The Swindon season ended with a whimper and not a bang. Rumours of a final meeting for the riders to say farewell to the fans melted away and we ended with a sidecar meeting, notable mainly when two chairs crashed into the air fence on turns 1 and 2 (they ride the other way round the track so these were panels on what we usually term turn 3), destroying the panels and leaving us to patch up the mess.
In a perverse sort of way, my favourite Thursday of the year is probably the one that follows the last meeting of the year. Shock, horror. What is he saying? Does he not like the speedway racing? Well, of course I do, although you get precious little chance to savour it when you're out in the middle, but that first Thursday after the season is over is like that magical first evening at the end of a summer term at school, with the whole of the summer holiday stretching out before you.
There's still lots to do but the pressure has gone.
The first major task is to get the air fence in, cleaned and stored in the pits. This year the whole lot, all 50 odd panels, were going to be sent away for repair and some alterations, but more of that later.
Gerald, Punch, Adam, Aaron, Roy and I set to dismantling turns 1 and 2 on that first day. We gave them a quick blast with a pressure washer, to get rid of the cakings of shale that liberally coated them, before loading them onto a low loader and transporting them to the pits. That took us a day to complete.
The following Thursday we dismantled and cleaned turns 3 and 4.
The Thursday after that we started to jet wash the panels again in the pit area. Our air fence is called an "Air loss" system. In effect, we have 4 air pumps that keep a continuous flow of air into the bags and that air is released slowly down the seams. If the air didn't escape we'd have four gigantic balloons and lots of riders bouncing off them straight back onto the track. The secret is to try to balance the air input with the air loss. Too much air and we have rock hard air bags that will not slow a rider down safely; too little and the whole lot sags and is no dam good to man nor beast.
When the bags were new, some years ago, we could keep the air pumps on low because the air loss was small and even across the lengths of the air fences. Now, however, the bags are beginning to show signs of wear and tear. Seams have been stretched, patches patched and the elements have taken their toll on the material. The air loss is now significant in some panels and the balancing act is difficult to achieve.
But where the top seams have been stretched over the years, they let our air and let in water when it rains. There is no way that we could collect in the air fence at the end of each meeting and then put it out again prior to the next match. Other tracks manage to do it (Lakeside for instance) but the design and manufacture of the bags is different and our track uses more bags on one corner than some tracks use on all 4!
Deflated at the end of a meeting, partly to save on petrol for the air pumps but also so that the greyhounds can be seen from the main stand, the air bags pool water and a lot of it seeps through the seams. By the end of the season most bags are three times as heavy as they should be, filled along the base with a soggy mixture of shale, sand and water - not a healthy combination.
Back up in the pits this slimy mixture finds its way out of the bags, coating the pits and the previously cleaned outer shell of the panels with yet more slime.
We are almost into November and we are still cleaning fence panels. We break up the monotony of this by working on the track. We can now pull back material that has been driven up against the fence and prepare the base of the track around the outside for when the air fence comes back.
It is cold and wet but we are a cheery little bunch, made all the more cheerful by regular visitations from Flo (Karen, our Sports Therapist) who brings us home made scones and chocolate cakes and other assorted goodies. Other visitors include Stan Potter (our tapes man), Mick Hunt (Clerk of the course), Mick Richards (pressure washer extraordinaire) and the occasional visitation from Rosco.
Punch and I clamber up on top of the pits roof to cover the electronic scoreboard with miles of bubble wrap and an adapted plastic sheet to keep out the ravages of the weather.
Into November and the days are getting shorter and the temperature colder. But we have a plan for work that will keep us going over the coldest months and improve the track significantly.
During the last weeks of the 2008 season there had been some discussions about changing the shape of the track at Swindon to try to improve yet further the quality of racing. Shortening the straights and bringing the perimeter fence in by a metre or so would have given us sufficient separation from the lighting standards so that a 4 foot fence could have been installed, similar to those seen at Wolverhampton and Poole. This would have improved spectator viewing but once an initial set of costings had been done it was clear that this work would not go ahead.
Undaunted, we came up with a plan to put a drain all the way round the white line thus allowing water to drain directly off the track surface and run down a drain on the infield and then into the main drain on turns 1 and 2. A digger and dumper truck were organised for us and duly turned up on time. Unfortunately, we lacked the necessary hardcore on that particular day so decided to wait for its arrival before embarking on our excavations. Digging a drainage ditch without the means to fill it would have been foolhardy, as well as being a health and safety hazard.
Buoyed up by our new project, and with the air fence at last in a reasonable state of cleanliness, we pitched up for work the following Thursday and got a real shock. The hardcore had still not appeared. No, that wasn't the shock. The shock was the disappearance of the digger and dumper truck. They had been re-claimed by the firm who had lent them to us in the first place! Cold, wet and a tad despondent, we helped our friend from the air bag company to load the first batch of panels into his mini van and settled down to tidying up our lockup.
With the onset of the festive season came the on set of a bad dose of the flu. I think we all suffered during those last few weeks of 2008.
And then came the flood, but that's in Act 2, and that's coming to a computer screen near you soon!
