Mid-American Association of Equipment Lessors Golf Tournament

Close to 330 industry stakeholders participated in this years events by

playing one or both days of the Warm-up Weekend or in  the MAEL Invitational

on Monday, attending the reception and dinner and being entertained by the

Bear's new H-back, Mike Leach, or as sponsors. 

Needless to say, warming up was a challenge as the Chicagoland area experienced record low temperatures during the entire weekend.  Feel free to confirm with others in attendance, but I believe it is fair to say that everyone had a great time playing,

entertaining and networking with others in our industry. Greek Islands was

once again the scene of a festive Saturday evening dinner after the round at

Ruffled Feather's in Lemont and  Nick Popovich hosted a lovely dinner at his

ranch in Valparaiso, IN after Sunday's round at Aberdeen.

 Mike Fleming (president of the Equipment Leasing Association ) was

there on Monday and said a few words on behalf of the ELA, including the

announcement that Rudy Gulliani will be the keynote speaker at the ELA

convention later this year in San Francisco. 

More than 200 finished play on Monday despite the sunny but very windy and chilly conditions.  We are preparing a thank you to our sponsors and an announcement to our membership and mailing list announcing the results and winners which we will copy you

on.

We will also be sending out a formal announcement in the next few days

announcing a change in the date and format for next years events; 1)the date

will be in either June or August to ensure that warming up is never again a

problem and 2)because of its success and the enthusiasm of a core group of

avid golfers who would like to play (for economic gain) some of the more

famous courses in Chicagoland like Bob-o-Link, Medinah, Butler National,

Kemper Lakes, Black Sheep Golf Club, Olympia Fields, Dubsdread at Cog Hill

(we may also relocate the Team Challenge to Kohler WI, the home of Black

Wolf Run, Whistling Straits, etc.), etc., the Warm-up Weekend will become

the MAEL Team Challenge with room for a limited number of four man teams

(ladies are always welcome as well, unless we have a black out for play at

Bob-o-Link or the Black Sheep Golf Club which are men only clubs, in which

case we will arrange an equally challenging alternate venue for the ladies

or lady teams). 

Jeff Elliott of Huntington Bank Equipment Finance and Fred

Summers of Vision Financial Group will be organizing the Team Challenge (I

am working on them to become co-chairmen of the Invitational as well for

next year and to commence a rotation of the chairmanship of these events on

an annual or biannual basis).

 We will also be migrating to a new advance registration policy which will

    1)permit our members and their guests

assurance that they will have priority registration rights and to permit

them to plan ahead and

     2) to reduce the volunteer staff's administrative

costs of later event announcements and some participants last minute

registrations. 

We expect both 2003 events to be sold out before the end of

this summer.  I hope you and Jim (Merrilees) will be able to make it next year!

Best regards,

Clyde D. Cady

President

Facility Capital

333 West Wacker Drive

Suite 1750

Chicago, IL  60606

ccady@facilitycapital.com

312.541.6000 phone

312.541.1275 fax

312.399.9335 mobile

 (( I thought Jim Merrilees was going this year, maybe next year,

 thank you very much for the report, as it is appreciated by

 all of us. editor )