Babes Ride Out 7 attracted women on all flavors of motorcycles — cruisers, sportbikes, ADVs and more — to the golden hills of central California. Photos by the author.

A women-only rally celebrating the camaraderie of two wheels.

It all started, like these things often do, with two friends who just wanted to share a newfound love of riding motorcycles. They planned a ?girls? weekend? of riding and camping in California?s Mojave Desert, and thought it might be fun to invite some of the fellow women riders they?d been connecting with on social media (but had yet to meet in person). Playfully, they dubbed it Babes in Borrego. The year was 2013, and to their surprise 50 women showed up, some having come from as far away as New York and Oregon. They were all there for one simple reason: they loved to ride motorcycles. 
The next year Anya and Ashmore, the two founding friends, stepped up their game for what they were now calling Babes Ride Out, renting a private campground near Joshua Tree, California. They expected 150 women; instead they got 500. The next year, 1,500. That same year, 2015, they hosted their first off-road-oriented event, called (of course) Babes in the Dirt. In 2016, Babes Ride Out — or BRO for short — expanded to the East Coast and then to the UK. Anya and Ashmore had tapped into a powerful force: women who were passionate about riding and who craved the camaraderie that only a gathering of motorcyclists seems to prov...