Barre Town Thunder Chickens

 

 

Newsletter

 

Barre Town Thunder Chickens Snowmobile Club
P.O. Box 273
South Barre, VT 05670
www.barretownthunderchickens.com

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

 

2009     Club of the Year

 

Seems a bit early, but the snowmobile season appears to be just around the corner.  As I travel around the community running errands for the club, I am hearing a lot of buzz about the upcoming season, with Mike Beaudet from Gilles Sales & Service reporting that he hasn’t seen people preparing for the season this early since 2003.  Let’s hope that this is a sign of a strong season to come and we get plenty of snow to play around on.

 

The Thunder Chickens took a very active role in the planning of this year’s VAST annual meeting held at the Barre Auditorium and BOR complex.   Washington County Clubs hosted the event and we feel we met the goals to reduce costs and increase attendance.   We have heard very positive comments from those in attendance in regard to the changes made in the format and the offering of a vendor expo.  Having access to the BOR on Friday and Monday was a great help to the vendors being able to set up and take down around the open hours of the Saturday event.  Please see the article in the current Vast News thanking all involved, but I would like to thank especially Johnny Lynds, Washington County Director, Jim Morrill, Pres. Sno-Bees, David Rouleau Pres. Thunder Chickens and Bonnie Holbrook VAST recording secretary for their countless hours over the summer in bringing this event together.

 

Volunteers have been busy throughout the summer continuing to make our trail system better.  This summer’s activities include 3 decent size projects.  First we have worked with George Watt whom has graciously opened his land for the purpose of snowmobiling for many years making corridor 12/14 in the South Barre area possible and passable.  Mr. Watt has worked with us on many occasions as reroutes were necessary allowing us to utilize his land to accommodate the trail system, provide feeds to local businesses and/or providing us connecting  loops making grooming patterns more efficient.  This year we finally brought to fruition the rebuilding/decking of a bridge in that area that I believe has been in the works for about five years.   In addition to improving the trail system in the area, we also are able to provide access to Granite City Cycles whom sell Yamaha snowmobiles and provide repair services.  Secondly we have worked with Wayne Tucker of Quarry Hill Quick stop to better the trails near his business.  Over the last few years we have rerouted and tried various temporary solutions to access his store working around development and landowners not in favor of the trail.  With those parameters in mind, we were only able to provide an ungroomable “goat path” in one section, making this an undesirable trail access from the Graniteville side behind MacAuley Wholesale Meats.  We are happy to have explained what is involved in planning and creating a trail, resolved all differences and found a more permanent solution allowing us access onto the store side of the road.  With that we were able to apply for VAST grants to improve this area giving us a fully groomed section of trail.  The third big project was rerouting the trail near WN12 Cor. 25A to eliminate a sharp curve and remove a section of trail that paralleled the Graniteville Road.  Original reroute plans took us up over a hilly terrain which also had the sun working against us.  Thanks to the foresight of Steve Malnati, whom spent some time walking in the woods looking for a better solution, we have done just that and created a better safer corridor away from the road.  Thanks to all the volunteers donating many hours to the continued betterment of our trails.   As we approach the upcoming season, trail set up will be under way. Contact Jon Joslin to see when/where you can help.  476-9709h  279-3522c.

 

As always, we also thank the many landowners that we are privileged to work with.  Without them, the sport of snowmobiling would not exist.  At our end of season meeting in April, we voted to thank them with a $50 gift certificate from the Steakhouse Restaurant.  We also thank Toni at the Steakhouse for working with our club to offer these certificates at the club level.   VAST themselves, has also been in the works trying to provide a thank you to the landowners.  Over the summer they started to develop a coupon book for the landowners offering savings at many different businesses throughout VT.  As with any start up idea, the first offering met some challenges around timing but plans will be underway to increase awareness allowing more clubs to take part “building” the business coupons during our active season and facilitate distribution along with our yearly acquisition of LO permission forms.  We are looking forward to receiving this year’s booklet to distribute to our landowners when they arrive later this fall. 

 

Also at our April meeting we voted in our slate of officers.  Again, we had more interest in positions, than positions available which is a nice problem to have.  We are pleased to announce that all current officers/directors were interested in their continued service to the club and were voted in. Pres.  David Rouleau, VP Mark Reaves, Treasurer Steve Arquin, Secretary Pam Massey, Membership Coord. Donna Keene,  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.     Congrats and thanks to all of you for your continued efforts for the club.

 

As voted on at the 42^nd VAST annual meeting, the cost of TMA’s have gone down this year by $20 due to the removal of a one year surcharge that was placed last year to rebuild the construction and grooming funds.   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 15^th start of the season.  This year’s form has a couple of optional donations 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 deductable 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

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.

 

 

 

Upcoming Events:

October 17^th – 1^st Annual Chili Cook-Off held at Absolute PowerSports.   This event was to offer an event for snowmobile and ATV clubs to raise funds for their clubs.  Thanks to Pam Massey for coordinating our clubs involvement and congratulations to our own Kevin Collins for taking away the Judge’s Choice Award.

 

November 6^th – 27^th Annual  Snowmobile Raffle.   Tickets are $120, 100 balls sold, offered to the ballholder first , then offered out to our waiting list.  Each year we turnover a handful of numbers, contact David 476-7732 if you’d like to get on our waiting list.   Event is held at the Canadian Club and includes a meal for two along with music during the social by the SHS Jazz Band.  Top prize is choice of Polaris 4X4 500, Ski-Doo  550x, or $4000 cash, along with other prizes throughout the night.   Thanks to Absolute PowerSports VT for working with us again this year on this event.

 

December 5^th – Snowmobile Safety Course held at Barre Town School 9-3:00 Contact David 371-1279 to register.  Class is limited to 40 students, adults welcome to attend as well. Certified instructors are David Rouleau, Mark Reaves and thanks to Pam Massey and Kevin Collins for becoming certified over the summer and helping out this year as well. 

As of the writing of this newsletter, we are also working with the Montpelier Rec. Dept to provide instructors for them to offer a course.   In the past they have offered out a class broken out on multiple days in two or three hour increments.  Most likely this will be the same.  Watch our site and the safety course tab at the VAST site for more details as they come.

 

December 9^th  – Holiday Pot luck – details to be determined, more info online and in next issue.

 

Poker Runs and Barre Blizzard Blast involvement to be planned at upcoming meetings.

 

 

 

At the last Washington County Meeting we voted to contribute $2750 to VTC this year.  In the past we have donated similar funds and they are very appreciative of our support.   Steve McCleod comes to our meeting yearly and summarizes what has been going on and what challenges they are facing.   $3 of each TMA goes into funds for the county level.   These monies are set aside for the usage such as this that the county members vote on.    We also recently voted to upgrade the Sherriff sleds and trailers which will equip them with a 12’ enclosed trailer and two 2008 two up sleds for patrolling with.   These are being paid for with monies from county dues that have been encumbered for this purpose.  We also set aside money for Sherriff manpower, however they use this as last resort only if state allocations are used up.   To date, this money has not been used, thus we have rolled it into allocations for upgrading equipment.   We will be acquiring back the 10’ trailer and current two sleds, which will be sold and monies returned to the county for future equipment upgrades.  We are also working with the Waterbury Backcountry Rescue to provide them with a Rescue Toboggan.  Actual figures are still being presented but the overall consensus was to support this group that services the northern western part of our county.