Chili-Bunco at Spring Hollow Lodge - Westerville March 2, 2025

(Photos below)

By Tony Burgess

Sunday, March 2^nd was this year’s date for our Annual Chili-Bunco event. Again this year, we met at the MetroParks Spring Hollow Lodge in Westerville which is set in a beautiful heavily wooded portion of the park.

The day was very bright and sunny for a good part of the afternoon. Even though it was only about 30 degrees, it didn’t feel that cold because of the bright sun.

The 29 people who attended this year started to arrive about noon to help set up the tables, chairs and everything else needed. By 1:00, almost everyone was present, and the “hum” of friendly chit-chat covered the room. Everyone asking, “how are you doing?”, or “how were your holidays?” if people had not seen each other since our Annual Christmas/Holiday party in early December. This is such a nice time to spend with your friends on a Sunday afternoon.

The “dinner bell” rang just after 1:00pm and everyone joined the queue to partake in some of the chili brought by everyone (although most was from Wendy’s – which is fine) in addition to the sides and desserts which graced the far end of the table. I must note that some people must have been confused by the direction of the queue since they started with the desserts first – go figure. Not to worry as there was plenty of chili, sides and desserts to go around and no one felt short-changed by any stretch.

As is the plan for most of these events, we normally eat first, then play Bunco afterwards.  This, however, depends upon what day and time we can secure the Lodge since it books-up pretty quickly and trying to find an open timeslot can be a challenge.

About 2:00pm, we cleared the tables and reconfigured them for our Bunco Match. It worked out perfectly this year where we had 28 players, so seven teams of four players each. Sometimes with a “non-divisible by 4” headcount, we need to institute a “ghost player” or two.

Bunco is a fast-moving dice game where you change your team “partner” after every hand, which then provides a great opportunity to chat with folks you have not seen in a while, or better yet, meeting new people. As the afternoon progresses, the chit-chat grows more intense, and the laughter grows louder.

One of the objects is to roll the dice matching the “current number” and when you do, you yell “BUNCO” and you are awarded the Bunco hat. But don’t get too attached to it since someone may yell “BUNCO” one second later, or you could be the proud caretaker of the hat for many, many minutes.

As the afternoon progresses, you keep track of the number of “wins” you amass, as well as the number of Buncos you may have rolled. Sometimes it’s a lot, other times not so much. At the end, we award prizes for the afternoon’s most wins, most Buncos, least wins, and the person wearing the Bunco hat at the end of the game (this year, literally separated by two seconds).

Our Big Winners this year were: Most Wins – Kevin Jensen; Most Buncos – Everett “Mr. Wonderful” Rainer; Least Wins – Lauri Jensen; and the Bunco Hat was Chris Clark.

No one left hungry as there was still plenty of chili to take home as well as some sides and desserts.

Lynne and I want to thank everyone who joined us again this year and I want to especially thank everyone who did the “heavy lifting” this year since my shoulder is recovering from recent surgery and ten people started to yell at me if I dared pick up anything!!

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