This blog is written in the numbness of Tuesday morning after the bitter disappointments of Monday night at Monmore. 170 miles driven in 3 hours and 40 minutes at a cost of over £25.00 in petrol. Add al the other bits and bobs, like entrance fees, programme and food for my son and the total cost comes to well over £50. Don't tell me that it doesn't hurt ... because it does.
But more of that later when the disappointment came be viewed in a more dispassionate manner.
I was looking forward to a relatively peaceful day last Thursday at the track - a day when we could get on with all the routine work that needs to be done to prepare for arguably the biggest match in the last 42 years at Swindon, the second leg of the Elite League Play Off Final.
But all that was shattered in a telephone call from Punch the evening before.
Hitherto, unbeknown to me, the Robins had decided upon a full "Behind Closed Doors" practice session and that would throw all of my plans into the air.
With a skeleton crew, because no one had seen this coming, we set to early. While Punch and Ronnie worked on the track, getting water into it throughout the morning in anticipation of a long and hard session in the afternoon, Roy, Arron and I helped Mick to clean the banners from last week.
Except the law unto Sod kicked in. The pressure washer lost all pressure. Eventually, after virtually dismantling the whole thing we found a small sliver of plastic stuck in a ball cock. The plastic had broken off a joint when we were joining the water pipe to the mains tap, run down the pipe and lodged in the smallest gap it could find.
With water now gushing out we returned to the task of cleaning ... and then Sod intervened again, this time in the guise of blowing the fuses in the pits. Re-setting he circuit breaker there didn't help and eventually Mick had to change the plug. There followed the last incantation of Sod - everything worked perfectly ... but none of us could fathom out why!
While they carried on with the washing I turned my attention to the over sized banners that we have acquired this season. After an 8 month battle with the bl....y things we have, at last, arrived at a solution as to how to keep them from blowing away like massive sails every time the wind gets up on the notoriously windy top of the hill at Blunsdon.
With a collection of small bungy clips which will hold the tops of the banners to the safety fence, not the air fence itself, I set about threading them through the eyelets that Steve Masters had made for us last week.
The quickest and most efficient way to achieve this was to push the bungy through the eyelet and then pull it back, loop it and then crush the clip against the rubber. In this way we should keep the clips on the banners permanently.
Once that was done we were helped by Mick Hunt to put all of the rubber kickboards out and remove all of the greyhound starting gate platforms that had conveniently been left out for us to remove. With the air fence clipped in place and the inserts to the safety fence in place, we had a track ready for practice.
News of the practice spread quickly, although when Bob Crowther arrived on a beautifully prepared BMW that he had been loaned, he was taken aback by the hive of activity all around.
The first arrival was the ever polite and thoroughly nice Morten Risager. I know many English people whose command of our language is less secure than Morten's. With just a hint of an accent, he sat and spoke with us as we polished off early lunches. His views on riding in Britain were interesting, and I will cover them more fully at a later date.
In attendance we had Leigh Adams, Paul Hurry, Morten, Ryan Fisher, Cory Gathercole and Richard Sweetman. Travis was, presumably in Sweden, Matej somewhere on the continent, while the in form Simon Stead was booked for a practice at Scunthorpe.
The track was prepared exactly as it would have been for a race meeting, ripped areas and all.
And so it began.
Initially the riders came out in ones and two's and practiced a few laps at slow speed before beginning a series of high speed laps. Once these had been completed they returned to the pits or spent time with their mechanics on the centre green.
The real excitement, for me, came when they asked to use the tapes to practice starting techniques. With start marshall Stan Potter operating the buttons high up in the ref's box, I took over his duties as star marshall with Roy Hicks and Mick Richards helping to get the tapes down in place.
While Ron made his final few passes with the small blade over the track to even out the surface, Stan took me through my new duties.
Bring them into line and then hold your arms out parallel to the track. When you are satisfied that they are ready, drop your arms to the side and walk away. As soon as the arms are lowered the green light will be put on and then the tapes will go up sometime in the next two seconds.
Stan put out a spare set of tapes while Flo (Karen) our sports therapist, watched on in a now sunbathed pit area.
A riders eye view of the track from the starting gates is interesting. From gate 1 there is such a long drive to the first corner but then the track disappears off to the left very suddenly. From gate 4 the sheer expanse of track is awesome.
All of the photographs that follow were taken early on in the session - you can't have a camera at hand when you're at the gates.
And the sensation - awe inspiring.
They come out of the pits and then make a practice start and come hammering at you. Of course, they were all very compliant, so after giving them a chance to make alterations to clutches etc. I brought them to the line. The noise at this stage, even through ear defenders, is massive. But it was nothing compared with what was to come. Raising my arms, the volume was astounding; the ground shook. When I dripped my arms and moved back it became even more immense and the the tapes went up and received a blast of shale up the backside. Wow!
In the end we carried out about 12 practice starts and each was just a stunning experience.
But more was to come.
When the riders declared that they had finished with the gates, Stan collected up the tapes and departed.
However, with him gone Morten, Ryan and the Aussies decided they wanted some more practice off the gates. The solution suggested was that I stand on the line, they line up alongside me, I decide when they are ready and raise my arms to indicate the green light. They rev like mad and then go as soon as I drop my arms.
First time round it doesn't work well. The riders in gates 1 and 4 can't see me well and I don't keep my arms up (in the green light position) long enough for the bikes to rev properly.
Morten has a solution - stand 6 feet in front of the riders and then do the raise arms and drop arms bit. Now this is scary.
They arrive at the line, start to rev the engines and look straight at you. You raise your arms, the earth shakes and armageddon arrives when you drop your arms and four massively powered speedway bikes blast passed you. I could feel the rush of the wind as they passed.
In the end it was just Ryan practicing, but the adrenalin rush with just one rider was still something to behold.
And then it all ended and they packed up and went off.
So did virtually everyone else and it was left to Ron, Punch, Arron and me to put it all back in readiness for next week.
While Punch worked with the tractor on the track, Ron, Arron and I started work with shovels bringing back dirt that had lodged against the kickboards. Given that the inside measurement at Blunsdon is 363 metres, the outside is well over 400, and that's a lot of digging.
In an exhausted state, Arron and I had to then get in all 50 large rubber kickboards and fold them up and store them and then un pin all of the air fences. Once this had been done we had to carry the 7 heavy air pumps back to the lock up and pull the pit gate air panel back into the pits. I don't mind admitting that late on in this procedure I was seeing stars and feeling particularly unwell. We were effectively doing the jobs that 30 people would do on our own.
It was well after 6 when I got home, collapsed into a chair and fell asleep for the rest of the evening. IT related appointments on Friday morning were very low key; one client asking if I was ill and would like to cancel. And we've got the same thing next Thursday - joy!!
