Homecoming: What Babes Ride Out Gave Me Back

I turned the key, felt the Triumph Bonneville T120 growl back to life beneath me, and something clicked back into place — something I hadn't realized was missing until that moment. It had been years since I'd owned a motorcycle, my short-lived affair with a 155cc Vespa Primavera notwithstanding. The muscle memory hadn't gone anywhere. Neither, it turned out, had I.

Getting there had taken longer than I'd like to admit.

Last year, I nearly let my PhD program take me apart. After ending a 7-year relationship and surviving a global pandemic, I enrolled in a doctoral program in Organizational Behavior, convinced that I wanted a career that would intellectually challenge me. What I didn't anticipate was the toll: the stress and fragmented sleep, the isolation, the emotional rollercoaster, and the heaviness of not knowing whether you can carve out a sufficiently meaningful theoretical contribution, or whether the quiet yet ever-so-present pressure will eventually crush you. Four and a half years of that and then, by no small miracle, I defended my dissertation proposal last March. But while I'm on track to finish by the end of the year, the numbness persisted — the sense of having lost myself somewhere along the way. I had to find my way back.

I started riding at 23. I took a weekend course, sold my car five days later, and bought a green Kawasaki EX500 (I named him “Green Prince”) that a friend rode home for me because I wasn't freeway-ready yet. Carbureted, it needed some ramp-up time on chilly Arizona winter mornings before  I rode it to work, geared up from head to toe like a proper beginner should. But I didn’t mind — I was hooked immediately. The decision to get a bike changed the trajectory of my life. I'd moved to Arizona from Poland only a couple of years before, still learning how to navigate life in the U.S. on my own. Riding became part of my new identity.

Within a year, I upgraded to the 25th Anniversary Honda VFR800 (AKA “The Captain”) and took it everywhere. On my days off, I went on long desert rides to Prescott or Payson. At night, when the scorching AZ sun went down, I rode to bike nights and riding school events. I made a best friend at one of the Team AZ bike safety events, rode to Tucson and Flagstaff on weekends, and Sunday viewings of MotoGP and Isle of Man racing became weekend religion. The Captain took me places Green Prince never could. I rode to Crater Lake in Oregon, around Lake Tahoe, took fan laps at Laguna Seca during a MotoGP weekend, and rode the Pacific Coast Highway through Monterey and Carmel. The bike wasn't just my daily commuter; it was the key to a new world. Off the bike, I got a job at a Harley-Davidson dealership and later moved to California to work at Dainese HQ in Orange County. I made lifelong friends in that world, met my ex through the industry, and kept trying to convince other women that motorcycling wasn't nearly as scary as it looked.

Then life intervened the way it does, and the bike was gone.

In February, I found out about Babes Ride Out through a social media ad, the algorithm, for once, doing something useful. I was deep in dissertation proposal mode, with neither the budget nor the bandwidth to ride. But something in me had been waiting for exactly this. Something that had become like a wild animal resigned to captivity yet still alive, still watching, still yearning for open ground. I wanted to smell the wind and feel the chill of the morning air, to ride open stretches of highway sitting up on the bike, the left hand on my thigh, the horizon unfolding ahead in every direction. I wanted to feel that extra beat in my heart in the unexpectedly tight corner, the deep satisfaction of the sound of the engine braking, coming down to a stop with grace and precision, the whole bike gathering itself into stillness. I needed to let that part of me out.

It turned out I'd stumbled onto something that had been quietly building for over a decade. The event had been running annually since 2013, when Ashmore Ellis organized what began as a small, invite-your-friends camping trip in California with a simple but quietly radical premise: create a women-first motorcycle space with no gatekeeping and no performance pressure, welcoming to seasoned riders and complete beginners alike. I think that’s what made it stick — the mix of camping, community, and accessibility. From its early Joshua Tree and Central Coast events, Babes Ride Out has since expanded to the East Coast, Oregon, and internationally to the U.K. Its "Babes in the Dirt" arm runs women-first off-road events across California and as far as Iceland, the latter of which is firmly on my list.

This year's event was held near Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, and I found a way to go.

The Wednesday before the event, I dusted off my Dainese leathers, my AGV Agostini race replica helmet, and picked up a stunning 2026 Triumph Bonneville T120 Black (“Bonnie”) from a local dealer. Early Friday afternoon, I strapped down a sleeping pad and a tent to the bike, loaded a touring backpack, and, wobbling under the weight of everything, pointed her toward the desert. The weather was perfect: warm, sunny, light breeze. Being on a bike again felt like reopening a book I'd forgotten how much I loved. Freedom. Presence. A part of me that had gone dormant was beginning to awaken.

