I know I wish I could find my old Polaris TX, or my Alouette Super-Brut!

Well Vance Elfering has had that special sled on his mind since, oh, well 1977 or so. His 250cc Rupp Magnum was the toy of choice for him and his sister, growing up in the middle of Minnesota. They rode it constantly in the late 70’s into the earluy 1980’s.

Unlike the rest of us who will never be so lucky as to find out original machines (Yes, I am jealous), Vance and his baby were reunited just a couple of weeks ago.

Turns out Vance’s dad liked the machine so much that he cleaned it up a bit, put some wax on all the chrome and stuck it away in a garage. When Vance got into the old sleds again, the first thing he did was try and talk dad out of the machine – with no luck.

That is until this summer… when dad finally relented and Vance was able to take it home. The sled is in near perfect condition… Except for a couple of insignificant customizations, the machine is in pristine original condition, and ready to ride. I was truly amazed at how sweet the original chrome is on the machine.

When asked what his plans were for the machine, Vance didn’t hesitate to say it will be rider this coming winter at Waconia, Live On Skis and an other events.

Sounds to me like a machine made of good memories is about to make some more!

• 1st place gets a trophy sculpture: “Man Smoking a Cigar” from Office Depot, and a tin full Of Hershey’s Kisses. He also gets a $20 gift certificate from the vintagesleds store, plus an Antique Polaris Snowmobile Diecast and a RetroSno.com T-shirt from Judge Rude Dog at RetroSno.com. (Note to my neighbors Jill and the Vman: Thanks for the cookies, they were great. But yes, I am re-gifting the tin and the chocolates. Hope you don’t mind, but I think trucker and his wife will really love them.)
• 2nd place gets a $15 gift certificate from the vintagesleds store, a Snickers bar AND a RetroSno.com T-Shirt.
• 3rd place gets $10 gift certificate from the vintagesleds store, some Altoid breath mints AND RetroSno.com T-Shirt.
• Runners up get there name mentioned on the biggest website for sleds in the world.

You know, I think I would have gotten bigger, cooler prizes, but then, I thought “Why? They already got the find of the year!” Thanks to our judges, and Doc Jim who coordinated this whole thing.

1st Place: Jason Hollenkamp (aka Trucker) and his 1982 530cc Kawasaki Interceptor, #61 of 601 produced. Found in a barn in excellent shape, this photo taken after just cleaning it up! Bribe: Pictures of his Hottie wife in a bikini.

2nd Place: SlideJob’s 1971 600cc Rupp Magnum. Pretty rare sled. Bribe: Undisclosed palm greasing.

3rd place: Gary Bright’s 1973 800cc Polaris Starfire, one of only 4 known to exist. Gary hunted it down amongst a lot of Polaris race sleds and parts from a retired racer. Bribe(s): Too numerous to mention. May cause rioting.

Honorable Mention : 82SRX500’s (aka Jon Bertolino) 1973 650cc Arctic Cat EXT. Bribe: Offered photos of scantily clad women.

Honorable Mention: Justin’s (aka 71txman) dream sled – a 1971 Polaris 795cc 2+1 Racer. Might have won had he not “found it” on eBay. Bribe: Actually gave a judge a complete sled. Justin may not have won “find of the year” But he gets top honors for the best bribe!

The winner will get a trophy, and their choice of a DVD from the vintagesleds store. The Judges are (by their Bull Session names: VIN+AGE, Rude Dog, and 72tx340.

The rules were pretty simple.
1. It’s just for fun
3. Judges can be bribed (beer and pictures of girls on your sled were the hot tickets)
4. Judges are allowed to have temper tantrums
5. One entry per Bull Sessions members
6. Some other rules got mentioned, and may be used if the judges feel like it.

Many nice entries have come in so far, and Doc Jim who got it all going, and all the participants are having a blast. Check it out on the Bull Sessions.

The winner will be announced early next week.

Ladies and Gentleman: Introducing the 2007 Polaris RXL oval ice race machine by Wahl Brothers. Not only is it dead sexy, it’s extremely fast on the oval race track. This one is for newest Wahl Racing Driver Jordan Whal.
Dustin Wahl wins the 440 Champ final at Beausejour this past weekend – and Super 78 RXL fan (and CPTC President) Dale Neduzak couldn’t be happier!	Durmont Wahl, hard at work on his Terry Wahl’s ‘07 RXL.

