Hey everyone, just wanted to say thanks to everyone who has been asking questions and spreading the word on the Apple Cup Million Dollar Race. We are going to be featured in the next Racing Pigeon Digest that comes out and look for our full page ad on the race next year. Take a few minutes to look over our new rules, about us, and our payout for 2019 by clicking on those tabs.
Most of the winners have been paid, if you owe us a W-9, get it to us. We have sent out most of the entry fee refunds then ran out of checks. We got some more and hopefully will have the rest of you reimbursed by next week.
Most of the birds have been shipped. One last chance to those of you who know you still have birds. I have called and emailed, you have until Friday to let us know if you want the bird back or not.
Rick & Olga
We worked on inputting the addresses of those we planned on shipping birds back to today last night and in to the early AM through the USPS Click N Ship site and when we went to pay before printing the site froze up on us. This happened last year as well, very frustrating. So we went down and talked to our postmaster who agreed to let us dump 40 boxes off on her, she even called in another clerk to accomodate us. However, after spending time on the phone with the Click N Ship folks this morning, then prepping boxes and manually filling out 40 express labels, we came to the realization that there just was not enough time left in the day to get the birds boxed up and down to the post office and give them enough time to process each shipment before the express truck shows up in the afternoon. Now that 90% of the work is done it is just a matter of putting the right birds in the right boxes and getting them to the post office, which we will do tomorrow.
We are only shipping to those who won money on the final race this week, simple deduction of shipping from winnings. Had we thought about it we would of also contacted those who won money on the 267 mile race, totally slipped our minds. We will ship back the remainder next Monday, providing you have sent your return shipping fees which is $60 for the first bird, $10 each additional. Some of you have already sent return shipping to our PO Box, we will mail yours out next Monday.
Once we have the birds shipped out we will send out prize money minus shipping, providing we have a W-9 on you. If we owe you a entry fee refund this check will be separate from the prize money check if you won prizes so you do not have to pay taxes on the refund portion.
Thanks for everyone's patience.
Birds are released at 7:00
Good Luck Everyone
The birds had their 39th training toss today from Goldendale, our favorite 60 mile station. The birds came home together, a few decided to play around outside the loft. We just did some quick calculating and it looks like your birds logged 1,919.3 miles in training this year, this does not include the actual races. There are only a very few races who train like we do, but it looks like we logged in the most training miles this year of any races in North America.
We boosted the corn today and will tomorrow before the birds are loaded on to the trailer and we head down to Alturas, CA. We plan on getting down there before dark so the birds can get a good drink before going to sleep. They will have water in front of them all night and of course in the morning as well.
The birds are tentatively scheduled to be released at 0700 Thursday morning but if the sun is up before then we will release a bit earlier. The days are getting shorter so we want to give your birds as much daylight as possible to make it home on the day.
If you plan on coming for lunch please let us know via email or text, lunch will be served at 1 PM. The earliest birds could possibly arrive would be around 2 PM but that is 50 mph and we do not usually hit speeds like that on this course. We are very busy today and tomorrow getting ready for the final and we don't have a lot of time to spend on the phone, hope you understand. Please bring a comfortable chair.
Good luck to everyone on the final race!