I pulled into Palm Canyon Resort in Borrego Springs a few hours later, knowing no one and feeling a bit like an imposter on my borrowed bike, with rusty skills, and a single forearm tattoo in a sea of tatted-up women on custom bikes who looked like they did this kind of thing every weekend. There were no men in sight: not at the vendor booths lining the entrance, not at check-in, not anywhere. Only women — of all ages, on every kind of bike, with camping setups ranging from minimalist to Dakar-ready — and the air was electric.

A woman at check-in smiled broadly, handed me a map of the resort, and pointed me toward my campsite. A few minutes later, as I stood in the dirt trying to figure out how to set up my tent, Shelby — a young woman I'd briefly met at check-in — pulled up on her blue Dyna. Her short, blue hair matched her bike perfectly. With her piercings, dark glasses, and tattoos, she reminded me of Noomi Rapace from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. As it turned out, we were sharing the campsite. Over the next two hours, fighting hot wind gusts, Shelby and I set up our tents and compared ride-in stories. I discovered she was the best campsite mate I could have asked for: a seasoned BRO attendee and camper who seemingly knew every other person there. By the end of the weekend, I'd learned just how much riding meant to her, learned about the life-threatening accident she'd survived and come back from, and been struck by how certain people — open, warm, utterly themselves — can feel like old friends so quickly.

After setting up camp, we shed our riding gear, pulled on our bikinis, and headed to the pool. It was packed. All around me were women with full-sleeve tattoos, colorful hair, piercings — a bold and unapologetic aesthetic of biker culture I'd been largely absent from for years. Academia, it turns out, has a much less vivid aesthetic. At first, I sat on the pool's edge with a cold 805 in hand just watching, feeling slightly on the outside of it all. My mind drifted to my riding days, the industry that had shaped my twenties, the people, places, and experiences I’d almost forgotten. Then I stopped watching and started participating. A few hours later, as I was belting out "What's Love Got to Do with It" at karaoke, women dancing and singing alongside me, it occurred to me that maybe I wasn't so different from them after all. And maybe this wasn't just my homecoming either.

I woke the next morning at 6:30 AM to still air, and the San Ysidro Mountain displayed brilliantly behind a field of colorful tents and parked bikes. After discovering that the coffee vendor had fallen through, I gathered my courage and asked three women camped nearby if I could join them for breakfast in town. They said yes without hesitation. At the local diner, people gave us curious looks and struck up conversations about the event and motorcycling. One sweet older lady stopped me on my way out to ask what had brought so many "hot women in leathers" to town.

Sitting across from three women who'd been camping together at BRO for a few years, I noticed something I'd see repeatedly throughout the weekend: the friendships this event quietly builds. Some women shared large campsites with their trucks backed in, bikes unloaded and packed tightly together. They had some impressive camping setups — one even had an espresso bar folding out of a truck. It was clear they came to ride together, starting their days with coffee in a circle of camping chairs and ending them with late-night post-party shenanigans. Other women, like Shelby, our sassy and hilarious neighbor Hannah, or me, arrived solo with everything strapped to our bikes, yet still found ourselves gathered around a picnic table in the late afternoon. Different setups, same instinct — making friends at BRO came naturally.

After breakfast, we rode out to see the Galleta Meadows Sculptures in Anza-Borrego, where giant metal animals are frozen mid-motion in the desert landscape. A small herd of mammoths lifted their trunks in the air, a horse launched a saber-tooth tiger from its back with both hind legs, a wind god bird lifted off with its prey, two stags stood locked in a mating standoff, and a massive sea dragon’s tail seemed to stretch endlessly across the road. Mountains and open blue sky behind all of it. It was a glorious way to start the day, and proof that the desert saves its most curious gifts for those who ride out to find them.

My companions had planned a three-hour Salton Sea loop next, which they invited me to join, but wind advisories and the exhaustion of riding from AZ the day before brought them back to camp. I had a different idea. Julian. Apple pie.

Julian is an hour away from Anza-Borrego. The road unwinds through rocky desert before going green and lush as it snakes up the mountain. The wind was already building, so I took the twisties slowly, easing into the rhythm of the bike, aware that it had been years since I'd ridden mountain roads, the cornering bravado of my twenties long gone, replaced by something humbler and wiser. Bonnie was steady and forgiving, her classic shape hiding a modern confidence and power that rewarded patience through the corners.

By the time I reached altitude, the temperature had dropped sharply. That’s when I discovered the heated grips — Bonnie's second-best feature, as it turned out (the first was cruise control, which I'd been immensely grateful for in the HOV lane on the 405 freeway two days prior). There is nothing quite like cold hands locked around a throttle with the tension creeping up through your forearms, into your neck and shoulders, stealing your focus. Bonnie's warm grips were a gift for those final thirty minutes, a small delight and a wink from the universe.  

