Listening to Audra Gerty tell of her exploits you get the feeling that she”™s an adrenaline junkie.
Slap a “No Fear” bumper sticker on the back of her four-stroke, V-twin Victory Vegas motorcycle; heck, slap it on her back.
For her birthday in 2006, she treated herself to a jump out of an airplane; freefalling over the Hudson Valley for 40 seconds and hitting a top speed of 130 mph.
Last year she upped her speed benchmark when she hit 149 mph in a race car at Daytona International Speedway.
Doing 65 mph on the Kraken, a floorless roller coaster at Sea World Orlando was nothing, albeit a bit lonely since she had to wait on line for 45 minutes by herself since her friends were not willing to go along for the gut-displacing ride.
She”™s sort of like a super heroine, executive by day and thrill-seeker by night.
Her co-workers call her a daredevil.
But that couldn”™t be further from the truth, she says.
On her slow days, she also kayaks and cooks.
Gerty is living life without regrets. But she”™s doing it at a high rate of speed.
Life started out simple for the executive vice president and chief financial officer of Dutchess County Regional Chamber of Commerce, who grew up on Overlook Road in the town of Poughkeepsie. She learned to cook at her mom”™s knee when she was 6. Three years later, when her mom bought a horse for herself and Gerty”™s older sister to share, she wanted one, too. She named her first horse, an Arabian, Cybis.
She would ride with her sister down to Wappinger Creek by Sleight Plass Farm, whose fields are now planted with houses. She would swim as the horses cooled themselves in the water on many hot summer days.
At 14, Gerty got a job at the nearby veterinarian office cleaning cages and feeding animals. Her earnings went to her horse for food and other sundries.
Hooves gave way to wheels in the form of a motorcycle, a Yamaha Maxim 550 that she cajoled her dad into buying her as she headed out the door to Cornell University to study hotel and restaurant management.
After college, she got a job in a restaurant outside St. Paul, Minn. Riding out on her motorcycle, and somewhere on a highway in Minnesota, a police car”™s siren sounded, beckoning her to pull over to the side of the road. This being the Midwest and the first time being stopped by the police, the young college graduate sat and shook; she didn”™t know that she was to approach the police car, not the other way around as it was in New York.
So, she sat paranoid and waited for the officer. She went over in her mind as to what she possibly could have done to warrant this less-than-pleasing experience. “I didn”™t cut anybody off. I didn”™t go through a red light”¦” The PA on the police car crackled: “Get off your bike and approach the car!”
She got off, pulled off her helmet and flipped her long blonde hair back. The officer was expecting some long-haired thug who stole a motorcycle, instead he got a shaking young woman. His jaw dropped. Sgt. Chase, Gerty still remembers his name, said he stopped her because she didn”™t have a license plate. She looked at the back of her bike and saw it was missing. He told her to contact New York DMV and get a new plate. And he let her go.
She had a series of jobs since then, landing in her current post in April 2000. “It”™s a personal record.”
One of the positive aspects of her derring-do is the emboldening feeling she gets.
She was very nervous as the day of her parachute jump approached. But on that morning as she rolled out of bed, she was ready. After taking the perfunctory safety session prior to the jump, she boarded the plane and hooked up to an experienced skydiver for the tandem jump.
“Make no mistake, my heart was pounding.”
Since her back was attached to the front of the skydiver, she was looking straight down at the earth some 13,500 feet below. She said it was “sheer terror.”
After she stepped off the plane and stopped screaming, she enjoyed the beauty of the valley below.
The head rush, the adrenaline pumping ”¦ she felt it for three days afterward.
The trips she made around Daytona Speedway made her appreciate the danger and rush that NASCAR drivers experience, especially having to take those 31-degree banked turns at a high rate of speed.
“After doing super scary things, there”™s nothing you really can”™t do. Getting in front of a chamber crowd is nothing.”
When does she slow down? In her kitchen when she cooks, except if it”™s the holidays and her close friend joins her to bake dozens of cookies from 7 a.m. to 4 in the afternoon.
The kayaking also slows her down. So does reading on the couch with her dog, Cosmo, named not after the Seinfeld character, but her favorite drink.
As to her motivation for the speedier aspects of her life, she just says plainly that she doesn”™t want to have any regrets.
“Instead of saying ”˜someday,”™ make a plan and do it.”
As for her birthday this year she”™s considering a trip to Las Vegas. But gambling is not in her sights. There”™s a place there that let”™s you drive an Indy race car. Top speed? Somewhere around 165 mph!
