so the wife and I went to southern illinois to visit a friend before she leaves for France for a year. She lives in the residential area of a small farming town and her dad is a farmer. It's the kind of town where everyone knows everyone's business and other than gossip and drinking, there really isn't much to do. Thank goodness for the drinking. Well, seeing as there really isn't much in the way of distractions, I must applaud the townspeople's creativity when it comes to deriving different methods for consuming alcohol. sure, there're parties, drinking games, keggers, bars, and homebound alcoholism... but this past weekend I was introduced to a new trend sweeping the farming communities of the nation: The poker run.
Now, I've participated on many poker runs before. It's a popular fundraiser around here geared toward bikers. Everyone starts out at a common location to register where you get a special form. You then ride to 5 different predetermined locations where you select a card from a deck and the person in charge of that site writes that card on your form. after the last stop you go back to a common location where everyone turns in their forms. Whoever has the best poker hand wins the prize. It usually is a great time if it's run well. usually all the stops will have food and music and stuff, and since you can come and go at your convenience, it's usually a nice relaxing day of riding on the motorcycle.
Here's the twise in teh farming communities:
Tractor driven poker runs. That's right. I went on a poker run where about 50 cabless farm tractors pulled trailers. On our trailer we had some picnic tables and lots and lots and lots of beer... and a radio. The event was a great time. You can tell that much more than their actual poker hand, all the participants' main concern was getting thrown their next beer... sadly, even the drivers of the tractors. It turned into an all-day event and we had to take off a little early, but I just wanted to give you all the visual of a beer-drinkin' good ol' bobaloo sitting on a trailer being pulled by a tractor. I have some pics that I'll be putting on facebook when I get around to it.
I could probably tell you a lot more about it, but I'm lazy.
Thanks for reading