A little rain wasn’t enough to shut down the first Mentor Poker Run last weekend. Photos courtesy/copyright Jeff Helmkamp/Helmkamp Photos.
Elite Poker Runs LLC’s Anthony Scioli had hoped for the 30 boats in his inaugural Mentor Poker Run on Lake Erie in Ohio last weekend, but ended up with 21. He’d hoped for great weather, but ended up with a two-hour rain delay for Saturday’s lunch run to Nuevo Modern Mexican and Tequila Bar Restaurant behind the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. He’d hoped to have a helicopter for photographer Jeff Helmkamp to shoot from, but that, too, wasn’t in the card thanks to impending thunderstorms.
And the show went on.
“We still had a great time,” said Scioli, who used his 32-foot Concept center console as Helmkamp’s photo platform. “We had everything from a 20-foot Formula to a 50-foot Nor-Tech V-bottom. I was actually amazed at the number of 100-plus-mph boats we had registered. I’ve never had a driver’s meeting before where I had to say, ‘Hey, we might not even run,’ but we waited it out, watched the radar and got our weather window. It was supposed to thunder in the afternoon, but it didn’t. All the afternoon weather ended up going south of us.”
“Of course I was hoping for a better turnout, but you know what?” he added. “Small poker runs are really fun.”
Judging from the faces of the participants in the photos above, we’d have to agree.
and then