Big bad bikers bring bunnies

Off the Wire
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It was the type of ride that bikers live for.

Clear skies, breezy wind and temperatures that settled in the 70s. But Saturday’s weather was only icing on the cake for what more than 180 bikers set out to do. The real highlights were the smiles they’d receive from area children.
Yesterday, a little less than a dozen different motorcycle and riding clubs traveled across the Central Pennsylvania region equipped with some precious cargo – stuffed animals.
That meant another year of the 193rd Psycho Warriors Motorcycle Riding Club’s annual “Bunny Run,” where area residents took to their motorcycles to deliver a little happiness to children who were in the hospital over the Easter holiday weekend.
“It’s our way of showing the sick children that there are people out there who care,” said Dave “Hound” Rudy of the Warrior Brotherhood Veterans Motorcycle Club in Carlisle. “It puts a smile on their faces.”
And members of the various clubs that participated were looking to put a smile on a lot of children’s faces.
Rudy estimates that 183 bikers and their VIP Evan Forrester from Fox 43 News gathered at the Psycho Warriors’ club before heading out first to Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center and then to the Ronald McDonald House.
“A lot of the kids were still sleeping at Hershey, but the ones we met were ecstatic to get the stuffed animals,” Rudy laughed. “There were also about half a dozen or so kids at the Ronald McDonald House and they were ecstatic, too. That’s the key to this.”
From there, the group of riders split up, and they would eventually cover 24 hospitals from all over the region, including those in Philadelphia, Allentown, Danville, Lancaster and York.
Stop in Carlisle
A few riders from area motorcycle and riding clubs took the journey from Hershey to stop at the Carlisle Regional Medical Center before hopping off for a final stop in Chambersburg.
Splitting up the collection of more than 1,200 stuffed animals, which was double last year’s amount, the bikers, donned in their leather jackets and sunglasses, waltzed into area hospitals with baskets and bags full of their fuzzy gifts.
Though CRMC did not have any patients in its emergency department to receive the gifts on Saturday, they were still all the more welcome in both the ER and the pregnancy ward.
“It’s really nice of them to have done this,” said Dr. Cliff Cloonan, the assistant chief of the emergency department at CRMC. “For as many as they brought, it probably won’t last a year – probably won’t last six months – but the kids really like it.”

Cloonan noted that having a stuffed animal on hand is particularly helpful for physicians when it comes to calming down the children and simply making them a little less nervous.
“We get a lot of little kids that come here, and they don’t really know what’s going on,” he said. “It’s kind of stressful for them. We talk to them, but they don’t really understand what’s going on. We give them popsicles and stickers, but they really like to get that stuffed animal. It makes their whole experience very pleasant. So the next time they get sick, they’ll want to come back.”

The bikers involved in the annual “Bunny Run” certainly have every intention of coming back next year.
“The Bunny Run has grown, and it’s become an annual tradition,” said Mike “Stump” Geib, the national sergeant at arms of WBVMC, and who has participated in the Bunny Run for six years since the event started.
“Within the next three years, we’re looking at incorporating the entire state,” Rudy said. “Once that happens, we have clubs in New Jersey and Ohio, and we’ll try to branch out to neighboring states.”
Until then, the bikers will happily keep up with delivering stuffed bunnies (and a few lambs) to the almost 850 sick children annual at area hospitals.

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