Dad's Ranting
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Wow, It's time for me to get a word in. 11th September What a date to have your birthday eah? It's been a bit of a bummer to say the least the past couple of years but it also reminds you of what's important. I spent the day at a race with my son and got totally soaked to the skin for my troubles but wet or not it's really nice to able to do something together. That's one of the best bits about racing at this level, it's a family thing and allows us to spend time with our kids, meet other people and in general have a good time. We haven't been able to race as much as we did earlier in the year as we had to move house. All this location, location, location stuff is OK to a point but when the location is good, the house needs shit loads of work doing to it! I haven't even finished doing the upstairs yet and to throw a spanner in the works further, along came Ellie Louise at 08:21 on Friday 27th August. This is Ellie with Ben when she was just 12 hours old.
May 05 I've never done any lap scoring and I wouldn't like to be responsible for it. I appreciate that it's not an easy job and mistakes can easily be made. However, the size of some of the mistakes recently beggar belief. Not long ago at Peacocks Hey, we checked Bens points for the overall and found that a simple mistake in adding up had cost him 20 points. We mentioned it and it was changed in time. This last weekend however, we and others were robbed of an overall position. A young lad in his first ever race riding an unsuitable bike, especially given the big hills and who had to be pushed up all the hills, was given 7th place overall!!! Just how wrong can you be? The lad was dead last in each and every race. Now I'm not having a go at him as he tried his best and had the bottle to have a go but the lap scoring was on another planet! A full gate of fast lads could be hard to keep score off but half a gate of autos and mistakes this big are still made and you have to wonder what has happened. It is made worse as championship points are at stake and it can mean a position at the end of it all. The mistake was eventually acknowledged but the presentation had been done and it was too late. The day after the wife was looking at the scores on the lap van and saw that a 65 rider had his points down wrongly and he too had been robbed of 20 points and also a trophy! The wife pointed it out again and all the 65 trophy winners were called back this time to give the correct people the trophies. Now some poor lad who was given a trophy had it taken back and given to someone else. It really isn't a good situation. There are 3 lap scorers who are supposed to cross check their sheets. Surely all 3 can't make the same mistake so why aren't these flagged before it's too late. On Sunday, Ben's last race didn't get off until 6.15pm. After it we had to pack up and drive 2 hours home and then unload everything and of course Monday is school again. A lot of ACU clubs look down on the AMCA but they could learn some valuable lesson on running meetings from them. The schoolboy clubs are far too interested on race mornings in getting in as much money as they can. Entry and scrutineering should close on time, not when people eventually turn up. Close on time you get the meeting off on time and we finish on time. A lot of people seem to think they can go down to scrutineering at the last minute and they won't get a marshal job and get away with this time and again. If the clubs really would close entry on time, this would stop and the rest of us wouldn't spend hours waiting for things to get under way. It was gone 12.00 when the autos went out for race 1, what the hells going on? Frankly I have so far yet to find a schoolboy club that can actually run a meeting effectively and in good time. 1/2 hour dinner breaks never last less than an hour and that's when the racing hasn't even started until after 11 am. Frankly it's crap! If people are forced the hard way to book in on time then that's how it should be. It's no good to threaten to close entry only to still bend to the will of certain people who just want to get out of marshalling. It's no good to threaten riders for riding in the paddock if you won't back it up in the end. Come on clubs, run the meetings properly and we can all go home at a reasonable time and not look like shit on Monday mornings! March 05 First of all I need to say a few thank you's to Ben's new sponsors, Cheshire 4X4 and also WL & SL Massey, the help really is appreciated. I also need to thank Sean Lawless, the very good looking (even if sleep deprived) editor of the best MX mag in the world, Dirt Bike Rider. Sean and the gang at DBR have gone above and beyond the call of duty to bring a smile to someone close to us who's been having a really s**t time of it recently. Cheers also to Jeff Perrett (he really isn't the drunken slob he likes to make out in his column) and to Geoff Walker for helping make it a really good day at Hawkstone. Cheers to Gordy and Swordy too for their time on the day, sorry we jinxed you Gordy and hope to see you back on top soon. Well so far we've had 5 meetings to date and there's no doubt that Ben and his partner in crime Ryan Elliott are improving all the time. In fact the last meeting with the Red Dragons at Peacocks Hey, they showed how much they both improved from the start of day 1 to the end of day 2. Ben is really happy with the 3 trophies he's picked up so far. They may not be top 3's but to the youngsters, any trophy is a boost and helps them gain in confidence and see some reward for the work they do. At a recent meeting, conditions were really foul and in the end only 11 auto's finished the day. The club technically were giving trophies down to 10th but I have to say that if that poor lad who finished 11th didn't get something, it's a damn shame! ALL of those kids showed guts and determination to get around the track at all in the conditions and every one deserved some recognition for they're efforts. I'm really busy at the moment and I'm working on getting this site built up. Rest assured that I will definitely be adding more to this page soon and it will certainly be more in the way of ranting than thank you's, so watch out! |
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