Team Maine Update 2-27-08

Hello Team Maine!!!Things are coming down to the wire. It is less then a week to go before we leave Maine for the 20 hour truck drive to Labrador City. The last couple of weeks have been very busy with planning and preparation.

Rob and Todd were in Labrador earlier this month for a week they spent lots of time checking out snow conditions as well as exploring some new sections added to the race course. A big expense in personal time and money but it was needed to be done so we have a better chance at competing with the locals in their backyard. Unfortunately Rob found a rock under the snow with his personal Ski-Doo XP Summit that bent up the front end of the sled. They did however get some time on the Race sleds and found a few things that needed to be changed. Meanwhile at the Andy Santerre Ride, Dana, Rich and the girls had taken a longer loop with Kevin Freeman (owner of the Sled Shop in Presque isle) and Rick Salley (The Ski-Doo Rep for Maine) and on the way back to the Caribou Motor Inn, Dana was leading the group, he had a very large Deer jump out from the side of the trail and literally land on the front of Rob’s XP Renegade that he was using and it mangled the front of the sled. This left us with 2 of Rob’s sleds to rebuild before the race as both will be making the trip to Labrador with us as Support Sleds. Fortunately both Rob and Dana were okay from the incidents and both sleds are ready to go.

The Race sleds have had lots of work done to them. Both with Ohlin front shocks, revalved rear shocks and heavy springs, auxiliary fuel tanks, auxiliary lighting among many other upgrades and adjustments for them to stay together for Rob and Rich during the race this year. We can only hope all the hard work pays off to limit down time due to broken parts.

This year Rob’s wife Tina and Rich’s wife Amanda are making the trip up to Lab for the race. Evidently they were not excited to sit up and stare at a computer screen all night again this year; they would rather be there and know what is going on 1st hand. We are looking forward to showing them around “The Big Land”. It will be interesting to get a women’s prospective on the whole event. Perhaps they will be the 1st Women’s team to enter the race next year…….

Also joining Rich, Rob, Dana and Todd will be Dave Hammond, as well as Wayne and Irene Dyer (Sponsors and supporters that want to experience the whole event). Also David and Andrew Milley and Todd Stokes (locals from Lab City) will be joining us up there as support crew Members. We will have 2 groups of 3 out in various parts of the race course to support Rich and Rob.

We will have a Web Blog up and running on the website over the weekend so Dana can post updates and let all the supporters back home post messages to the team and share other thoughts. Rob and Rich will probably update it themselves in Goosebay like they did last year. We will have links on our website to the GPS tracking site so you will be able to see where the racers are as the GPS updates. There will also be links to the Web Cams that are supposed to be up and running for the race at 3 of the checkpoints. We want all of our sponsors and supporters to be involved as much as possible from the comfort of your home or office.

Again part of the goal is to raise Money for Pine Tree Camp so if you know of any other potential Sponsors or Supporters let us know. Special thanks to our many sponsors; Please visit the website to view the long list that continues to grow. Also a special thank you goes to all the friends and supporters from SledMaine.com, Hardcoresledder.com, Dootalk.com and QuebecRider.com

The Crew at Team Maine Racing
Racing to Support Pine Tree Camp
www.teammaineracing.net