There is a saying that what you are now is as a consequence of what you did in a previous life! If that is the case, I must have been dreadful, because it's all coming back to haunt me now.
When Cory Gathercole, Ricky Kling and Mads Korneliussen ploughed into the air fence last week, wiping out all of our spare supplies, I thought it couldn't get any worse ... and then it did.
Arriving at the track to prepare for the match against Ipswich, Iknew that Punch would not be there during the morning and that Mark Price would be unlikely to be able to make it at all but I thought that at least the air fence crisis would have been solved.
I was to be disappointed. Once again, our air fence man had let us down, not once but several times leading up to Thursday. Promises had been made that some panels would be repaired and returned to us ... but this was not the case.
As a consequence, I had to attempt some running repairs on one of the bags damaged last week whilst coming up with solutions for what to do if any more were damaged during the evening's meeting.
And then we got news that Punch's granddaughter had been the innocent victim in a car accident on a roundabout in Swindon and, as a consequence, he would not be able to get up to the track at all.
Fortunately I had been able to inveigle / bribe my son, Dave, to come up and help once again in the knowledge that whilst he would be able to help during the day, he would not be able to stay for the meeting (school drama rehearsals and black belt Tae Kwan Do training). We met up with Ronnie and Roy and set about laying out the banners for Mick Richards to clean.
It was as we were walking through the pits that we came across a mystery man with a theodolite in his hand and surveying gear all around. Now why would the surveyors be back up at Blunsdon? Your guess may be as good as mine.
Undeterred, we started on the cleaning process for 42 banners and 42 rubber kickboards while Ronnie lay down the first major watering of the day. He had already watered the track the night before but it was hot and the wind was sufficient to have us soon involved in a game of "Chase the banner" around the centre green. The Law of Sod was upon us already - sins from a previous life raising their ugly heads.
Whilst not obviously scorching hot, the combination of wind and sun had two major consequences for us - first it dried the track almost as quickly as we put down water, and then it gave me severe sunburn on the back of my neck!
As we returned to the dark and shaded confines of NUmber 96 for a cup of tea and a chance to replenish our sagging energy levels, who should make a brief appearance but Mark, together with his two delightful daughters, Hayley and Caitlin, pictured above. Unable to spend any real time with us during the day, Mark still popped in to wish us well and to show the two girls exactly what he gets up to every Thursday at the track. When they revealed that they read the Blog it was inevitable that they should feature - we need all the fans we can get.
I was eager to get the air fence inflated on turns 3 and 4 as quickly as possible. The fact that two air panels had been replaced and a further one patched meant that I wasn't 100% sure that it would inflate properly. When air bags need changing during a meeting it is always a pretty hectic time. The Clerk of the Course and the referee always want to know how much time we want and there is a real pressure to get changes / repairs done quickly, it is quite dark working under and around the back of the panels and, while the track staff are well trained and disciplined, there is always a nagging doubt that a clasp may not have been done up properly or that one of the connector pipes linking the bags may have come loose.
As it was, the replacement panels were fine - the work had been done perfectly.
With the bags inflated well Dave, Roy and I set about hanging the blue catch netting, that is above the air panels and stops too much shale being deposited on the dog track, and then pinning the air bags to the wire safety fence so that the air bags don't move in the event of a crash or a gust of wind.
As we worked our way round the outside of the track Ron was putting more and more water down on the track. The aim is to get the water to permeate down into the base and then begin to assist the clay based shale to bind. We need the top surface of the shale to lightly bind together to give the necessary dirt for the back wheels to grip into and then have sufficient binding between the top layer and the base to prevent the top material from simply being blasted away when the first spinning rear wheel hits it.
Once again, the banking at Swindon, so good in getting excess water away when it rains, does us no favours today - the water that is deposited by the tanker runs across the surface but doesn't stay long enough in any one place to make a significant difference.
