"One hell of an X" is an emphatic, emotional way of saying something is very big or very intense--sometimes, very bad. It would always be said in a loud, enthusiastic way. It is an informal expression.
It's informal because "hell" is a borderline "bad word." When I was a child in the 1950s, "hell," used as a swear word, was still considered a bad word, which you would never hear on television; people would say "heck" instead. There's a U.S. company that makes products with names like "Heluva Good! Cheese Dip." It was founded in 1925 and of course the point is that when you read it aloud, it is "hell of a good cheese dip," but by spelling it that way they avoided using the bad word.
"Hell of a" can be used in many ways. (Don't use it yourself, just be aware of the meaning). In a musical play called "Carousel," the hero, an uneducated man, says to his girlfriend "There's a hell of a lot of stars in the sky, and the sky's so big the sea looks small."
The idea is that you are expressing such an intensity of emotion that you go just slightly outside the bounds of polite English. "It was a good show." Stronger: "It was a fantastic show." Even stronger: "It was a hell of a show."
"Ride" can be literal. "A hell of a ride" means an exciting ride. A ride on a difficult horse, or a roller-coaster, or an airplane with the pilot doing aerobatic stunts. Or, it can mean, figuratively, a part of one's life or career. "I worked for a crazy start-up company until it folded. It only lasted two years, but it was a hell of a ride while it lasted."