Ride Or Go Home | Baggers' 3,000-Mile Hell Ride Part 3

We met Junior's dream girl (and a couple of her friends) at the Smoking Yards BBQ in Idaho Summers, one of Billy's (Bartels, former editor of this magazine) favorite BBQ joints anywhere. I thought the girls were snobby right off the bat. We went to Dream Girl's horse ranch in the middle of the night. We went in and divvied up the beds. She offered one person to sleep in the barn; we thought the barn would be gnarly. Billy offered himself up to sleep in the barn. What we didn't realize is this was a multi-multi million-dollar horse ranch and above the large barn was a huge party room for visiting owners with a fireplace pit inside and multiple bedrooms. It was huge and pimp. Billy didn't tell us how rad it was until the next morning. Dream Girl's Hot Friend (DGHF) ended up spending the night with him up there.

We ended up hanging out an extra night and just decompressing and shooting more pictures of the bikes. Junior mooned after Dream Girl the whole time, while he did score a snuggle spot in her bed, we could tell by the expression on his face that that's all it was. DGHF on the other hand...let's just say it was a good thing we knew what was going on or we'd have called the cops. I managed to piss everybody off by spending the next day taking photos of dashes and saddlebags, Dream Girl riding her horse around in full-on horsey gear, and taking the whole crew (Dream Girl and DGHF included) back up to Loveland Pass to shoot even more photos, hoping for a cover (nope). Andy and Brad, they just sat back and watched the show.

We still had close to 400 miles to cover, no idea where we were staying in Sturgis, and the Glory of Carhenge to sample. Andy bugged out that night with a plane to catch in the a.m. from Rapid City, while the rest of us loafed around Dream Girl's little slice of paradise until midday before getting on the road again. Junior still mooning, Billy still...something, and all of us wary of hitting the road and doing hard miles again, which we hadn't since Chad's crash.

This was but the calm before yet another storm...