ABATE Region Zero's Not Just Another Damn Poker Run

Greetings, friends. I have been delinquent in my postings and so I shall attempt to do better for the rest of the summer. For one thing, the weather in NE Ohio has literally sucked up until about two weeks ago, and we are still dealing with the possibility of afternoon thunderstorms on a regular basis. ENOUGH ALREADY! But, alas, I digress...

Our grandson, Harley (seriously, that is really his name) is here for a week while Mom looks for a new pad somewhere near NYC, so we dragged the boy off to ABATE's annual Not Just Another Damn Poker Run. We caught up with our ABATE friends at the Bristol Inn just north of Chmpion Township where we live. Better than that, because I happened to post an event to FB, a few riders hooked up with the Ninety Nine and rode in as well.

Amazingly, we were blessed with totally awesome weather today, which made the ride all the better. We probably would have chosen some totally different (I mean, totally, absolutely, beyond description different) routes for the run, however, since we do not have the time to donate to the hard working group of ABATE, we have little room to complain.

And more amazingly, EVERY stop other than the first one, had free food. And I am not talking about pretzels, there was real food at every stop. It started with hot dogs, then graduated to ham, beans and taters, then the last stop had corn on the cob, burgers, macaroni salad, and alcohol infused watermelon! We enjoyed visiting with the Bristol Inn owner, who was manning the grill outback and threatened to swear he was not cooking if his significant other was asked. But what was really special was DJ Jim, who did a tribute to brothers lost. He took the time to take down names of brothers and sisters lost throughout the crowd, then read their names before playing a Pink Floyd tribute. It really choked him and me up...don't know about anybody else but I was speechless. Thanks, Jim.

As always, the ABATE people worked this event very hard and had every detail accounted for. But what we really appreciated was the fact that our start point and end point this time around was like 15 minutes from home.