Headed out to Ohio for the 16th annual Road Rash Bash this past weekend just outside of Cleveland Ohio. The Bash is an annual invite only party hosted by Kevin Moore and Hadley Conner, for around 500 of their close personal friends. We headed out of Chicago around 6:30pm and were promptly stopped by Indiana construction. After a 45 minute wait for the saddest whopper I have ever had (really pizza hut how do you run out of pizza?) the dream of getting into Cleveland at a reasonable hour was lost. We finally rolled into Cleveland around 2am and went to bed like kids on Christmas Eve extra excited about the day to come.
Woke up the next morning to the sound of a couple big V Twins firing up the parking lot. The day of the Bash has arrived but first we need food, an overstuffed sandwich from Paninis to be exact, a sandwich I have been dreaming about for 5 years, and sandwich that would help me forget about that sad limp Indiana whopper I had just a few hours earlier. On the way there we saw an old friend sitting at a stop sign, I honked my horn and yelled Dean!, to which I got an irritated looking glare in my direction, I yelled hey, its Danny! Thinking maybe he didn’t recognize me since it’s been so long, but then he yelled back “I know” with the same irritated glare on his face. Im gonna chalk it up to the sun being in his eyes, not because I was making him late to a show. Dean Cohen plays with the Del Rios, a Surf/Garage band based out of Cleveland I highly recommend you check out their new album Baptized in Reverb. You can check them out at thedelrios.com. After catching up with Dean, and the progress on his 53 Chevy, We wished him good luck with the gig and headed out to get that glorious overstuffed sandwich(ok maybe I’m a little too excited about the sandwich, but have you had one?! I mean damn its good! Ok enough about the sandwich, we grabbed a 30 pack of the champagne of beers and headed out to the Bash.
We rolled up around 1pm and the first thing we see is a stock car being fired up and rolled off a trailer, we had arrived. The cars and bikes had been rolling in since the night before, and I couldn’t wait to head out and start checking out all the rides that rolled in from the all over the Midwest and the East Coast. Heading up one of the drives almost every type of bike was represented, from a Brat style Yamaha to a Flathead Harley, and there were no shortage of triumphs on hand. After making sure none of the bikes had a hidden for sale sign on them we headed over to check out some of the bands, we caught the last part of the set by the Dutch Babies playing some grungy garage rock, and then got to check out the The Bomb City Royals out of Cleveland, if you like greasy rock and roll there a band you need to here. After that we took a quick stroll around the car/camping area to check out what the four wheel bunch was bringing. I regret not taking more photos of some the sick Kustoms there but by this time it had already been Miller time for about two hours so most of the pictures are of me pointing at my nipple or my thumb is in them. I really wish I coulda found the owner of that lifted van to do some off-roading, but off in the distance I heard 45 Spider starting their set so I had to bail to go check out Cleveland’s best Garage rock band. Not only can Kevin and Hadley throw a kick ass party but they have one hell of a rock n roll band, Check them out www.reverbnation.com/45spider . After more beers, and a few more bands, the Tufted Puffins, the Jackals of Botswana (Pittsburgh) and Archie and the Bunkers, we decided to call it a night. We missed out on the drunken Karaoke and the HUGE bon-fire but they are going to have to wait for next year.
Early-ish the next day… ok so it was around 11am when were finally able to muster up the energy to suck down some coffee we came across a bike show relatively close to where we were staying hosted by ClevelandMoto. There we had the pleasure of meeting and talking to Phil Waters the owner of ClevelandMoto clevelandmoto.com . You can really tell this guy has a love for all things with two wheels. Just when I thought we were concluding our trip and heading home without any new motorcycles (we didn’t bring the trailer on purpose so we wouldn’t bring anything home) Aga found a done just right xs650. I was like, “yeah that’s rad, too bad we don’t have a trailer” and Phil was like “that’s ok im heading to Chicago in a couple of weeks, ill drop it off” sooooo, long story short Aga is well on her way to becoming the cat lady of motorcycles. We said our final goodbyes to Phil and the 650 and hit the road back to Chicago.
On the way back we decided to stop in a travel Plaza on the Ohio/Indiana border. We were talking about how great the trip was over a slice of pizza, when we ran into another traveler that stopped in for a slice. Miguel aka Motorwolf on his way across North America to California and up to the farthest part of the Arctic Circle you can take a wheeled vehicle. I mean look at a map and wrap your head around that! On a Street Bob none the less! We got to chat a bit about his trip, his philosophy and his company @motorwolfusa, make sure you follow him @motorwolf its definitely one of the greatest travel adventures I have seen on the interwebs. After exchanging some t-shirts and patches we hit the road again finally making it home after that brutal Indiana construction. Looking forward to our next trip out to see old friends and make some new ones! If you see us out and about come say hi!
