Before the memories completely disappear from my head, I’ll provide a little recap of the Poker Ride held by Swami’s a few weekends ago. Swami’s Team Fun put up two full women’s teams, and several women joined mixed teams for the day. The Poker Ride is a long standing Swami’s tradition that is one part scavenger hunt, one part card game, and one part social event.
Janice, Doris, Jill, and Heather at the finish
Brielle, Kim, Laura, and Suzanne at the start
The weather was that kind of day when the sky is steel gray, constantly threatening rain, a little breezy, and more than a little bone chilling – hence all the extra clothes in the pictures above. The ride was originally advertised as 40 miles. Well, the route was essentially left up to the teams, with only “way points” provided for the next card stop (for example, the first instruction given was: Park & Ride off I-15, Deer Springs exit). So in the best case, I think the route was 50 miles. In my team’s case, it was closer to 56 miles. That was quite a day, especially as the previous day’s Saturday ride was on the tough side of intense.
Our team finished around 3 hours, 15 minutes with an average speed just over 17 mph on a fairly hilly route. There seemed to be a little less spirit of adventure on this instance of the Poker Ride than in the past, and a little more focus on teams’ speeds. Part of it may definitely have been that the weather wasn’t ideal and no one wanted to hang around for too long for fear of the shivers setting in.
At the end of the ride, burgers, hot dogs, chips and beer were served, although again, with the state of the weather, people weren’t as interested in lingering. I know that I for one really appreciated my veggie burger at the end, and I may or may not have eaten most of a bag of Costco potato chips on my own (those can’t enter my house).
Lori helps out on the grill
There was a little ceremony for “prizes”, if you can call them that. In pure “jokester” style, the prizes were definitely tongue in cheek.
Winning men’s team from Celo Pacific. They knew the best shortcut in Escondido – we should’ve followed them!
Winning women’s team showing off their “prizes”
Team with the best poker hand also got an “interesting” prize. I do enjoy the new water bottle at least!!
There may be another one of these in the works for the summer, which will hopefully focus more on the adventure and the camaraderie and a little less on the speed – maybe a theme of “let’s get lost together”, and a little Urban Adventure Quest type scavenger hunting – with of course, food and beer at the end!
I know both of our teams ending up enjoying themselves and proud of their day’s performance. So thanks goes out to Swami’s (Anthony and Troy in particular) for putting on such a great event, and thanks to Rob Klingensmith for the great photos!
This event was free for members of Swami’s, $10 for non-members.
Swami's Team Fun 