Looking for excitement?

Looking for unique motorcycles?

Looking for unusual vehicles?

Like meeting great people?

Enjoy the company of like minded people?

Like to meet new folks?

Interested in volunteering?

Interested in helping those less fortunate?

Well when I am in Calgary I am often found on Thursday nights at A&W in the North East at Bike Night.

On many Friday Nights I am at A&W in the South East at Car Night.

A&W for non Canadian readers is a chain of fast food stores that was first named after the Rootbear soft drink they sold it was A&W Root Beer and is still the main pop offered with your burger meal.

The A&W in the South East under direction of Franchasee owner Donnie is very pro active in raising funds for MS.

They use the car night as the main fund raiser. this involves volunteers , like Ernie my host and myself selling 50:50 tickets.

Again many of you wont be familiar with what 50:50 tickets are.

You purchase a combination of $5/$10 or $20 of coupon tickets they have two tickets with the same number. You keep one coupon the other is deposited in a collection barrel.

When selling stops 50% of the ticket sales goes to charity and the remainder is given to the holder of the one coupon drawn out of the barrel. Tonight's prize pool was $490 but large events like the calgary Stampede guarantee a $2m pool minimum!

To keep people interested a free draw of A&W merchandise is also held ie hats,stuffed bears,coffee mugs,diary's and also before the 50:50 cash draw a number of tickets are drawn out for higher value A&W gear eg picnic blanket,duffle bags etc.

The Franchasee holder is assisted by us volunteers to park cars,set up a hospitality tent,sell the tickets, register entrants and in return offers a free dinner voucher.

It is not uncommon to see around 100 vehicles ranging from classic hot rods to exotic supercars attend.

The bike nights have wained in popularity over the past two years as they are not actively promoted so attendance of 20-30 seems a maximum way shy of the 100+ I used to see 5 years ago.

Calgary is known to have car & bike nights every night somewhere and at weekends there maybe two or three competing for both entrants and spectators.

i remember from past visits where the Grey Eagle Casino would pull 300+ cars and bikes with the lure of high value prizes and free food for everyone. Sadly there car park is now a construction site so no shows still the A&W events provide a social interaction between the regulars and a free opportunity for visitors to look at vehicles and motorcycles that normally one would not see.