We were beginning to wonder if the 2010 season at Armadale would ever happen due to the severe winter weather with deep snow and severe frosts.
As a result our first trackwork session on Saturday 6th March was called off as the track was under 4 inches of frozen snow.
We arrived on Wednesday 10th on a very cold but bright sunny dry day with all the snow gone apart from a large pile of snow, ice and sand which had been scraped off the dog track and deposited beside the pits.
Our main job was extracting the fence boards from their winter resting place in the pits and taking them out to their allotted positions on the big trailer normally used for the greyhound track covers, This was achieved by mid-morning and after resiting some of the clamps and oiling or replacing bent or rusted fixing bolts the fence was ready for action.
Further tasks of reclipping the netting on the wire mesh fences on the straights and fitting padding to various lighting posts around the perimeter of the circuit were also completed. Ronnie Anderson had done his usual job of scrounging more used kart tyres and these were suitably attached to some of the fence posts on the fourth bend to provide a bit more bounce in the fence. This gave the fence line the appearance of a michelin man's nesting colony but was vital for rider safety. We also opened up the referee's box to dry it out a bit and check all the electrics including the vital task of swapping the infernal Sky green bulb for a much nicer white one! I also took the opportunity to check out the electrics in the first-aid room which had suffered a lot of water in through a leaky roof
All this time the track was a real swamp as it had been frozen solid but was gradually reverting to slop as it thawed so apart from a very light harrowing no work could be done on track preparation on Wednesday and things did not look good for Friday's press and practice.
However the weather improved for Thursday and Doc Bridgett was able to get the magic wheel circulating to frisk up and dry the surface aided by some improved weather.
Friday morning saw a vastly improved surface and a visit by a Kenny Stewart JCB to remove further loose and very wet material which Doc had scraped up with the small blade. The JCB was also invaluable in generally cleaning up the pits area and approaches to the track.
At this point the first rider appeared on the scene, our new Hungarian signing Jozsef Tabaka, who quickly introduced himself to all the staff present and had a walk round the track with his mechanic
Eventually after a team photo session with our main sponsor Stewart Melrose of Scotwaste (P7) the practice session got under way. In addition to 6 Monarchs (Kevin Wolbert only appeared for the photo shoot) Monarch's asset William Lawson, Dutch rider Henke Koonstra who had travelled over with Max Dilger and local junior Cal McDade participated. All riders performed well, notably Joszef who had a slight tumble, overlocking on the fourth bend, but recovered well, Max Dilger, Ryan Fisher who attacked the circuit in his normal fashion and Kalle Katajisto who had spent some time with his dad building up a machine in the pits, only to blow his motor the next day.
We had a further practice session on Saturday when last year's Monarch Michal Rajkowski appeared with his father, Bogdan and gave an impressive display of wheelies. The track was improved from Friday as more of the moisture had disappeared and further grading and packing had been possible.
Again Jozsef had a more spectacular fall, overlocking again in the same place, correcting it but then lifting and being flipped off the back of his machine, landing rather heavily on the exit of the bend but picking himself up unscathed.
A major topic of the day was the new silencers. General opinion was that they generated much more heat than last year's ones, causing burning and failure of the rubber spacer in the fixing bracket. The King silencers seemed worse in this respect, Andrew Tully changing to a Prodrive for day 2.
Track staff included the usual suspects - Ronnie Anderson, Graeme and Gordon Campbell, Jim Syme, Tommy Thomson, Andrew from Blackburn and Alex Gibson also Bill Purnell, John Thomson who is Matty Wethers sponsor, Peter Elliott and not forgetting Derek, our joiner and John who turns on our water supplies and looks after the plumbing.
