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

I call first dibs!



I look forward to seeing the photos because I can barely imagine what you just described. I have never heard of a Poker Run before, let alone one where drinking is involved. Hell I have barely seen a tractor let alone rode on one. I guess it shows how much of a city boy I really am!

I haven't taken the pics off my camera yet. If I'm realistic about it, I'd say I'll have 'em up by the end of the week.

I can imagine exactly what you described. I haven't heard of the tractor poker runs here but I can bet they go on. I live in the agricultural centre of Canada so we have poker runs(read: drunk fests) of every variety. Sounds like a blast riding on a trailer being pulled by a tractor and pouring back the suds in the process. Can't wait to see pics. In the tractor driver's defense, yeah they may have been drinking, but it's harder to get in a serious accident when you're doing 7 miles per hour

I love your apathy

Which one of you has a quote about apathy on your facebook?? I'm too lazy to look

Bob has it, but maybe you should steal it!

It could be our motto

nah screw that

too lazy to respond to that... emoticons will work nicely from here on out.

ok we've gone too far

Yeah... I figured that when I get the message "Your post contains more emoticons than this board allows"

Evade gets that message every second post

Poor guy... he can hardly communicate without the smilies!

Reminds me of an Arj Barker bit where he talks using text smilies.

"Hi, how are you semi colen close bracket"

Who's this Arj Barker guy!?