In Julian, helmet in hand, I put my name in for lunch at my favorite café and wandered into a honey store across the street, where a wood-burning stove at the center of the room served as a gathering point for visitors. With a jar of local White Sage honey in the bag, a bowl of chili, cappuccino, and a slice of boysenberry-apple pie later, I found myself in conversation with Jack — a sharp, eloquent political science predoctoral student at UCSD who'd spotted the helmet next to me and used it as an opening. After an hour of discussing our research projects, the impending doom (promise?) of AI, his stint in political activism, and our shared passion for experiments, I left Julian smiling, still tasting the pie, fortified by the warm meal and energized by an unexpected intellectual connection.

After returning to the camp and peeling off my riding gear, I sat with Shelby at our picnic table, telling her about my adventures. Gradually, the conversation drifted into deeper territories. I realized that I saw so much of my younger self in her — passion for bikes and the industry, curious and fiercely independent spirit, and warm energy with a whole lot of grit underneath. Basking in the late afternoon desert sun, we covered bikes, men, jobs, mothers, and so much more. Despite being in different places in life, the love of bikes — and all that they represent — connected us.

That night, Melissa — a fellow Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu aficionado and a vendor at the event — offered me a spare bed in her room to avoid the storm. I gratefully accepted. For a change, we weren’t in our gi uniforms getting ready to roll, but had a chance to hang out. After a night of dancing at the medieval-themed homing party — with women dressed in anything from knight’s armor to Viking face-paint and leathers, intricate queen gowns, and inflatable dragons — more conversations and more connections were had. By the time I finally lay down in my bed, I felt something I hadn't felt in a long time: genuinely, uncomplicated exhaustion. My body was tired from the day’s adventures, but my mind was overflowing with gratitude. I slept like a baby.

The ride back home the next day was something else entirely. The wind advisory had not been an exaggeration. It had held off through the morning, but by the time I descended toward San Diego, it arrived in full — cold, wet, and gusty. Somewhere in the twisties, visibility dropped to a few feet. I tightened my grip on Bonnie's heated grips and focused on the road ahead, tuning out my increasingly wet pants, jacket, and boots. Stiffness was creeping into my neck and shoulders as the rain came down harder. I was too deep in the snaking canyon roads to pull over. There was nothing to do but keep moving, a few feet of road in front of me at a time.

Somewhere in that rain, I realized that this was the lesson I'd come to learn. The last year had been about living under the weight of uncertainty. Do I have what it takes? When will I finish the program? Will my research be meaningful enough? What comes next? Soaking in the rain that Sunday morning, I felt these questions dissolve. There was only the bike, the road, the warmth of the grips, and the next curve. As in life, the only thing that’s real is our felt experience “here and now.” The rest is just a narrative and, oftentimes, not a particularly good one.

Before I entered the rain cloud vortex, a rainbow appeared over the mountains. I pulled over. The desert looked different. Where it had been gusty and dry the day before, the mountains were now vivid green, the storm transforming the landscape in real time. I'd gotten to experience both versions — the starry silence of the desert night over my tent, the warmth of Saturday's afternoon breeze, and now this: cold, rain-soaked, and suddenly alive. I’m not one for sappy metaphors, but it felt symbolic.

A weekend at Babes Ride Out gave me community, belonging, and restoration. It gave me Shelby, Marci, Hannah, Angela, and Apryl. It afforded a serendipitous opportunity to catch up with my BJJ friend Melissa. It brought three great women who let a BRO newbie join them for breakfast and didn't make it feel strange. It gave me Bonnie's heated grips in the rain and the reassuring purring sound of her engine on the freeway. It gave me apple-boysenberry pie in Julian, wild karaoke, and dance parties with women who sang and moved like no one was watching — because no one was judging.

Women carry a lot. The planning, the analyzing, the performing, the constant managing of how we're perceived. BRO was a space where all of that could fade away for a few days. Women on bikes, channeling our inner five-year-old selves, playing in the desert, being silly, being ourselves — unapologetic, at ease, safe among our own.

If I were to imagine what drove Ashmore Ellis and her friends to create this event in 2013, it’d be something close to what I felt that weekend — the understanding that freedom, joy, and the wild within never disappear. They just go quiet sometimes, patiently waiting to be found again.

I found mine in the desert, on a borrowed Triumph, with a single forearm tattoo, surrounded by people who felt like my own. I returned home to myself.

Next year, I’m going to ride my scrambler.

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