About time I updated our various wet and dry activities at in rainy/snowy/frosty and slightly dry West Lothian. After a normal Wednesday of fence washing etc (24th) it rained all day on Friday and eventually the meeting was called off about 3.30 p.m. Fortunately we had a back-up option of Saturday for the match against the Glasgow Tigers in the Spring Trophy.
We had been intrigued to notice three pieces of white painted thin plywood in the pits and on Saturday we found out what they were for. Graeme Campbell had arranged the construction of a large screen for video projection during meetings. This was constructed by Paul Tod, brother of stadium manager Robert, and hauled round to its new location next to the video box and securely clamped into position. The set up was completed by a AV projector sited on a small table on the dog track and worked very well, even giving the match score as well as video replays of heats.
We only just managed to beat the Tigers after being well ahead but fortunately we only just managed to lose by three in the second leg, thus regaining the Spring Trophy.
It was on the following Sunday that the really bad weather started, with heavy and continuous rain followed by about six inches of snow on Tuesday and Wednesday which ruled out any track work on Wednesday. Most of the white s*^t had gone by Thursday with the remains being bladed off and the track given a good wheeling to dry it out a bit. We arrived on Friday morning to a severe ground frost with the track looking not too bad but when the frost melted the track completely reverted to a sea of slop.
The only possible option to get the meeting against Newcastle on was to completely remove about three inches of very wet top surface by blading it into heaps and shovelling it into the Bobcat and the tractor bucket and depositing it at the side of the pits by the perimeter fence. This area soon filled up though and we resorted to dumping the rest of the sludge over the fence on the third and fourth bend. Probably the heaviest day of track work we have experienced at Armadale.
After some five hours of continuous effort the track was reasonably raceable but sadly we lost to a very quick Diamonds seven, helped by some machine trouble on our part but mostly by very good racing by Kenni Larsen, Rene Bach and Mark Lemon.. This was our first home defeat (to a PL side) since 2007.
