8492-R1_MSA_September2023

MSA Club News

some excavation work on some of the trails that needed to be widened and smoothed, with all the rain, this is being put on hold until the water dries up. Keep your fingers crossed on this one - it’s going to stop raining eventually. On a fundraising note, our club (along with the help and support from EMSC) has had the opportunity to earn money, parking cars at a few of the Waterfront Concerts this sum mer. We started off on Memorial Day Sunday (rather HOT that day -no RAIN) and did really well, 2 in June (RAIN) pretty good and 2 in August (CLOUDS / RAIN)-one very small and one average. This is really good as we are trying to raise enough money to cover the cost of a new roof for the clubhouse. THANKS, again for the support from EMSC - Don & Tami, Larry & Eileen, Brent, Troy and the others, along with the Manage ment staff at Shaws - Dean, Dave, Rob and their employees for these fund raising oppor tunities, THANK YOU ALL. We will wrap this up for now - just a couple of more items on the agenda: 1) 1st meeting of the season, Wednesday, September 6 at 7:00 P.M.at the GLRSC club house at the corner of Ohio Street & Phillips Road. Come on over and join the club, there is enough room for ALL. 2) We will be selling MSA Super Raffle Tickets, (GREAT PRIZES again this year) $2 each / 6 for $10 / 12 for $ 20, etc. on Friday nights starting on September 8th from 4 -8 P.M. at Village Variety in Glenburn, thank-you Tyler and Autumn. In addition, we will have membership applications (FAMILY & BUSI NESS) updates on trails, upcoming events at the clubhouse and as soon as they are avail able. Local trail maps & MSA ITS trail maps. 3) We will have a calendar of events in the MSA October Paper. Any questions that you may have please contact: EDDIE PINKHAM-PRESIDENT # 478-5375 BARRY RYAN -VICE PRESIDENT # 631 -9153 TYLER PINKHAM - TRAIL MASTER # 907 -0911 MARION PINKHAM - TREASURER # 942-2649. GAIL RYAN -SECRETARY # 478-6821 Enjoy the rest of the summer. See you in the fall and think of a white winter. BARRY -GLRSC REPORTER Okay, it’s that time of year again. Time to wrap up the end of summer festivities, drain the pool, close up the camp, put away the summer shorts and flip-flops, get the last few outdoor BBQ’s, do the back to school shop ping, and get the kids ready for another year of learning from their teachers. As the clubs get ready to ramp up for another fall start - we will get the brush cutters, chain saws, loppers, and the rest of the equipment out of storage and attack the trail system that looks like a tropical rainforest, with ALL of the rain this summer. We will need to seek out the landowners for permission to use their land, contact businesses for their con tinued support, get our fundraising activities (i.e. MSA SUPER RAFFLE TICKETS, bean suppers, bottle drives and other fundraisers) scheduled and completed. The 1st meeting of the season will be on Thursday, October 12th -7:00 P.M.@ Dale and Joann’s house (bring a snack if you like and a new member) good way to increase member ship and have some fun.See you then. P.S. On a late breaking update - Dale & Greg are looking at possibly purchasing a side by side to augment our trail work duties, and also a new grooming drag, more on those deci sions later. BARRY -KSRSC / REPORTER Hi to all, Summer flew by and with all the rain; one can only guess what winter will bring. I will try to describe Quadcounty Snowmobile Club. We are located in eastern part of Penobscot County in the Town of Springfield. Our 120 miles of ITS connector trail and Club trail KENDUSKEAG STREAM RIDERS sc Kenduskeag , ME QUADCOUNTY sc Springfield , ME

connects 4 counties: Penobscot, Washington, Aroostook and Hancock. Our Trails traverse through 11 towns and townships tying east ern Maine together with groomed trails done by our certified groomer operators operating two New Holland tractors. We have about 82 members and 16 business members. I am proud to say Quadcounty SC has some old members doing trail work and grooming, we need younger people to step up and take the strain off us older members. We certainly would love more members, actively helping is the best, but members can’t always help with time, distance, work and health commit ments. So just joining the club helps greatly. Our Club or any club would certainly want sledders to join to make Maine’s massive trail system work. Please join a Club. Quadcounty SC has been busy over the summer with our Breakfast, every first and third Saturday morning each month. Our busiest Breakfast, we served 110 people. It has become the area social event with peo ple visiting while eating a great meal of their choice. We have had such large turnouts for our Breakfasts, if you haven’t been to the clubhouse this summer, you should stop in and see the improvements. You won’t believe what the barn looks like! In July, Quadcounty SC had our annual Chicken BBQ serving 186 people. In August, We had our annual Lobster Feed serving 200 pound and half lobsters. Our kitchen crew does an excellent job cooking and providing delicious meals. We will be serving suppers this winter. We will post the dates, as they get closer. We will be selling Super Raffle Tickets this fall at our local businesses. It is a great way for clubs to raise money and there is great prizes to win!! Your Slow Typing Reporter, Kevin It’s hard to believe we’re already gearing up and preparing for winter again, but, by the time you read this, we will have already held our first club meeting for the 2023-24 riding season! Despite less than favorable weather condi tions with lots of wild temperature swings, we actually managed a longer season of rideable trails in the Bangor area last year than we did in the year before that! We certainly had our share of issues with water holes that wouldn’t freeze, or kept breaking open, and things of that nature, but thanks to some amazing vol unteers we managed some pretty darn nice trails for a few weeks! We were also successful in getting a major trail re-route completed so that the two sides of Bangor were connected again last winter, after losing an important trail section the prior year! We have lots of work ahead of us with trail maintenance, bush hogging, and equipment prep for the upcoming season. We are also working on hopefully getting a trail open to connect to Pushaw Lake so Bangor riders have a more direct route to Glenburn, which we also lost with the previously mentioned lost trail section. All that to say we have lots to do and not many hands to do it with, so anyone who is passionate about riding in the Bangor area and has some free time to spare would be more than welcome to join us and help out with get ting things ready to roll for winter! After several years of short seasons and lower snow totals, it seems like we are due for some more snow, so fingers crossed we’ll get it this year and hopefully have a great trail system all ready to go for everyone to enjoy! We always try to get out to do trail work, as needed, whenever weather and volunteer availability permits. Feel free to reach out to us on Facebook or drop us a line at paul bunyanscbangor@hotmail.com for details on when and where we will be working, as we’d love to include anyone who is interested in helping out! Volunteers are ALWAYS wel come and VERY MUCH appreciated, many hands make light work!! We generally hold our meetings on the second Wednesday of each month during the season, starting in September, and would love to have anyone who is interested join us! PAUL BUNYAN sc Bangor , ME

