Monster Jam driver a hard truck to follow
“I started racing monster trucks at 14,” says Rosalee Ramer.
“Can’t you not drive until you’re 16?” I ask Ramer, who at 20 is the youngest female competitor in the Monster Jam circuit.
“Well,” and then she goes on to explain how her events don’t take place on government roads and therefore don’t require a license. As someone who didn’t get his learner’s permit until he was almost 17, I can’t help but notice how different Ramer’s life is from mine.
Ramer helms Wild Flower (named for JaneDear Girls song) at Monster Jam, pitting massive mechanical marvels against each other on a dirt course of ramps and obstacles, hitting Camping World Stadium in Orlando on Saturday (7 p.m., $32-$160, ticket master.com).
The California native must have motor oil in her blood. Her father, Kelvin Ramer, started driving monster truck Time Flys when Rosalee COMMENTARY was 7. “I’ve always been right by his side, trying to learn,” she says.
By his side means traveling with him 25-35 weekends a year. Every year. Since she was 7.
But even that wasn’t where Ramer started. When she was 3, her father took his first ride in a monster truck and summarily broke it. “We have pictures of me up late with my dad and some other guys, holding flashlights and helping with that,” she says.
I was 35 when I changed my first radiator. It took six hours and my hands looked like I spent the whole time punching coral.
Ramer, who raced go-carts at 4, joined Monster Jam in 2015 and last year became the first woman to finish in the Top 10 in more than a decade at the Monster World Finals in Las Vegas.
But that’s still just her weekend job. Ramer is also a full-time student at Georgia Tech in Atlanta. “I attend classes Monday through Thursday while I’m on the road,” she says. The first in her family to go to college, she plans to use her degree in mechanical engineering to “push the sport further.”
I’m lucky if at the end of my workweek I don’t sleep until next Monday.
She drives a Jeep with 42-inch tires. I drive a car that looks like the dictionary definition of “comfortable for the elderly.”
But the real difference between Ramer and most of the rest of the world is what drives our experiences. “For me, it’s just all about the adrenaline rush of driving,” says Ramer.
For me, it’s enough of a rush just to watch.