It was only meant to be a three-week trip to the United States.
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But it turned into the best decision of Harriet Burbidge-Smith's mountain biking career, and has helped her tick off goal after goal.
She received a late call up to join the Red Bull Formation event in the Utah desert last May but there was a catch, she had to pay her own way.
The 25-year-old had little savings, was working random jobs to fund her riding aspirations and only planned to be away for a matter of weeks.
But the gamble paid off.
"I got called up last minute, about two weeks before the event," she said.
"When that came up I thought, 'I can't turn this down. I'm going to try and make it work however I can'. I sold a bunch of things, I moved out of the apartment I was living in, just trying to make it all happen for this one trip.
"It was going to be a three-week trip, it wasn't going to be long at all. Then I did well at Formation, and then I got some some really good results at the first Crankworx stop, and from there I just decided to cancel my flight home, and try and stay as long as I could."
The eight-time Australian champion got her big break a month later. At the first Crankworx World Tour stop in Innbruck she finished first in the dual slalom, third in the cliff and speed style, and fifth in the pumptrack event.
It set the scene for the next six months of her breakout season on the world stage.
Burbidge-Smith closed out the tour the same way she started it, with a top of the podium finish in the dual slalom. Before she took out third overall after the tour wrapped up, with six podium finishes throughout the series.
"I was able to continue to get support and go from what I was doing at the time, which was working other jobs and riding, to where I am now, where it's like a full-time career," she said.
"So it's the first time I can properly say that from mountain biking. It's pretty crazy.
"Now I feel like I'm in a position where I have all these opportunities that are available to me right now, and in a good position to take them. So I'm really excited for this year and what's to come."
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This year she hopes to do it all over again.
Burbidge-Smith kicked the year off at the Highline MTB Festival in Victoria - where she did her first flip to dirt but over-rotated - before she returned to New Zealand to get some more training in, ahead of her season start in North America.
She has her eyes on an overall Crankworx title in 2022, alongside a return to Formation and hopefully an invite to her first Audi Nines in Austria.
After a long career racing on the BMX circuit, where she earned two-world championships, her switch in 2018 to mountain biking meant she had to start from square one again.
It took her until 2021, largely thanks to COVID-19 delays, to reach the dreams she laid out for herself in her new discipline.
Including her first Red Bull athlete project following her through the trails of Maydena, Tasmania, which is set to be realised on April 19.
"It's a massive deal, it was a dream come true signing with Red Bull last year," she said.
"That's a dream that I've had since I first started riding, was to be an athlete on Red Bull, and then the fact that they're interested in doing a video project with me, that hopefully gets a lot of people interested in my riding, it's amazing."
The Canberra region has produced a number of successful mountain bikers alongside Burbidge-Smith, including Caroline Buchanan and Mike Ross in the freeride events. And Bec and Daniel McConnell - in addition to up-and-comer Zoe Cuthbert - in the cross-country rides.
All of them spend large amounts of time overseas - with the exception being during Australia's border closures of COVID-19 - or are based overseas, where the majority of the professional events take place.
Having witnessed the recent growth of opportunities for women in mountain biking freeride, such as the addition of a women's slopestyle event to the 2022 FMB World Tour, Burbidge-Smith said the sport could only get bigger for the next generation.
"Canberra gets so many good riders because you have to be so dedicated, well I think Australia in general gets a lot of great riders because you have to be so dedicated to spend that time traveling overseas," she said.
"It's so much harder for people in Australia and New Zealand to compete overseas at that level, they've got to really want it. So I think that makes a massive difference.
"At my camp we had a bunch of girls from Canberra that did really well and just made massive progress.
"And I think now that we have more opportunities like the slopestyle tour, and all these events like Crankworx having so much more opportunities for women in the sport, I think it's going to just make that tenfold."