[AT] Portland

[Spencer Yost]

Portland was great as usual!  The friends, the evening get-togethers, 
the tractors, the live demonstrations, the engines, the dinners - its 
always over the top in terms of enjoyment.  Considering the regional 
flooding (Findlay OH is only an hour away) and a hotel reservation 
snafu, our attendance was near normal though several folks had to cut 
their stays short.  We saw the latest Dotson (Larry's newest 
grand-daughter), which was a great pleasure.  As Steve mentioned, I 
helped the Girard family with their harvesting equipment and belted up 
to a large corn sheller and silage chopper.   After the big 2.5" rain 
that swamped us, I pulled a lot of big pick-ups with their trailers out 
of the mud and one COE fixed body flat bed with my Oliver 77 diesel - 
That was as much fun as running the harvest equipment! 

The charity auction went really well - we raised 1600 (a slight 
correction to Steve's number).  More importantly, right before I left 
for Portland, I received something in the mail that reminded me why we 
do the auction.  It was a thank you card from Cecil Monson's wife, 
Lucille.   It was one of the warmest and most heartfelt note's I have 
received in a long time.  I scanned it and placed it at:

http://www.atis.net/~yostsw/img070.jpg

All in all it was a great time and I'm looking forward to next year.  If 
you aren't going to camp, remember to make your hotel reservations for 
next year in the next few months or you'll have to stay farther away 
than you might like.  I'll see you there!

Spencer Yost