If you have the “Best of SnoPro 1973-1978” book, checkout page number 116. See the picture of Jerry Bunke and the smiling little kid who is sitting on a genuine factory race sled? That’s Jerry’s 340!

It started as Don Omdahl’s 440 until he was hurt and Jerry was brought up to race Don’s sleds. This is the 440 – note the stripes on the tunnel.

On the ride home, we figured out through pictures that this is Jerry’s 340 – because the lack of a tunnel stripe, and how high the numbers are.

Crossing Wisconsin was normal – much like crossing most of Minnesota really. I was looking forward to getting to Ecanaba Michigan, a place I had never been to before. Plus it’s just fun to use the word ‘Escanaba’ in a sentence. Try it.

As soon as we left Wisconsin, things got different. Very different. The buildings changed – they were all made of different materials, ones I had never seen. Not wood, or brick or steel, but something that resembled tree bark – with an unearthly glow to it. Most houses were decorated with the owners collection of home appliances, cars on blocks, the occasional snowmobile, spare parts & other furniture items. The woods got thicker. Thick like we-could-hide-Jimmy-Hoffa’s-body-here thick.

At one point, I swore , I heard Uller God praying out loud for snow. And his prayer was answered. It began to snow, and rain.

Then I started noticing how the signs had changed. Unlike Minnesota or Wisconsin, there was no longer any signs for gas stations, McDonald’s, or real estate agents. Instead, there were signs for “Pasties”. I don’t know about you, but where I come from, Pasties are what dancing girls wear when they have nothing else on. If that was correct, the Upper had a ton of places that had dancin’ girls. Why they had a place for dancin’ girls every mile or so! Odd, however, that when ever the pasties were mentioned, ice cream, smoked fish and pie were also on the sign. That seemed odd, but we just assumed the uppers liked to have some food while looking at the nearly naked dancing girls. After all, who doesn’t?

Then there was the small, broken down farm on the side of the road with a large red & white sign proudly shouting “Web Site Designing”. I’m still not sure of what to make of that.

The wind picked up as we reached Ecanaba. It was as I had pictured, kind of a rustic shipping city with lots of old brick warehouse type buildings. We made a wrong turn and drove for several miles before I noticed that Lake Michigan was on our left, when the map said it should have been on the right. We back tracked and found the correct turn. We followed the highway with Lake Michigan on our right the rest of the way.

Lake Michigan is amazing. Very blue, as in 73 Polaris Starfire blue, with miles and miles of sandy beaches. The winds were high, so there wasn’t a single boat on the lake. Just huge white caps crashing.

Coming over a hill, I spotted our destination: The Macinaw Bridge. Wow. I’ve been over the San Francisco bridge, and it has nothing on this thing! It’s huge. And tall. And with a good high wind, it’s like an amusement park ride just to cross it.

On the other side was a family in a truck, waiting patiently at a gas station. I’ll leave their name out of the story, because I’m not sure they want it plastered on the Internet. We all got out, shook hands had a few laughs, then took a look inside the back of his truck. There it was.

One of Jerry Bunke’s 1976 SnoPro sleds. The number 874 is still on both sides of the tunnel.

While I was outside drooling over the sled, Jim went into the gas station. The women working behind the counter had more tattoos then a prison guard, but Jim had to ask any way. “We keep seeing these signs for Pasties all over the place – what are they?” Jim asked as he paid for his bottle of tea.

Clone 340 RXL with a 79 hood.

The lady corrected him. “THEY AIN’T CALLED ‘PASTIES’! THERE CALLED ‘PAW-STEEEZ’!” Jim learned it is a major offense to pronounce the word as it is spelled. She then went on to explain it is a local delicacy – some kind of meat and potatoes thing wrapped in bread. “Sort of like a pot-pie” she said.

Jim, myself and our new friends all did some loading, swapped some cash, looked at some pictures and loaded the sled into my truck. It was cold and windy, and they had been kind enough to wait for his for hours, but they were ready to go home. We said good-bye, then Jim and I headed back across the bridge, back across the Upper and towards Appleton Wisconsin.

We made Appleton by 11:00 that night, and that was a lot of driving. More then I ever care to do again. When we got to the Hampton Inn in Appleton, I began to get nervous about leaving the sled in the truck. So I checked in, then drove around back. Jim and I took the sled out of the truck… and hauled it up two flights of stairs and into the second floor hotel room.

