..well, you know the rest, don’t you?
Yesterday was Easter Saturday and the long weekend. It was also speedway night at Nowra with the speedcars as the featured division and the night’s racing slated to finish with a big demolition derby for which 22 cars were entered. Except that it didn’t quite go according to script.
Traffic heading south on the Princes Highway is always diabolical on long weekends and during the summer months so my plan was to take the bike down to the track and filter my way there if necessary. I carried some shorts and my joggers in the backpack so I could get changed out of my riding clobber when I got there.
When I got out onto the highway the traffic didn’t look too bad but I figured that I wasn’t in a hurry so I would take the opportunity to run in the new tyres and go to Nowra up and over the mountain and down through Kangaroo Valley. I was aware that, being a long weekend, the traffic on the roads over the mountains could also be pretty bad and that there were not as many overtaking opportunities either but, what the heck, a ride is a ride.
Surprisingly the mountain roads were all but deserted; score. I made good time, revelling in that “new tyre” feeling we all know so well. At the track I got changed and settled into the familiar routine of checking the pits to see if who had entered had actually arrived and who had actually arrived who hadn’t entered (it’s a long story) Speedcars, 4 cylinder sedans and speedway karts, mmm, should be a pretty easy night.
NOT… Not long after wheel packing had finished and the first couple of races had been run a major snag emerged. The rules for the Speedcar Club state that they can only race if qualified paramedic staff are on the ground with a properly equipped recovery vehicle. But the medical people had not arrived. Frantic telephone calls by club staff failed to raise any response from the people concerned and it soon emerged that our paramedic staff had gone away for the Easter weekend (or so it seemed.) The next half an hour was spent frantically trying to arrange an alternative but without success. Races for the “minor” classes were still being run but it was becoming evident that the speedcar races were not going to happen.
Eventually, after exhausting all avenues to secure paramedic services, we were forced to announce that there would be no speedcar races. A bit of lateral thinking by the club officials resulted in Speedway Australia officials allowing us to run cars one at a time on the track in a Time Trial situation but no racing. I doubt the crowd was convinced that this was good value for their entry paid at the gate but it was the best that could be made of an unfortunate situation.
Despite this, and despite some people leaving in a pretty angry frame of mind, the bulk of the crowd stayed and were rewarded with some scintillating time trialling by the individual speedcars and the entertaining spectacle of one of the cars pulling onto the infield at the end of the allocated 5 laps, running straight across the grass and ditching the car in the creek that bisects the infield! Apparently the throttle had stuck open at the end of his run and the driver could not find the kill switch in the darkness of the infield, away from the floodlights.
The creek that runs through the property can be clearly seen in the Google Maps snapshot. Fortunately neither the car or the driver were damaged but the accident was typical of the night that we were having. When I first went to the track to commentate, I remember my sidekick, Frank Carmody, joking that you shouldn’t go in the creek because the alligators would get you. That was many years ago and I’ve never seen it happen until last night.
The rest of the programme went well with the demo derby keeping most of the crowd at the venue and providing them with the vicarious road rage experience that is inimical to events of this kind. I changed back into my riding gear at the end of the (early completed) programme and headed off home. Riding to the track has many advantages, the most significant being that, regardless of how bad the traffic is on the way THERE, the highway is nearly always DESERTED on the way home around midnight and the fun of booming through the bends, lights on high beam and an empty road is always a great way to finish the night..
…except if it rains… I’d had a great run home until I hit the Big Dipper just after the Kiama Bends and I ran into a waterfall. It was a shock and I was almost instantly drowned. I was wearing my kevlar jeans and a summer weight jacket with no liner but, even if I had been wearing proper “wets” I am sure the result would have been the same. I rode on through the torrential downpour which only eased up around the roundabout at Yallah by which stage I was only a few kilometres from home. In my suburb’s streets the road were a little damp it having experienced a shower sometime earlier in the night. That was little consolation for me.
Needless to say, I was VERY glad I had bought a new set of tyres last weekend at the Sheene because, even WITH new tyres, I HATE riding in the rain. But at least they gave me a bit more confidence.
It never rains…yep, I can pretty much identify.
dunc says
the old wet backside ride hey
yep the rain seemed to come from no where
we got 165mm in our gauge
corrimal way
was a lot of rain in a short time
Phil Hall says
News says it was worse in the northern suburbs. Sure gets your attention!