Hope everyone is having a terrific summer.  It’s been a great summer for summer activities but in a couple of weeks, with the arrival of Labor Day, all thoughts will be focused on the upcoming winter and snowmobiling. 

The first membership meeting of the season will be held on September 10^th.  The meeting will be held at The Clubhouse Restaurant (formerly Peoples Choice).   You will be ordering your choice for dinner off the menu.  Social hour starts at 5:30 PM, Dinner is at 6:30 PM and the meeting will follow.

There is a lot of trail work to be done this Fall – it seems the weather this summer has been great for growing brush, weeds, and alders.  We will be looking for volunteers to go out and work on the trails to get them ready for winter grooming.  With the next newsletter, a schedule of work weekends and contact information will be enclosed.  As soon as the schedule is created, it will also be listed on our web page.  Please consider helping out a weekend or two.  This is a lot of work.

Fundraising this year is going to be very important.  We pre-buy fuel for our groomers and we all know what’s happened with the cost of fuel.  Last year we paid $15,750 when we bought our fuel in September.  This year it will cost us $21,500.  We ask local fuel suppliers for bids to supply our fuel and this was the lowest bid. 

Speaking of fundraising, Monika at the Clubhouse Restaurant is hosting a Casino Night to benefit the Rangeley Lakes Snowmobile Club on Friday, September 2^nd.  This is Labor Day Weekend.  Please try to attend and help make this event a success.  A schedule of other activities she has planned for that weekend is enclosed. 

Last year the groomer barn was built.  The barn has no water and no sewer, hence, no bathroom.  We are hoping to raise money this year to have this work done.   The barn has been such an asset to the club and we will really get the full value of it this winter when the guys can leave from the barn to go out grooming and return to the barn to work on the equipment and get it ready for the next trip.   We are looking for donations of mechanical tools for the barn.  We all have a few duplicates or old tools we no longer use.  The guys at the barn would sure welcome anything you can spare.  Just call Clark at 207-864-9047 if you have anything you can donate. 

Enclosed with this newsletter is the usual information with your membership renewal form.  Super Raffle tickets are enclosed and we are asking each member to sell or buy five tickets.  Remember, for each ticket sold, the RLSC gets to keep $1.  We are also raffling off a 2006 Polaris Classic 550 snowmobile again this year.  Tickets for that raffle will be enclosed with the next newsletter.  The drawing for the sled will be held at Snodeo 2006. 

The RLSC will have a booth at two snowmobile shows in October.  We will be at the Maine Snowmobile Show at the Augusta Civic Center on the weekend of October 7, 8 and 9^th and at the New England Snowmobile Expo at the Big E Fairgrounds in Springfield, MA on October 14, 15, 16.  We are looking for volunteers who would like to take a shift at our booth at both shows. 

Enclosed with this newsletter is a calendar of events and a space for anyone who wants to volunteer to sign up and help with these events.  We serve a dinner at each membership meeting and it has been difficult to find people who would like to help prepare the meals.  Our meetings are held in facilities with well-equipped kitchens.  Many meals we serve can be prepared at home before the meeting and we do not expect a volunteer to purchase the food out of their pocket.  They are reimbursed for what they have purchased.  An option to the problem of lack of volunteers to do the cooking is to not serve meals at our meetings.   The same people keep volunteering to do the same things over and over again and “burn out” becomes a problem.    So look over the calendar of events enclosed, think about volunteering for some of these tasks and send the form back to us at the Club address.

We still have plenty of fleece vests for sale.  You can check them out on our web page.  The cost is $25.  We also still have a few long-sleeve t-shirts and hats and will be ordering more.  These make nice Christmas gifts. 

Send your membership renewal form in as soon as possible, along with Super Raffle Tickets and Easy Bucks forms.  Fundraising is going to be very important this year.  If you think you can sell more Super Raffle Tickets, please write to us at the club address or send an e-mail to Gail at gavi2@verizon.net. 

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!