again.

What’s the first thing you’ll do when restrictions are eased?

Well, my personal world will be much changed when the restrictions are lifted as I will hopefully have a healthy and happy daughter - another wild woman for the tribe. I hope to introduce her to motorcycles and camping as soon as possible. I dream of camping and off-road trips!

I probably won’t be doing any long-distance road trips for a while until I get the hang of the whole being a mother thing, but any trips I am able to take always end up including motorcycles in some way or another.

Where is the first place you’ll ride?

The first places I will ride are all the OHV areas around the Sierras and in Northern California, where I grew up riding as a child and am now in close proximity to again.