Barre Town Thunder Chickens

Newsletter

Barre Town Thunder Chickens

2011 -2012 Season

Celebrating 40 Years of Providing Snowmobile Trails in Central Vermont

1971 - 2011

Thank You Landowners and Volunteers!

Club of the Year
in 2009

At the 42^nd VAST annual meeting, we received the award of VAST 2009 Club of the Year. The nomination form spoke to our strong rapport with our landowners, focus on the betterment of our trail systems, working with the many businesses in our region and of our involvement within our community promoting the recreational sport of snowmobiling in a positive way. Over the past few years we have hosted safety courses, poker rides, raised and donated over $14,000 to the Town of Barre to the Travis Mercy Memorial Skatepark and last year hosted two freestyle snowmobile jumping shows as part of the Barre Blizzard Blast winter carnival. Congratulations to the club on the award and thanks to all the volunteers donating their time on the trail work and events along with members of neighboring clubs that come out to support our events.

Trails Will Be Open!!

The Barre Town Thunder Chickens are happy to announce that with some good luck and hard work, all of our trails have been repaired and ready for the 2011-2012 season. We experienced significant damage with the spring flooding; virtually every branch of our system became impassable with wash outs and bridge damage. Trailmaster Jon Joslin, Steve Malnati, Vinny Covino and other members jumped on the situation and hit the field to evaluate the damage. They inspected the system, tracked down materials, obtained contractor quotes and worked with VAST to get all the necessary paperwork filed and approved. We were lucky that Hurricane Irene took it a lot easier on our trails than some of our neighboring clubs. We had 5 primary areas to address which included resetting two bridges, addressing two culverts and replacing one bridge that was washed away. Most of the effort was machine work, provided by Vinnie Covino of Covino Construction 802-479-9430. 2011 is our 40th anniversary so we are no stranger to unexpected weather damage, last minute trail reroutes and all else that comes with maintaining 40 plus miles of corridor trail. We have had a long tradition of dedicated members and officers willing to do what it takes and the summer of 2011 was no exception. With their efforts, despite mother nature’s best shot, we will be back in business for our 40th season. Please join us at our Safety Course, Poker Runs & Free Style Jumping Exhibition as we celebrate our anniversary. If you see one of the crew somewhere please be sure to give them a tip of the hat for making it happen once again.

At our April meeting we voted in our slate of officers for the 2011-2012 season. All have returned to serve in the same capacity as last season. Pres. David Rouleau, VP Jim Dwinell, Treasurer Steve Arquin, Secretary Pam Massey, Membership Coordinator Donna M. Rouleau, Trail Master Jon Joslin, Groomer Vinny Covino, Two Year Director- Gary Klinefelter, Steve Malnati, Doug Anderson, One Year Director Kevin Collins, George Hunt , Nathan Hunt and Webmaster Patti Covino. Mark Reaves continues to represent our club at VAST meetings as the County Alternate Director and serves as the Secretary at County meetings. Congrats and thanks to all of you for your continued efforts for the club. As a token of our appreciation, we voted to thank our many landowners with a $35 gift certificate to the Steakhouse Restaurant. These landowners generously allow us to utilize their land for the recreational sport of snowmobiling and without them, our sport would not exist. We also thank Toni at the Steakhouse for again working with our club to offer these as well as providing a facility to host our monthly meetings.

Next Meetings: Held at the Steakhouse Restaurant 6:30 – Beverage/Food available to order

Tuesdays Jan 03, 2012 / Feb 7, 2012 / Mar 6, 2012 / Apr, 10 2012

As voted on at the 44th VAST annual meeting, the cost of TMA’s have increased by $15 to assist with expenses directly related to flood and Irene damage. TMA’s are in hand and have been distributed to our vendors for sale. As was the case last year, there is a reduced price for early birds as well that purchase theirs before the Dec 16th start of the season. This year’s form has a couple of optional donation categories as well that we would ask you to consider. Club Grooming has been added as a direct donation to the club to offset the expensive undertaking of grooming such as equipment purchase, fuel and/or repair costs. There are also two tax deductible categories Lamoille Valley Rail Trail and Vermont Snow Trails Conservancy. Information on both of these can be found on the back of the TMA form or the VAST website, along with various pricing for Antique, Classic, Family TMA. www.VTVAST.ORG

Also at the VAST Meeting, our own Steve Malnati was recognized for his efforts in spearheading recent projects such as resurrecting the trail to VAST and onward to Comfort Inn and Maplewood Convenience Store at Berlin Corners, and helping our club recover from the spring flood damage by working with VAST and offering creative cost saving solutions to get us up and running. Steve was awarded the dedication award for this and in his unsung hero way was appreciative of the award while making it known that he is not a one man show, rather attributing the club’s achievements due to the entire crew of volunteers ! Congrats ! Please patronize one of the following vendors that work with our club to purchase your TMA or fill out the attached form and mail back to us. Thanks in advance for choosing to be a member of the Barre Town Thunder Chickens, celebrating 40 years of service to our community.

