Be sure to get your Duck Derby Tickets for this year's big event on Monday, May 26 after the Memorial Day Parade. This is the 20th annual Duck Derby which is sponsored by the Auburn Kiwanis Club. All proceeds go to local non-profit agencies for youth activities. This year's grand prize is a Disney Package for four nights for four people.

There are also a lot of other great vacation prizes as well as passes to the Auburn Players and of course, the last place finishing duck who wins $100. Tickets are available all over town for $5 apiece. The person that sells the winning tickets gets $100, so if you need a ticket, call me at the YMCA because I have been selling for years and I am still waiting to win the $100. I figure between that and the losing duck I should have half a chance.

Memorial Day weekend is also when the Annual Nucor Soap Box Derby takes place. Steve Komanecky, race director has been hard at work helping people with questions about their derby car, making sure everyone is registered, ordering shirts and tending to all of the last minute details. Tyburn Academy will be at the Soap Box Derby selling raffle tickets for a 2008 Chevrolet Corvette.

The Prison City Ramblers and the Finger Lakes Car Club will also be there showing off of their cars. The EJ Gavras Center will again do face painting and other children's activities and Dave Moskov and his Auburn High School football team will be there to sell food. The football players will also be helping getting the derby cars back up to the starting line for their runs down the hill. Upstate Paving, under the direction of one of our members, Tim LoCastro has been working diligently to make sure that all paving is done and the roads are in good shape for the big event.

We have received six new cardio machines for our upstairs cardio room. The biggest new machine is the step mill, which works along the lines of an escalator as it forces the participant to step up stairs continuously while the stair mill is running. Most people on their first couple of tries come away complaining that it is too hard, but they still keep coming back for more.

We also have two new treadmills as well as two new elliptical trainers. People are clamoring to use these machines and get very territorial about them. Unfortunately for us, Nautilus is calling back all of these machines to their factories so that they can rework them and make them less liable to the constant maintenance that they go through now. If all of those machines go at once, we will be in a lot of trouble with our members.

It is interesting to see how little things can easily upset the general workings here at the YMCA. This week, our cable froze on certain television channels and we could only offer a couple of channels to watch while working out. It really is harder to work out when you don't have the distraction of a television show, music, magazines or friends to talk to. It seems to make the time go by so much faster. Hopefully that problem will be fixed and we won't have to contend with that experience again. It seems as there are always little things that pop up to inconvenience us but the bottom line is that everyone who works at the YMCA tries to make your experience here a memorable one.

Hansinger is the assistant fitness instructor for the YMCA