CMN Poker Run

This past Thursday I was at Bike Night at Porky's and there was a guy handing out flyers for the 1st Annual Children's Miracle Network Poker Run. It was $20 per person, and you got free burgers / chips / pop all day, with the chance to win some prizes. I love poker runs because you usually get to meet a lot of nice people and the money goes to a great cause. Andrea and I geared up yesterday at 10:30 am, and headed for the Ankeny Wal Mart parking lot to get registered.

It was a beautiful day in the mid 80's, sunny, a small breeze, which is pretty much ideal for great riding. We took off with a group of 5 other bikes towards Saylorville Lake for our first stop of our 100 mile run. The object of this poker run was to make 5 stops, and at every stop you drew a chip out of a bucket, the chips were numbered 1 - 52 (cuz that's how many cards are in a deck), and the goal was to get the highest chipcount you could. What was my first draw? 1. As in One. The lowest chip in the bucket. I asked if there was a prize for lowest, and they said there was, but it was more of a booby prize. That became my mission for the day.

The next stop we were in for a nice little treat. That treat came in the form of a terential downpour. It came out of nowhere, and it felt like the drops were the size of golf balls. I had water overflowing out the top of my boots, and my freshly waxed bike was a complete disaster. But we pushed through it, and 5 excruciating minutes later then we were back on the sunny backroads rural Iowa, drying off as fast as we got wet.

We made all our stops, and were waiting for the rest of the bikes to get back so we could draw for prizes. In our first group of 5, the ladies counting the chips told us that as of right now, Andrea had the highest count, and I had the lowest, but there were still 7 - 8 bikes out that haven't had theirs counted.

Then it came time to announce the winners. The 3rd place winner for highest chip count was....... Andrea Kneifl. For that, she received a $25 gift card to Hy-Vee. Nice. The prize for lowest chip count goes to........ some guy named Doug. Dang! The guy beat me by 4 measly points for the booby prize.

After that, they drew for prizes with the tickets we purchased during registration. Andrea's name was drawn and she won this cool little motorycle clock. My name was drawn for sunglasses and a Sturgis Bandana. It was a great day, we met some very nice people, ate some good food, and actually took home some pretty sweet prizes. There's a pic of the prizes below.


Now, I don't like to think of a Charity Poker Run as profitable, but for $20 each, we made a pretty nice haul. Oh, and helped out a great charity. That too. ;-)