| After seeing a news story about the cancellation of this year's Toy Run, I was surprised to learn that Drexel University had stepped with a promise of volunteers to collect whatever toys the motorcyclists would care to deliver to Citizen's Bank Park (CBP). Thus, it was after I completed a morning 5K running race around the Art Museum, that I continued on to Penn's Landing to join several thousand of my closest motorcycling buddies.
Temperatures rose during the late morning and was quite pleasant for the slow ride to the final destination - the parking lot outside CBP. The same basic vendors were at Penn's Landing as in years past, so it was a familiar sight for those of us who had participated in prior years. Some years the weather was bad and "only" a couple thousand bikes would show up. One particularly pleasant day with temps in the 70s, brought out tens of thousands of bikes and a like complement of toys for delivery to CHOP. This year, however, we weren't going to end up at CHOP and therefore were never ensnarled in crawling mass of humanity trying to park, drop off gifts and leave from in front of the hospital. I also recall that there had been several instances of stolen bikes at previous events. That said, it was nice to know the toys would ultimately be delivered to needy children, regardless of where the cyclists ended up.
I missed having my daughter, Kristen, join us for this annual pilgrimage as she is now a collage freshman. Instead, I brought "Fred" with me. Fred is a skeleton that I had previously zip-tied to the back of my red PC800 for the Halloween holiday. Fred elicited lots of smiles from fellow riders and their passengers and didn't talk nearly as much as Kristen. :^)
After parking, I walked slowly up toward the front of the event to see the familiar vendors and try to locate some fellow Red Knights. Bought a cheeseburger along the way. On the return trip, I located our chapter members and a few minutes later, had my bike parked among them. It was nice to speak to some guys I don't see but once a year and even caught up with a guy from my fire company who is a member of another Red Knights club. Soon though, we heard the rumble of bikes ahead of us and knew the ride was to begin shortly.
After passing by the start point and making the left, we make another two relatively quick lefts and then a right, putting us back onto Columbus Boulevard pointed in the opposite direction from where we started. As we continued slowly along, to our left, we could see the long line of parked bikes awaiting their turn to follow us. When we came to the end of the parked bikes, I asked the rider next to me if we were just going to make a Uturn and make it a complete circle of bikes. "Yeah, and then we just go around the circle twice and head home."
The "tour" continued along Columbus Boulevard and ultimately ended up at CBP perhaps 15 minutes later. A bit of stop-n-go before we had the opportunity to pull into the massive parking lot to claim our respective parking spots. Off the bikes, everyone walked to one of a number of tables staffed by volunteers, behind whom were large boxes labeled "Boy", "Girl", or "Unisex". Lacking the constriction presented by a walk through CHOP, the collection went quickly and smoothly, leaving us more time to talk and look at bikes, before heading on our respective ways home.
I actually spoke with a volunteer for a bit to see if the organization collecting the gifts would be will to part with any of them for another great cause. My niece works at the Child Guidance Resource Center located in Coatesville. In past years, Toys For Tots, had provided toys to her organization, but the person in charge had since left, leaving them unsure of if they would have gifts for the 950 to 1000 underprivileged kids. I left my contact information with the volunteer in hopes that someone will contact me with a promise to provide gifts to these kids. We'll see.
I arrived back home about 1:30, and still plenty of time to get some of those pesky honey-do items off the ever-growing list. I'm glad the event was able to take place and hope it will continue to do so for this important charity. Red Knights from Pennsylvania and New Jersey made an excellent showing. |
