The future's safe

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It is uncanny - every Thursday it seems to rain, and it poured down today, so much so that there are precious few photographs because I didn't want to get the camera too wet.
Punch, Gerald and I were joined by my 12 year old son, Dave. A glance through the Blog's photo album features a good few photos of him, and quite rightly so.

He (and his sister, Steffie) has been a true speedway fan since he could first walk. His autograph book is stacked with the great and the famous and he's as knowledgeable about our beloved sport as most fans.

Last season he gave up every Thursday during his school holidays to come up and work on the track and often would end up staying to tidy up after a meeting long after the racing had finished. While many of his contemporaries are content to spend hours on the PlayStation, Dave has always been more than willing to come along and work alongside us and learn from people like Gerald and Punch.

Today has been no exception. Kitted out in his new overalls and with a sturdy pair of boots, he worked alongside me assembling the air fence on turn three. The fence, as those who read about it before Christmas will know, is b.....y heavy and very awkward to manoeuvre. Add the fact that it was cold and tipping down with rain and you'll soon appreciate that the work wasn't a bundle of fun. But there were no complaints from him. He just got on with the work. With youngsters like David the future of the sport is as secure as it could be. Well done mate!

The air fence has been modified with a triangular piece added at the bottom of the front side. This should push the front of the fence upward and stop it from slipping forward.
We'll still need to add the heavy rubber kickboards to protect it but we'll get round to that later.

Getting the first section of air fence up is a very time consuming activity. Each panel must be connected by the air flow pipes and then strapped to the next panel. When the 13 sections were ready we inflated them to see how they sat against the safety fence. We then had to calculate how the gate to the pits would open and close with its air fence in place.

You can't rush this and we ended up having to move the whole air fence three times before we got it right. The fence then had to be clipped to the safety wire fence behind it. By three o'clock we had finished. The rest of the fence on turn 4 should now fit perfectly.

So what of Punch, Gerald and Shirley?

Shirl provided us with piping hot cups of coffee to ward off the cold and damp. Punch and Gerald fought an ultimately winning battle to get the old cherry picker, that has cluttered up the pits area car park, into life so that a team of scaffolders could come and remove some of the apparently unnecessary lighting poles around the edge of the track. If you look at the photograph above you'll see the lights on short poles with cross pieces running parallel to the ground. It's these latter pieces that are being removed to make the whole place look smarter and also to improve camera views when Sky come a calling.

We packed up as the sun came out, sadly too late and too wan to dry us or the track. Saturday will revolve around getting the whole air fence in place. What fun - I can hardly wait!

Oh, before I forget, it's Punch's 69th birthday on Saturday. We'll celebrate with a cake and a few candles. I'm sure his fan club would like to send him their best wishes. Email me with any special birthday sentiments and I'll make sure that he gets them on Saturday.

To send a birthday email to Punch please click here.