Residents at Alpine Summit Senior’s Lodge may be jetting around Jasper a lot more often.
Organizers of this year’s Jasper Motorcycle Tours Poker Run, the eleventh, have settled on the purchase of a trishaw for the home as the benefit charity.
The pedal-assisted cross between a tricycle and a rickshaw costs as much as $12,000 and would give workers and family members the option to take up to two residents for a ride at a time.
“I had seen it on the Internet too,” Leanne Kading said. “We thought ‘we wanted to do something local,’ so to me it was either the seniors or the kids. A lot of us work in the hospital as well, so we’re around them and we see, and I think the community has been overwhelming with support.”
This year’s run is Sept. 30. Registration starts the Friday night before with a meet and greet at the Legion from 6-9 p.m. and continues at 10 a.m. Saturday morning. The ride departs at noon and will last about five hours if past years are any indication.
Then the party really starts, with dinner at 5:30 p.m., also at the Legion, featuring a silent auction and live music from Whiskey for the Pain.
Entry into the poker run is $50 for the first hand and $20 for each additional hand and includes dinner. There are door prizes.
“You don’t have to ride a bike to join us, though, you can come to the dinner for $20,” she said.
It would be super nice if they had an idea of how many folks to expect for dinner for logistical purposes, so ideally you will buy your ticket to dinner at the Tours storefront at 610 Patricia St. by Sept. 28.
Mountain weather, which brought the first snowfall warning of the season for Jasper yesterday, is volatile this time of year but Kading has it on good authority that there may be a chinook on the way.
“We get riders from all over the local area, Hinton, Edson, Grande Cache, we get some from Edmonton, we could get Calgary riders,” Kading said. “We may also get (members of international all-women motorcycle club The Litas.”
The event started with JMT but was taken over for a few years by Tourism Jasper before merging into thinner times.
“We thought ‘you know, it’s so important,’ so we took it back as a small, little business and we’re trying to find the time to do it all and make it a success, plus do something communitywise.”
