Ride for Kids 2008 Recap & The Winners!! Monday, May 5 2008

This year’s Ride for Kids was a great success. It is amazing to me how fast his event has grown over the past 5 years. This year we had over 1000 motorcyclists at the event and raised a lot of money. Thanks to friends, family, and all the generous BOTL that donated this year I raised $3180 beating my goal of $3000. That put me in the top 10 of individual fundraisers at the event for the second year in a row. It says a lot about the growth of the event when I can bring more than twice as much money than I did last year and yet I ranked about the same in terms of individual fundraisers this year. I will have to work hard to keep pace for next year. The event raised in total, $138,280.00 for the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation. Darth Vader and some Storm Troopers showed up. It was a cool treat for the kids. The top fundraiser of the event this year was a guy who is an illustrator for Lucas Arts and he brought out the Star Wars Characters. There were several “Ride Stars” at the event. A Star is a child who has either beaten, or is battling a brain tumor. They are great kids that a full of personality and do a fabulous job entertaining and inspiring the crowd every year. Here are a bunch of pictures from the event…

Click for
(All the pictures can be clicked for a larger view)

I got there pretty early. This probably wasn’t even half the bikes that showed up. They had us spread across a few different parking lots.

Like I said above, the Dark Lord himself showed up to support the Kids.

There was a sea of humanity under a huge pavilion over flowing out into the sunshine. My poor little camera couldn’t get a wide enough shot to really show how many people where there.

These are the Stars of the Ride. These are some of the brave young kids who benefit from the treatment and programs and research done by the PBTFUS. There were some very emotional moments, but most of all they had the crowd in laughing fits. The younger kids are especially good at playing to the crowd.

And of course the Money Shot (ha ha). This years ride raised over $138,000 which is a huge increase over the $91,000 raised last year. Thank you all for your donations!

So now everyone wants to know who won the cigars…

First I had to write everyone’s names on the tickets I was using for the drawing. Here is a picture of all the tickets in the box I drew them from.

So I gave the box a good shake or twenty and…

First name out and winner of the Opus X provided by my very generous friends at CigarsDirect.com was… Elektrobot

Second name out and winner of the Perdomo Habanos provided by Tabacalera Perdomo was… JohnLongIsland

Third name drawn for the Camacho Monarcas provided by Dylan Austin and Camacho Cigars was… Belicoso Fino

And the fourth name winning the box of Hoyo de Monterey Dark Sumatras donated by The Tobacconists of Cary was… Brian Hewitt

Congratulations to the winners. I will be sending out your cigars this week. And I want to say thank you again to everyone who donated. I really appreciate your help and support. The money raised will go a long way in helping these brave children and their families as they cope with this terrifying disease.

I also wanted to take this opportunity to once again thank the many bloggers, forum members, and friends who helped me get the word out. Without your help I wouldn’t have been so successful. I also want to thank once again, Billy of CigarsDirect.com, Dylan of Camacho Cigars, Jeff & Chris of Tabacalera Perdomo, and Rob & Bill of Tobacconists of Cary. Without the generosity of these folks I wouldn’t have had all these great cigars to give away.
Thanks again everyone!