STORY BY KAREN BOSSICK
PHOTO BY NILS RIBI
Camp Rainbow Gold campers will get a surprise Sunday when the 16th annual Motorcycle Escort delivers them to their camp north of Ketchum.
The Boise Valley Riders Motorcycle Club will present the young’uns with custom hoodies with their biker names on back.
The club has made the campers honorary members. That means: When the campers ride, the club will ride, as well. And that means the club will escort the campers back from Cathedral Pines to Boise when camp week is over.
The motorcycle escort will escort the youth, ages 6 through 12, from Happy Family, 3880 W. Americana Terrace in Boise at 11 a.m.
Their initial destination: Bellevue Memorial Park where Mahoney’s Bar & Grill will be serving a barbecue lunch.
The motorcycle club and bus load of youngsters hope to arrive at Bellevue Memorial Park at about 1:30 p.m. where they will join up with hundreds more motorcyclists. Following lunch motorcyclists will escort the campers to camp at Cathedral Pines, 14 miles north of Ketchum.
“The idea of these tough-looking men and women, none of whom I have ever met, literally lining the streets and surrounding the bus in honor of our babies caused me to sob with wracking tears,” said one camper’s mother. “For me, they were a physical manifestation of something I couldn’t previously touch – the support we found from our community during our darkest hour, and the love we’ve been shown in the years after.”
Camp Rainbow Gold began in the mid-1980s to give youngsters who can’t attend other camps a week away from hospitals, doctors and the daily reminders of their struggles with cancer. It gives them a chance to make friends with other youngsters who know what they’re going through, while doing normal camp activities like singing around a campfire, riding horses and drawing a bow and arrow.