TMA Vendor Locations:

We would like to thank them for their continued support of our club. We appreciate all of the time and effort that they put in and hope that you would patronize their place of business.

Gilles Sales & Service – 476-3101 Hilltop Inns – 3472 airport Rd 229-5766

www.GillesMarine.com

Lawson’ Store – Websterville - 476-7661 Barre Electric – Barre-Montpelier Road – 476-0280

Laquerre’s Marine and Cycle Guy’s Repair Shop – 16 Brook St. 476-7502

www.laquerres.com 476-8199

The Great Energy Store/Deli – 476-3563

Comfort Inn & Suites of Montpelier www.comfortinnMontpelier.com 802 229-2222

Beat the rush: have your sleds serviced before the start of the season. Gilles, Laquerres & Guy’s Repair right here in Barre are ready to serve your needs with service, parts and oil as well as other gear such as helmets and attire. Also Mastine Motorsports located at 224 Pleasant Street in Bethel, (802) 234-9199 has opened with Jesse bringing his expertise and mechanics from his days at Lucky’s

Upcoming/Recent Events:

*On October 28th – we held our 29th Annual Raffle. Event was held at the Canadian Club and included a buffet

meal for two. Grand Prize was a $4000 cash, along with other prizes throughout the night. Thanks to Bond

Auto Parts & Barre Electric for donating toward our prizes. Congrats to Steve Reno and Rick Choquette as the

overall winners. They were the last two in and made a deal to split the cash taking home $2000 each (had a

deal not been struck, Rick would have been the overall winner). The format of the raffle is by selling 100 balls

at $125. Each year we offer to the ball holder first, then apply to our waiting list if they are not interested. Each

year we turn over about five balls, contact David 476-7732 if you’d like to get on our waiting list for next year.

**November 26th – Holiday Tree Lighting Parade in Downtown Barre – come see the Tucker Cat in action on main street in Barre as we anxiously await the trails to open.

**December 3rd – Snowmobile Safety Course to be held at Barre Town School 9-3:30 Contact Montpelier Rec

Dept. at 225-8699 to pre-register. Class is limited to 40 students, adults welcome to attend as well. Certified

instructors are David Rouleau, Mark Reaves and Pam Massey.

**Annual Holiday Pot Luck – date/location is being planned – watch the website for info. This is a nice family

setting to get to know other members and the Yankee Gift swap follows the pot luck.

**Feb. 18th. hosting the Travis Mercy Skate Park Fundraiser (Poker Run, Silent Auction and Chicken/Pasta meal) on

**Feb. 25th.We are also happy to announce that we will again be a part of the Barre Blizzard Blast winter carnival that we will be bringing back Jesse Mastine of Treeline Sledstyle along with Eric Abare, Jesse Moran, Matt Eramo, Jeremy Malone to perform another two shows of Freestyle Sled Jumping . We will be at the same location as last year at the Wilson Industrial park and offer Two shows 4:00 and 6:00 under the lights, It's a free event.

In addition to the storm damage, the crew has been busy making additional enhancements to the trail system.In working with the AOT dept. we have acquired some fill and changed the crossing of Route 62 making it safer and creating a better grooming route for our Tucker Cat. Vinny also addressed additional storm damage parallel to the Barre Montpelier road and crews enhanced some corners in the vicinity of Little John/Donahue Roads in Websterville. Due to the need to address storm damage, we have not been able to pursue any more development on our future plans to connect beyond Berlin Corners onward toward Northfield, Riverton and Warren areas. We expect legwork on this project to pick back up as we head into the season.In addition to the storm repairs we have made great strides in revamping our junction poles and signs. Gary Klinefelter has taken on this massive project turning it from a talked about vision to a reality. Gary has dedicated countless hours analyzing, designing, working with the VAST trail committee and Worksafe to get the signs into production. Once that was complete he turned the focus to rebuilding the junction poles themselves including the relocation of some allowing us more permanent locations. This will ease the trail take down and set up process as we will no longer need to remove the junction poles themselves so that they will be out of the landowners way. Thanks to Gary for spearheading this project and the crew for helping with the construction and assembly of the new junctions. Sample of the new format is below. Shows Corridor and N/S/W/E direction, Jct Location, Town Navigation and the next Jct you’ll come to. Another big thanks to Allen Lumber for donating lumber to construct our Jct poles – we appreciate their continued support of our club, neighboring clubs and snowmobiling in our community

Riders in action at the 2011 Freestyle Show Mark you calendar for Feb. 25th 2012.
Some of the original logos that have evolved over the years leading up to our current one below

Riders in action at the 2011 Freestyle Show

Mark you calendar for Feb. 25th 2012

Some of the original logos that have evolved over the years leading up to our current one below