Idaho Ski Swap...Amazing!

Last evening Helen and I served our first night at the Idaho Ski Swap at the Boise Fairgrounds Exhibition Hall. Our grandaughter Emily joined us and tonight our daughter Anna joins our volunteer team. People came from all over Boise, Idaho and out of state (one man came from Machinaw City, Michigan), bringing used and new skiing and snow boarding equipment and accessories to be placed on consignment. I expected a lot of skiing stuff, but was blown away by the volume of items placed for sale.
The Exhibition Hall is enormous, (think SuperWalmart store) probably 8-10 basketball courts size. Helen and I, working the 'stocking' assignment, would push a grocery cart up one of the intake lanes and other volunteers checking in the equipment and recording same on computers would fill our cart with equipment, etc. Then we would wheel the cart to the appropriate area to place the items according to size, age, etc.

There was, at the 9:30 p.m. closing time, 25,000 items -- skis, snowboards, skiing and snowboarding boots, googles, poles, etc., and enough snow clothing to fill a Target store!





Emily is hoping to make the Idaho Varsity Snowboarding team and go on to try to make the National team. She is really good on the board. She boarded on the Nampa High School team last year, but won in competition so easily she decided to go for more challenging competition, thus the Idaho team.

Helen and I are working four days as volunteers at the Ski Swap. Last night we 'stocked' equipment. Today we work Security, tomorrow Admissions and finally on Sunday afternoon we work Inventory.

Think of a SuperWalmart store stocked wall to wall with only skiing equipment and you get a mental image of the enormous scope of the Ski Swap.