Story by Mike Tolliver and Shannon Fenton
Pictures by Chris Brown
In cruises the
Amir’s bagged M3, and I watch from the stage. An amazing surf blue laid across a
sultry stretch on the wheels set to a soundtrack of the staccato thrum of loping
cams. It’s a good place to be on a cold morning to be sure. Though let’s reboot
to the beginning of the day where I was sick, struggling to not toss my cookies
while at home setting up little over 100 photos across my 8-10 social media
accounts. Awaiting my driver for the truck.
Forty minutes past
when the driver was to arrive so that we could get on the road for #NWTOYRUN
patience is exhausted. A few calls and my backup driver was in route. Another
queasy 35 minutes later and we were pulling into #NWTOYRUN with the semi-truck,
finally ready to begin the day. We drive slowly past hundreds of cars staged in
line for a not so typical Northwest morning. A-typical as the sun is out and the
rain has finally abated, today is going to be a great day and its only 8:45am.
Cars flow as
salmon run up the river in the fall. First hundreds then thousands progress
through the line, toys or cash in hand to help kids with needs. Clubs and forums
are parking in neatly organized rows, enthusiast tribes of every ilk. The lower
bowl teems with stanced, slammed rides. On the StanceWars stage I’m booming the
latest Big Sean and calling out for the next round of Lead/Follow to proceed to
the track. The O’Brian group is stuffing a tiny little Scion to egregious
capacity with 17 people in less than 2 minutes. Marines are filling tall a pair
of large Enterprise Rental Trucks with hundreds or thousands of toys. At the end
of the day there were nine rounds of Lead/Follow on the track and somewhere in
the neighborhood of 3,000-4,000 cars through the gate. This year's #NWTOYRUN
netted over ten thousand dollars cash donated and both those Enterprise trucks
were filled with toys. We were happy to have been involved again and ecstatic to
donate what our profit was for the day.