We usually post meeting information on our Facebook page ahead of time, but feel free to email or message us on Facebook with any questions! Sincerely, Paul Phillips - President COASTAL REGION

Hello from rainy Saco Maine, I was reading last year’s September news letter, and to this point last year, we had 14 consecutive sunny weekends. It has been nothing like that this year with record rain fall across the entire state. We haven’t been out to check any trails yet, but just looking at the small trail by my house, it isn’t good. Everything is still very wet with too much mud. Hopefully, things start to dry out a little as we get ready for trail work which will start in mid-September. Our club has had a good season of go-kart racing. With all the rain we’ve had, we’ve been really lucky for some nice Thursday eve nings when we run the races. The turnout has been surprisingly strong, so we are actually making some decent money this year. Along with go-kart racing, another nice fundraiser for us is the annual car show in Old Orchard Beach in September. It’s one of the biggest car shows in the area and we sell breakfast sandwiches, coffee, clam cakes, and fries. We also sell a huge number of MSA raf fle tickets. The club recently purchased a new Polaris Side by Side for trail grooming. The total cost was just over $36K, but it is a necessary piece of equipment. We applied for a capital grant through the State of Maine, but were denied. The state has a predetermined amount of funds to distribute and certain criteria to grade applicants for the funding. While I completely understand the logic that goes in to determin ing who gets funding and who doesn’t, I think it is time the legislature allocates more funds to this program. Most clubs operate on a very thin budget and getting a newer piece of equip ment to improve trails is a huge investment. There needs to be a better plan in place to help clubs, since the snowmobile industry injects over $600 million into the state’s economy. Lastly, start getting those summer toys ready for their winter nap and get the sleds ready for riding. Don’t wait until the first flakes start falling to start the sleds. There is usually some maintenance that needs to be performed, even on newer sleds, so don’t wait. Same goes for your trailers. Have everything ready to go! Cheers Doug Doherty, President By the time you read this, Southern Maine “CSacopee Valley Snow Drifters (SVSD) welcomes all to join and attend our meetings starting the first Tuesday of the month thru the 2023/2024 season, SVSD meets at the Kezar Falls Fire Station located at 47 River St. in Porter, Maine at 7 PM. It is vital if you enjoy the sport of snowmobiling that you join and volunteer in a MSA snowmobile club and sup port your sport of snowmobiling. SACOPEE VALLEY SNOW DRIFTERS Parsonsfield, ME

FALMOUTH SNOVOYAGERS sc PO Box 66834, Falmouth, ME FalmouthSnovoyagers.com FalmouthSnoVoyagers@gmail.com Find us on Facebook

Good evening Fellow Sledders, what a sur prise, it’s pouring buckets outside, hasn’t hap pened that many times this summer! Now for some advanced Math, 1” of rain equals 10” of the White fluffy stuff, I take this as Gospel because Cousin Elwin Hansen has mentioned this many, many times at the Club meetings!! So with 13” of rain so far this Summer, that brings us up 130” of trail quality white gold flakes! That is a tall pile of snow. Club Vice President Wayne Keniston would convert this to Ten feet and 10” of pow der. Other members would convert to #16.5 Quarts of Polaris 2 stroke oil, stack end to end. While other members, well probably a major ity would convert to #19 cans of their favorite plant base & yeast/ Barley cold refreshments. Well you get my Message, hope there will be enough moisture left for a decent snow amount for this upcoming 2023 - 2024 Winter. This season the Club welcomes Mr. John Briggs onboard as the new President. He graciously accepted the nomination and was elected President back in the spring. Will be in Good hands for sure. Wayne Keniston has decided again to be Vice President, thanks for staying with us again & again! Trail Master John Reed again will be directing all of the trail and bridgework, along with all of the MANY MANY Responsibilities that goes with that position. This club has already gone out and started inspecting trails and bridges for maintenance and damage. Very fortunate as compared to other areas of the State that had quirky storms blow thru and cause significant damage. Next on the agenda will be popping the cowlings on the Clubs # 4 grooming sleds, always chasing the Mice out & cleaning up. Should be in fine shape, not many trail hours from last year. Many tasks will get finalize and completed before cold temps arrived. Well that wraps it up for now. See you on the trail. Right smart and Ride safely!! John T. Low Club Secretary & MSA Reporter

SACO PATHFINDERS sc Saco, ME Find us on Facebook Club-Reporter John Lambert MSA MEMBERS CHANGE OF ADDRESS Let us know when your USPS mailing address has changed - so you won’t miss an issue of the Maine Snowmobiler Members Name: ________________________________________ Old Mailing Address: ___________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________ NEW MAILING ADDRESS: ___________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________ Mail to: Maine Snowmobile Association, PO Box 80, Augusta, ME 04332 fax: 207-622-7669 or e-mail info to: www.mainesnowmobileassociation.com

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