Three Women Were Duped By the Same Jerk. Now They’re Road Tripping Around the Country

Seven months ago, they were strangers. They met, decided to refurbish a 30-year-old school bus together, and hit the road.

byKristin V. Shaw|
Three Women Were Duped By the Same Jerk. Now They’re Road Tripping Around the Country
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Two women from Idaho and one from Utah discovered they were all dating the same man. It would have been natural for them to be angry with one another, as it typically goes with a story like this, but not these women. Instead, Abi Roberts, 19, Bekah King, 18, and Morgan Tabor, 21, formed a bond that led to a most unlikely road trip.

In June, Roberts, King, and Tabor set off in a converted 30-year-old Thomas Built school bus they had gutted and refurbished over the course of two and a half months. Now close pals, their friendship cemented by an unusual situation, they’re having the time of their lives on a road trip that doesn’t have a firm ending date. 

Abi Roberts, Bekah King, and Morgan Tabor

Last December, Idaho resident Tabor started to have doubts about her boyfriend, whom she had dated on and off for a couple of years. She had spotted a number of extra-friendly comments from other women on his social media posts and when she clicked on the profile of one of them, she got the shock of her life: there was her boyfriend, embracing the other woman in what was a decidedly more-than-friends situation in a multitude of photos.

Tabor reached out to the woman, and together they discovered at least six other paramours of the guy they thought was theirs and theirs alone. One of those women was Abi Roberts of Salt Lake City, nearly a five-hour drive away. While Tabor was on a lengthy video chat with Roberts, the cheater pulled up in her driveway unexpectedly, bearing flowers.

“Hey, look here,” Tabor told The Washington Post. “I’ve made some new friends.”

Busted.

The young lothario, a 20-year-old college student from Boise, tried to convince all of his girlfriends that dating them simultaneously was copacetic. They decided they weren’t having it and ditched him in favor of their new friendships. Tabor jokes that the Casanova had “a type” because the new friends discovered they had much more in common in terms of similar interests that went way beyond their taste in men.

According to Tabor’s text message thread, about four days after they started talking (Christmas Eve 2020) the trio started talking about living together. It became more of a reality mid-January when a friend of Tabor’s was selling a bus and they started dreaming about creating a tiny house on wheels for a new adventure. That's when the BAM bus (Bekah, Abi, Morgan) was born.

As fate would have it, they embarked on their two-and-a-half-month project smack in the middle of a supply shortage due to the pandemic. Wood was expensive, and they had to stick to a budget; they turned to Facebook Marketplace to find atypical sources for materials. The sink was made from a mixing bowl with a hole punched through the bottom, for example, and the counter was constructed with inexpensive flooring. 

“We salvaged any wood we could get,” King told me in a phone interview with all three women. “Furniture, shelves, you name it: we turned it all into workable material.”

Roberts, a student at Utah State, made the long drive from Salt Lake City to Boise to help on the weekends. Parts of the build involved a steep learning curve, and the trio leaned on King’s experience with construction as well as the skoolie community on YouTube and Pinterest (Skooliana

is one of their favorites). They also enlisted two of their dads to help with the bigger projects, like the roof deck and bunk beds. 

“My parents were little hesitant about this at first,” Tabor says. “They finally got on board when the bus moved to my house and my dad showed up with his drill to help.”

Abi Roberts, Bekah King, and Morgan Tabor

Make no mistake, though: this entire project has been funded and directed by the women themselves, who work hard and are working remotely even now. None of them are independently wealthy, nor do they come from a lot of money; they figured out how to do everything on their shoestring budget.

When I spoke with Roberts, King, and Tabor, they told me their initial plan was to be out until November to follow the sun. Now it looks like it might be a possibility they can go even longer after a flurry of media coverage on their unusual story and an outpouring of encouragement and opportunities coming their way. As of today, they're in Glacier National Park in Montana, and they have a lot of places to see before they stop. They're not getting there quickly, either; the BAM bus isn't one of those with a 7.3-liter Godzilla V8 engine, and they say it's lucky to get to 63 miles per hour on a good downhill run. 

True story: when I was in college, I discovered my boyfriend was in a relationship with another woman. I called her up and we arranged to confront the guy in my dorm room. The look on his face is the one I imagine was similar to that of the guy Tabor, King, and Roberts were dating when he was exposed.  The idea that these three women found kinship and an incredibly memorable road trip out of the deal is not only unusual; it’s spectacular.

Abi Roberts, Bekah King, and Morgan Tabor

King told me that she appreciated the outreach from Tabor and Roberts to expose the manipulation that led to all of the women letting their guards down. They were coming from a place of understanding and wanted to find out how they got into this situation, she says.

“There was never any animosity,” Roberts says. “We realized this was a sucky situation and didn’t want to make it worse.”

I noticed that actor and director Reese Witherspoon liked more than one of the BAM bus crew's Instagram posts. Don't be surprised if you see this story turn up as a movie sometime in the future, and I'll be lined up for popcorn. 

Got a tip? Send the writer a note: kristin.shaw@thedrive.com

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