Bikers get revved up for good causeBy Tony Bartelme (Contact)
The Post and Courier
Sunday, August 17, 2008
The Post and Courier Seventy-eight-year old Russel Mims of James Island has been riding motorcycles for much of his life. He took off again on Saturday with more than 70 other bikers in a fundraising 'poker run' to benefit the Jenkins Orphanage. 'People just enjoy the camaraderie, and this is a good cause,' Mims said, just before he buckled up his helmet and began the 108-mile jaunt. 
Tyrone Walker Since Saturday's poker run was a fundraiser, Tiffaney Rathjen had little difficulty in selling a motorcycle-length strip of raffle tickets to Steve Waters of West Ashley. The bikers took off from the Centre Point Bar and Grill in North Charleston on their 108-mile ride. Russell Mims, 78, has been riding motorcycles for nearly six decades. Over the years, he watched returning servicemen from World War II form the Hells Angels, and more recently, how motorcyclists shed their rebel image and rode to raise money instead of cain. On Saturday, Mims and more than 70 other bikers gathered at a bar near Tanger Outlet in North Charleston for a 108-mile "poker run" for the Jenkins Orphanage to raise money. "People just enjoy the camaraderie, and this is a good cause," Mims of James Island said, just before he climbed aboard his shiny Kawasaki. Roger Lemon, one of the organizers, said a group of motorcyclists began raising money informally nine weeks ago for the orphanage on Thursday nights at Centre Point Bar & Grill. "We just presented them a check for $832 the week before last," Lemon said. Saturday's poker run was the biggest event so far, although the total raised won't be known until Monday. "It keeps getting bigger and bigger. There's a real need for these kids." Mims said many motorcyclists are professionals who go from one charity event to another. Indeed, the median age of today's rider is 42, up from 38 in 1998, according to the Motorcycle Industry Council. A third of today's riders have college degrees, compared with 23 percent in 1998. Poker runs have become especially popular in the past 15 years, Mims said. In Saturday's event, the bikers were given directions to various watering holes and eateries across the area where they pick up "cards." The rider with the best and worst hands wins a prize at the end of the day. Carolina Motorcycle Promotions helped organize the event, which included a raffle for $1,000 in gasoline. "It doesn't take much for motorcyclists to get together, but when it's for a good cause, so much for the better," Doug Hord said, moments before the group roared out of the parking lot. |
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Comments
This article has 10 comment(s)
Posted by STREETLAW on August 17, 2008 at 12:53 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Good causes abound and there are better ways of funding them than polluting the roadways with noisy and dangerous motorcycles.
If cars made as much racket on average as do motorcycles, most of the population would be stone deaf.
I will never understand why these showoff exhibitionist, many of them sociopaths, get such good press.
Maybe the media is afraid of them.
Posted by jeff61 on August 17, 2008 at 1:27 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Nice rack, should have look at this story sooner
Posted by ed52 on August 17, 2008 at 4:47 p.m. (Suggest removal)
oh streetlaw , you found us out. please don't tell my minister or my sales manager. they both thought i was a professional person.
Posted by Slick50 on August 17, 2008 at 5:37 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Streetlaw:
I find the continual thump, thump, thump from an overpowered car stereo more disturbing than the occasional roar of a motorcycle. You know the type; when the wholesale cost of the stereo exceeds the retail value of the auto it was installed in. These must be the stone deaf, showoff exhibitionists you are referring to.
By definition, a sociopath is antisocial. Does raising money for a good cause strike you as antisocial?
Posted by STREETLAW on August 17, 2008 at 8:22 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Well I suspect you could have raised more by staying home, saving on the gas and time, and having a garage sale.
All bikes aren't noisy and all bikers aren't sociopathic. But a few noisy car stereos hardly equates to a few hundred noisy bikes. And neither should be permitted.
I read somewhere that true charity is not puffed up, that is, it does not call attention to itself. To each his own I'm sure.
By the way, decades ago, I got a ticket for having a glass pack muffler on my car that you would not have even noticed in daytime traffic. It was on the car when I brought it and I never even noticed. Unfortunately I was getting off swing shift around midnight and was the only car on the road when I got pulled. But that muffler was 20 times quieter than many of todays bikers you can hear for miles, even during the day. Why is it they never get a ticket? Or do they?
For obvious reasons, anyone who rides a motorcycle in traffic must have a suicidal bent. And risky behavior is definitely a sociopathic characteristic.
But you knew that.
Posted by rjcontego on August 18, 2008 at 5:40 a.m. (Suggest removal)
i wish someone would do a study on what damage motorcycle noise has on people...i would bet that a baby's hearing is damaged to some degree by a brief encounter with a ear-bleeding roar from a motorcycle...i cover my ears when those monstrosities pass, it's so loud... what to do? Just sit back and let the community’s hearing be destroyed?..ironically, from what I’m told, riders don’t really hear the blasts because the sound is traveling away from them…lucky them… there should be some law that limits the allowable noise any road vehicle can emit on public streets, especially if it can damage people's hearing.
Posted by coahtrtaylor on August 18, 2008 at 9:17 a.m. (Suggest removal)
number1volsfan1: AMEN!!!!!!!!!
Posted by MyHumbleOpinion on August 18, 2008 at 9:30 a.m. (Suggest removal)
STREET LAW - In just two statements you have made more pollutant racket than any motorcycle.
Take your meds and quit your whining & idiotic psychoanalytic stereotyping.
Posted by LowCountryCrime on August 18, 2008 at 3:27 p.m. (Suggest removal)
number1volsfan1: You summed it up quite nicely. I hear modified exhaust systems on pickup trucks that are louder than my Harley. Loud pipes DO save lives.
Bikers - even the "outlaw" types - are some of the most charitable people I have had the pleasure of meeting. Toy runs, raising cash kids with cancer, coming together to support a fellow biker whose daughter was murdered (Florida), etc. I could go on, but I have to cut the grass and wash the bike.
Folks like StreetLaw are the timid type who intimidated by the free spirit types who ride. He's the guy at the intersection blowing his d*mn horn while 2,000 bikers on a Toy Run ride by. He doesn't care that those 2,000 bikers donated thousands of toys and thousands of dollars. There are several toy runs before Christmas and most bikers in the area attend them all.
Posted by luvmydogs59 on August 18, 2008 at 8:15 p.m. (Suggest removal)
number1volsfan1....couldn't have said it any better!!
Live to ride, ride to live!!