I'd rather be here.........

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Benefit rides always left me with a warm and fuzzy feeling, and I used to ride a lot of them. We made one benefit ride for a fallen brother that did leave a bad taste in my mouth and still bugs me today...We rode with a club here in the Houston area, and at that time there were several clubs in and around the area....One of the members of one of these clubs went down and had to be flown by life flight to the trauma center hospital....We found out that over 75% of the people being flown by life flight didn't have insurance:shock:...So on a Labor day weekend all these clubs threw a "Life Flight" benefit run....

We had several great rides and the weather held up, hundreds showed up, paid their registration fees and everyone was asked to try to get their friends, neighbors, families, and some got some major companies to donate some big bucks.....The Club (aka a beer joint) where we held this ride donated 1/2 of the money they got in total sales to our benefit.....

Life Flight was told what we were doing and they even had one of their choppers fly in and one of Houston's famous Doctors flew in with it..Doctor "Red" Duke...The Dr. had a great time visiting with us, ate a bunch of BBQ, drank a few beers, and even rode several bikes....Life was good ....We all were doing our part to help out Life Flight, gave everyone that warm fuzzy feeling....

OK....The next Saturday morning we were told to bring our money to the hospital were Life Flight was located, and that there would be TV people from all the major TV stations, and reporters from the local news papers too.... there to cover this event.....WOW ....Who could ask for anything more....So we, the presidents of all clubs and chapters showed up, everyone was wearing very nice clothes, no jeans tee shirts, but we all did wear our "club colors" .....

We had in our hands about $125,000.00 Dollars.....:shock::shock::shock::shock:..Like I said we had some corporate sponsors, one that donated just to our club $50,000.00 In memory of one of their former employees that flew Life Flight, but didn't make it.......We all got there all fired up about the "Good publicity" that we were going to get for bikers...This lady walks out into the lobby, after we had waited for about 30 minutes, asked if we had something for her???? We gave her that bag with the money in it, thinking we were going to be usher to where all the reporters were.....Nope!!!!!..That woman walked back through those doors, and we stood there stunned for a minute or two, then the receptionist looked at us and asked "Do y'all need something else????"...:shock:....We had just been dismissed!!!!!!...No TV stations, No newspaper reporters ....Nothing !!!!!...We left with very bitter tastes in our mouths....We left there and rode on to a benefit ride for another fallen brother.....That ride was a good one after the disaster we had just experienced.....

One week later one of their choppers had a accident being moved on the landing pad, but in the news it was made mention that a corporate sponsor had donated enough money to cover repairs??????

After that we only made benefit rides for people that appreciated what we did...We never did any more rides for Life Flight and told our major donors what had happened too...They also either stopped donating or cut their donations way back...But count me in on a benefit ride that will do someone some good any time....

Claude.....