Easy Bucks Winners for December were Eddie Collins of Rangeley and John Johnson of Windham, Maine.  Neither were present.

The January membership meeting will be held on January 14^th with dinner at 6:30 and meeting to follow at the Episcopal  Church Undercroft on Main St. in Rangeley.  Dinner will be prepared by the Rangeley School Class of 2010 and their parents.  Please come and support the club and these kids in their effort to raise money for their class trip.

Included you will find the SNODEO 2006 Schedule.  There may be a few minor changes made as the event gets closer.  Final schedules will be available at area businesses and at Snodeo throughout the weekend.  Note that again this year, trophies will be awarded for decorated sleds or floats in the parade.  Last year we only had a couple participants – it would be nice to have more sleds in this event.   Get creative and enter your sled!

You will find tickets enclosed for the Snodeo 50/50 raffle.  You can purchase these tickets by mail and you don’t need to present to win.  Just fill out the ticket with your name and contact information and mail that portion of the ticket to the club.  The tickets sell for $1 each.  Last year, the winner of this raffle won $1130.  This is our biggest 50/50 drawing of the season.  Keep in mind that ALL proceeds from Snodeo go into our trail fund.  Without these fundraisers, we would be very limited on the number of trips the groomers could do in a week.  With the fundraising money, we have been able to keep the groomers out there daily to insure you a great ride. 

Also, if you haven’t purchased your tickets for the Polaris snowmobile we are raffling off during Snodeo, time is running out.  Someone is going to win this beautiful sled on January 21^st.  If you need tickets, just e-mail me at gavi2@verizon.net or write to the club and request them.  They will be mailed out to you.

If you receive a membership form with this newsletter, it indicates that you haven’t renewed your membership for this year.  This will be the last newsletter sent out to non-members.  Please renew!  Your membership is important to the club and membership dues keep the trails groomed. It’s important for you because of the insurance provided by the Maine Snowmobile Association when you become a club member.

An unfortunate incident happened in Rangeley after one of our early December snowstorms.  Someone decided to come to Rangeley to ride his new snowmobile.  He parked his vehicle and unloaded his sled on a road that was clearly marked “no snowmobiling” and proceeded to ride on this road.  He rounded a corner and hit a truck coming the other way.  His sled was destroyed and he ended up in the hospital with very serious injuries.  We hope that he is improving and will be back on the trail soon.  We can’t emphasize enough the importance of staying off posted roads, especially here in the Rangeley area where most of these roads are owned by paper companies and land management companies.  They own a large portion of the land our trails are on and should they get perturbed enough to close their properties to snowmobiling, our entire trail system would be in jeopardy.    We had a report that someone was out there removing the “no snowmobiling” signs on some of these roads.  Remember, any plowed road is illegal for snowmobiling unless it is marked with trail signs.  This is a State law. 

Since our trail maps were printed, we have had a trail change on ITS 89 out of Rangeley.  This is the trail that leaves town in back of the Rangeley Inn.  The trail will be back where it was two years ago, better know as the “Greeley Trail”.  The trail change will be clearly marked. 

Hope to see you all here for Snodeo! 

Gail Gavigan, Secretary

Please visit our Sponsors page to check out businesses who have donated or pledged to donate to our grooming and trail maintenance program for this season. Be sure to patronize these businesses when in the area. It is due to their donations that we have the great riding conditions we all enjoy!