A glance at this month's cover and a quick look inside say it all - Vintage! SAM will be hosting the National Vintage Championship at the New England Snowmobile Expo, October 13 & 14 on the Eastern States Exposition Grounds in West Springfield. I love looking at the old iron but don't have the time to restore anything older than a 2007 Ski-Doo. Vintage is a sub-culture of snowmobiling and those that participate are crazy, like a rabid gopher. It seems like they spend a good amount of cash on their projects, too. You gotta wonder; is there any money left over in those households to feed the kids? Do the children ever see the parent who is the vintage restorer? In reality, I'm a bit jealous of those guys with the shiny old sleds; they look so nice, I want one, too. But want doesn't necessarily get you much. It's blood, sweat and tears. These enthusiasts have put a ton of sweat-equity into those old machines and are damn proud of them. Understandable.

Looking back in time, I now have an undesirable urge to kick myself in the shorts. Unwittingly, I have passed on or sold vintage equipment and now regret it. Haven't we all given away or worse yet, thrown away old stuff that is more valuable now than the day it was new??? A painful search of eBay exposes the millions of dollars I should have in my bank account had I not thrown away all of my childhood belongings. As a school aged kid, (obviously a dumb one) I had just about every Boston Bruins trading card that existed. Cheevers, Esposito, Bucyk, Hodge, Cashman, Sanderson along with multiple examples of Bobby Orr's smile. Those cards, along with a poster of #4 flying through the air as he scored the winning goal in the 1970 Stanley Cup (in overtime) are somewhere at the bottom of the old Billerica Town dump. Orr's cards are said to be worth about a grand each; I bet I had about ten of them. But alas, those things, along with so many other collectible items that we all once owned, are gone. At eight years old, they were prized possessions, but as time went on (and the Bruins slipped) they were less important and slowly cluttered the bedroom. How, or when, they made the journey to the trashcan is anyone's guess but I'm positive that's where they went.

The same thing can be said of old sleds. Not that I ever had a vast collection, quite the opposite. Many years ago, I did have a few old project sleds, both Cats. One I bought, the other was given to me. The free one was partially dismantled and had a big Hirth motor. The problem was (and still would be), project sleds are a pain in the neck, especially when snow is on the ground and a brand new sled is ready to ride. The old wrecks sat under a blue tarp that season, completely hidden from view by a blanket of snow. Those sleds looked butt-ugly the following summer and it was clear that some sort of action was needed, so I started advertising them for sale. The one that ran sold easy enough but the one with the big Hirth had me worried. How the heck would I get rid of this thing? It would make a great boat anchor. Surprisingly, two guys showed up within a week of the ad appearing. They had called me a few days earlier and asked a ton of questions, few of which I could answer, most of which seemed pretty dumb at the time. "It's just an old sled," was my reply. "I don't know anything about it." They kept asking about the exhaust and where it exited the belly pan. I had no idea and didn't care; the thing was in pieces, "Why don't you just come over and look at it?" Sure enough, the two of them came over and seemed pretty excited at first glance. Neither hesitated to lie down in the mud for a closer look. They were focused on several items, especially the rusty exhaust. It may have had dual pipes, I forget. They spoke to each other in soft voices but smiled the whole time. It was pretty obvious that they liked what they saw. That meant two things; my wife would be happy about getting that junk pile out of the yard and I'd have enough money to buy a case of beer! Ain't life great? In all honesty, I don't remember if I gave those guys that sled for free or not, but being a world-class cheapskate, I probably tried to weasel at least 25 bucks out of their wallet. Seemed like a great deal at the time. To this day, I still don't know much about old sleds, but the vintage guys are always trying to educate the unwashed masses, and over the past few years my appreciation of the old sleds has grown. I have also come to the realization that I most likely threw away another "Bobby Orr card."

Dan Gould
President