The arrival of Mike Hunt, Clerk of the Course, is greeted with the kind of enthusiasm that must have been reserved for the Second Coming! When Richie Leniec and his mate appear for a few minutes we are almost in 7th heaven. Suddenly jobs that the three of us saw taking 2 hours could be accomplished in one and from being worryingly behind schedule we were actually ahead of ourselves.
After lunch it was a case of hanging banners and kickboards and then addressing the problem of the ever diminishing supply of usable air bags.
My idea of trying to stitch one hole back together was short lived. The seam which had split was at a join where no less than four pieces of material came together and there was no way that I could get a needle through it. In the end I reverted to a drill, some cable ties and a tin of contact adhesive. Aided by track man Edwin Hutchison, a fix was brought about.
After consulting with Terry Russell, Ronnie and the Clerk of the Course, we then took the drastic action of removing an air panel from the air fence on turn 3. Ideally, if we were going to remove a panel it would have been from the exit of turn 4 - this being an area where no one has ever ventured in all my years working with the fence. Unfortunately, right behind the end of the air bag on turn 4 is one of the temporary entrances in the main safety fence used by the dog people for their stating gates. Opening up this area would mean we'd have to add extra padding around the steel surrounds to the gate, and we simply do not have sufficient time to do this.
We remove a panel from the entrance to turn 3, add extra wooden kickboards to cover the space and use this bag as our new track spare. We challenge a few newcomers to identify what we have done and no one is completely sure. Whatever the case, the removal of the bag has made the entrance to turn 3 very wide.
We load the spare bags and as many tools as possible onto the red Ford pickup, henceforth to be referred to as the "Rapid Response Unit" or "Rapid Response Vehicle". We copped some criticism for the way that we changed the air bags last week - not in terms of time taken nor the efficiency of the replacements but in terms of having some of our younger brethren running back and forth to the pits to get pieces of kickboard "just in case". Now, everything that we have that can assist a repair or replacement will be kept on the RRU in the pits and driven out as soon as a crisis emerges ... or so we hoped!
There is excitement in the pits. Two trials bikes have appeared together with an ex multiple World Champion and his son. Barry Briggs is on a marathon ride around tracks in the UK and GP circuits abroad in aid of a charity to help disabled riders. The legend is back at Swindon tonight and belies his years to put on a great show riding round the track and then having a go at a practice start from the gates.
And so to the meeting. The first couple of heats went off well although it was clear that riders were struggling a bit with the track surface. After a couple of laps quite a lot of loose material had been produced and a couple of wisps of dust had been thrown up where the tyres had ripped down to the dry shale down below the surface. But we are told that the fans want dirt on the track and we have been trying so hard this year to produce that dirt whilst still giving riders a smooth, even surface to race on. Comparisons with other tracks simply do not work here. Swindon is unbelievably fast, as a consequence of the long straights and banking, yet quite tight on the corners. Entry speeds to the bend are very quick and the sheer power needed to get the bike round puts incredible forces down through the tyres and onto the track surface, which has to be strong enough to match these forces.
Heat 4 and all hell breaks loose. Miskoviak loses control exiting turn 2 and runs into Jonasson's back wheel. The later is high sided and the two clatter in to each other with the bikes coming to rest some 10 yards down the back straight, thankfully away from the air bags. We have everything on the RRU except for wooden kickboards and a repair kit for the steel safety fence, that has been ripped apart by Jonasson's flying bike.
We locate our last two spare wooden kickboards (make a note to myself that we need to prepare some more for next week) and than set about cutting out the jagged steel pieces where the safety fence has been breached. Honestly, you couldn't make it up!
By the end of the match, which the Robins win well and where both Simon Stead and Mads show that passing is more than just possible on our high speed race strip, we are too tired to work on the track - that will have to wait for Ron on Friday.
It's gone 11pm when we turn out the last of the lights and make our weary way home. But next week it's Cardiff ... and that's another story!
