Road Trip! Stu Jones Goes Poker Running

After the Old Hickory Fun Run, the Jones family headed to Graceland in Memphis, Tenn. Photo courtesy/copyright Stu Jones/Florida Powerboat Club

Since the early 1990s, Stu Jones of the Florida Powerboat Club has spent a lot of time organizing poker runs and building his business. That means mapping courses, securing permits, setting up hotels and dockage, hiring photo/video helicopters and shooters, contracting safety assets and dealing with the assortment of large and small personalities that comprise his club’s membership. There always are highs and lows in his job—a few years back Jones even took a punch from a clearly unhappy client—but for the most it all fades away come June because the aptly named Sunshine State is oppressively hot and humid in the summer.

“Things really do slow down in the summer months in South Florida,” said Jones.

You’d think that when poker run season ends in Florida Jones wouldn’t want to get anywhere near a poker run, that he’d enjoy time away from the kind of events he organizes for a living. You’d figure that attending other organizers’ poker runs would be the last thing he’d want to do with his time off, that he’d run for hills, so to speak, and spend the summer camping in the Colorado Rockies.

Of course, you’d be wrong.

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Photo courtesy/copyright Stu Jones/Florida Powerboat Club