Friday night was spent making up card packs for the dealers, as I had no real idea of how many people were likely to ride or how many of the volunteers were going to show up. I guessed on 8 volunteers and 22 riders so made up 8 packs of 20 cards each and a nice distribution of high value cards for the furthest away dealers, but a few wild cards thrown in for good measure ! I had dealers standing in Big Mumma, Spaghetti, at Dead Mans Corner, Tree Huggas, No Brakes, Iron Horse, Slipperies Delight and the beer stop in the old car park.
Race daydawned nice and sunny and I wandered the road at 7.45 for a paper and came home had coffee and toast. It was looking like being a top day, naturally half an hour later the cloud had moved in and the wind had picked up a bit…
I was quite nervous about the race, maybe nervous is a bit extreme, but I was certainly something, too much energy, luckily I had a few house jobs to do before I packed up and left. I had borrowed my brother in laws petrol weed wacker so I made good use of that and flattened the grass edges which is always fun, petrol powered tools are so cool.
I left home at 11.00 with a car load of bike, (which I didn’t ride) beer and prizes and headed for the supermarket to buy some basics for the BBQ. Got to the forest about an hour before the start and found a good spot to set up the barbie for race headquarters.
The riders and helpers started to show up soon after I arrived and the time before the race disappeared in a blur of chatting and getting peoples names down for the prize draw after the event. Luckily all the people who said they would help out, did and I was amazed to get 28 riders, which was a few more than I expected.
There was a small amount of chaos as I read the rules and shifted everyone to the start line, some of the helpers were not quite ready so I had to hold everyone back for a few minutes. Next event I will get this organised a bit better, I wanted to make sure the riders knew what the ‘dealers’ looked like so they knew who to ride up to in the forest.
Once the riders left 5 minutes late 2:05 I went and borrowed the bike parks BBQ and got that set up, I then hung about for an hour a half waiting for the riders to come back for food and a drink at 3:30.
The BBQ and prize giving were a bit of a blur for me, I remember having a couple of beers, cooking one hell of a lot of sausage, chatting to a lot of riders, handing out spot prizes and generally having a good time. The race was won by a girl with 4 kings.
The feedback on the day was everyone enjoyed it, which was just great, I wasn’t sure how people would find it. With the larger number of riders, more people would have missed out on cards then I planned. There was enough interest to run one of these again next year but next time I will ensure there are more cards and more dealers out there. At least next time it will be easy to get interest going now everyone knows what the heck it is all about !
Photos are here ;
http://aucklandsinglespeed.spaces.live.com
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