The Williams Lake Off Road Motorcycle Club wants to thank the community for its support in helping raise $4,000 during its annual Dirty Knobby Poker Run.
This year’s Dirty Knobby, held July 27 at Bull Mountain, was dedicated as a fundraiser for Williams Lake’s Brayden Methot after he was seriously injured in June following a vehicle incident near Kamloops.
“The support from the community, it’s always been good, but a lot of businesses went way overboard this time,” said WLORMA treasurer Mike Lynnes.
The event was originally scheduled to be held in June two days prior to Brayden’s injury, but because his family is actively involved with the WLORMA (Brayden’s dad, Brad, is the president), the idea sprung up to postpone the event and commit to a fundraiser.
WLORMA vice president Roger Patenaude said originally the idea was to create a Dirty Knobby T-shirt to be sold with all of the proceeds going to the Methot family.
“It was Sasha Kokesch that started it,” Roger said. “We were just going to do the T-shirt as a fundraiser but then we decided to do the whole event.”
Lynnes said the idea to sell T-shirts was well-received by the local business community.
“Not just with buying advertising on the T-shirts, but a lot of them did spend some time to sell T-shirts at their businesses,” Lynnes said.
Sixty-five people took part in this year’s event, which featured three courses: expert, intermediate and beginner courses.
Rick Kokesch also hosted a bike rodeo for the younger riders.
“That went over really well with the kids,” Patenaude said. “I think 50 per cent or so might have been under 12 or 15 years old.”
As for the club, it’s currently working on securing legal trail use and maintenance at the site on the north end of Bull Mountain, located near Springfield Ranch.
“They’ve [Springfield Ranch] been really good to us,” Patenaude said. “They let us use an area for the pits, so we’re looking at a recreational use area basically the same as what the mountain bike club has done around town.”
And both want to continue to grow the club in the coming years.
“We want to get the word out the club is still here,” Lynnes said. “It was kind of an up-and-down year for us for a number of reasons but hopefully next year we can get some more people out and rally around getting a riding area set up for all types of riders.”