Dates: July 27th - August 2nd
Location: North bend, OR
Event: Dune Fest

 It all started around July 10th when I was talking with Arland Lehman at LRD Performance, I mentioned to him that I wanted to get some sick dune footage for the new video Carpe Diem. He said, “Come to Dune Fest” so I did.

 The journey started about a week before when I was trying to find a way to get out to Oregon and also find a way to get around in the dunes once I was there, after ruling out paying $400 a day to rent a Polaris Scrambler or trying to get around the dunes in a rental car (SUV) I decided, screw it, I am going to buy a Yamaha Rhino, load it in my trailer, and drive to Oregon, it seemed like a good idea until about the 30 hour mark of a 35 hour drive (each way), it turns out Oregon is farther than I thought!

 So After a 35 hour drive and a short stop at LRD to tour their new shop, we make it to Dune Fest. I brought along our Chief Graphic Designer, Kyle Hansen to help with the filming and just to get him out of the office for awhile. My dad also came, because he had never been to the dunes to ride before and I liked the idea of sleeping in the back of the motor home while he drove (I helped a little). We started by checking out the vendor area and having a chat with the LRD guys to figure out where the best places to go to film and who to get a hold of, they basically just said, “drive around with a camera” so we did, it seemed to work. Friday we checked out the place and the 15,000 some riders that were there. We ended up finding some pretty good stuff, guys on tricked out banshees, trucks, and dune buggies flying around jumpin’ and doing other crazy stuff, but nothing like what was in store for Saturday.

 Saturday we woke up early and headed for the sand, as we crested the second hill we noticed a large area roped off where they were having sand drags, sweet! You wouldn’t believe the machines they had there, it was nuts! Mostly banshees and other quads with street bike engines stuffed in them, and one snowmobile. We checked that out for awhile and then headed further into the dunes. By the end of the day we had seen a lifted H2, a guy who set up a freestyle jump in the sand pull off some cool tricks, dune buggies hitting some huge jumps, oh, yeah, and lots and lots of gorgeous women riding around in nothing but bikinis (we have a tough job). By the end of the day we had seen some pretty good stuff and were going to pack it up for the night until we ran into Buddy Richard of Razorback Offroad, he was getting ready to take his off-road truck out and he asked if we wanted to go; sure, why not. That thing moves! Nothing got in his way, he was scooting across every little bump airing out over all the dunes and just flat out haulin’, it was pretty sweet, after awhile it started to get dark, which only means one thing, Party!

 It started innocently enough at some people’s camp site, they had made a jump out of sand and they were jumping their mini quads over it and just being stupid, exactly what we like! I am pretty sure they had some liquid encouragement but that’s okay. From there we hopped in the rhino and headed down to the next party we knew of, earlier that day we had talked to Bob (that’s it just Bob) as he was riding by, he mentioned a little get together at his camp site so we had to check it out. When we got there it was a decent little get together maybe 15 people but we soon learned it doesn’t matter how many people you have at your party it matters what kind of people you have. Before long we were giving a guy a green Mohawk, lighting fireworks off in Donnie’s butt, and trying to talk the girls into getting a little crazy for the camera (think girls gone wild).

 The next morning I woke up in our motor home (not sure how I got there) to the sound of Kyle knocking on the door (not sure where he slept) after finally moving again around noon we decided we had seen all we needed and filmed all we could so we decided to start our 35 hour drive back home. After all we have to leave again on the 7th of August to go to Tennessee to film with Jeremy Lawson, Wes Heatherly and others, plus go to Loretta Lynns.

Brad Phillips