Yep, leaning against the wall in the Hampton Inn was a snowmobile. We got lucky, no one saw us bring it in. We were not so lucky leaving the next morning. We opened the door and started to pull it out. The door across the hall opened right after we had gotten it into the hall. The tenants of the room looked at us, then the sled, then just shook his head, as if to say “what the…..”. Jim and I just high-tailed it out of the hall, down the stairs and loaded it back into the truck.

Moments later, we were having breakfast with 2005 and 2006 Vintage SnoPro Champ mark Anderson, who lives near Appleton. Right after that, we headed to Mark’s shop were I picked up the clone RXL I’m hoping to bomb around on this winter. After chatting with Mark and looking over his race sleds (two of which are still for sale), we packed up headed home.

We stopped at Ed Schlosser’s house, who is doing some amazing upholstery work for me. Picked up some foam from him, chatted for a bit, then hit the road, making back to the Twin Cities around 9:00 last night. Good trip. Good people. Good timing. Interesting places.

These pics are just more proof that they are still out there. The 76 250Z was found sitting in a barn in Pennsylvania waiting to be discovered. The 77 Cross Country was sitting in the back yard of an apartment complex in Lincoln,Illinois. Oh yeah they are both residents of Ohio now. The Z is stripped down to the bulk head for a complete restoration and the Cross Country is resting comfortably inside waiting for its turn on the bench – along with a dozen or so other Cats!

These two Cats were recently rescued by Terry Bashoor on Ohio.

Kevin Warning sent in this snapshot from “somewhere” in Wyoming. It’s the back of a store, with a dozen or so trail muscle sleds strewn about. Talk about stuff… the Scorpions have to be of some interest, do they not? According to Kevin, they’d probably take $200 a piece for them….. Just goes to show it’s still out there! Want to know more? Contact Kevin.

Wade Batholomew sent in some photos and this story of his new found treasure: A 1976 Cat Z. Yep, the treasure is still out there!

Well, the story of this sled goes like this: My mom works with a guy and she showed him a picture of my other 76 Z, and he said “Oh I’ve seen one of them next to a barn on the way to my house.”

Well he ended up buying it for $250 and I told him if he didn’t want it I would buy it off of him. Well, he called me up a month later and sold it to me. Now its being restored back to original. Sled has been sitting since 1988, the last owner says. He trail rode it in Michigan, In a town called Glendale. All hood decals are painted on. Ya that’s right. It doesn’t look bad for being painted. It also has cooling fins under the running boards, instead of the radiator. It looks to be all there from there.

Just shows again they are still out there. Look hard.

Thanks – AWESOME WEBSITE!

Jeff Lausten’s new treasure, A 73 SR292 and a 71 SR433.

Hello Larry,
Here is a picture of the results of one good day of Bushwackin’. I heard about the one on the left from a car junk yard guy who was picking up some old vehicles from a place back in the woods near Shevlin, Mn. I had to check it out…

After a Saturday morning road trip and talking to a few different people the sled was found under a spruce tree in the middle of no where, the owner was no where to be found either, but a helpful neighbor pointed me toward the owners sister’s house. I pulled in the yard having high hopes of possibly making a deal but was told by the old gal that the owner of the sled was in Michigan until July 4th!

I could hardly stand waiting for two weeks until the 4th rolled around, but I endured the mental challenge. Tuesday morning the 4th came and I was out of bed at 3:30am with my wife wondering what the hell was going on, and mumbling something about crazy and obsessed, then went back to sleep.

I reached the destination and met with the fellow that owned the sled and his brother in law, we made the deal and loaded the machine. I was pretty stoked about the whole thing and ready to leave and head back home when the brother in law says “I have a old Yamaha in my can shed that you can load up too if you want it” so I had to look.

We get there, the shed is full of aluminum cans and the roof is falling in, way in the back is a yamaha hood poking out of the debris. I crawled back, moved some stuff and about [pooped] myself when I saw what was there. I tried to keep my cool and made another deal, loaded this one up also and drug it home.

July 4th 2006 was a good day, it yielded a ‘73 SR292 and a ‘71 SR433. Both need a little TLC but the price was right!

Thanks – Jeff Lausten

No thank you Jeff!