The Journey
The weekend started off as it always does with the team sharing the luxury Soreys bus with the Bendigo South East (formerly Flora Hill) Secondary team.
Everything was running smoothly as we drove through light rain until we embarked on our usual "Short Cut": a dirt road that bypasses Horsham and cuts half an hour off the trip.
Unfortunately this short cut is a dirt road with ‘Dry Weather Only’ signs. It was not dry weather.
About 200m into this so called ‘short cut’ the bus began to get very loose in the rear end as Noel our bus driver was putting in the drive of his life just trying to keep the bus on the road. His drive was so good many of us believe it could have earned him a start in the Word Rally Championship for next year. At 1 k from the bitumen, the road got very soft and the bus got very sideways and ended up bogged in the gutter.
What were we going to do?
Well, desperate times call for desperate measures. While most of the crew pushed the trailer to firmer ground, Chooka and Charles walked to the nearest farm to try and get a willing farmer with a tractor to get us out of our dilemma.
“Someone get up there and pull the bitumen closer” - Matt Anson
Thankfully one farmer was keen and came down with a tractor to right our bus. After an a hour and a half, the inaugural Horsham Trailer Pull team bonding exercise was complete and we were back on the road.
Just in time for Scrutineering
Once we finally made it to Murray Bridge were were pushing time to make it to scrutineering.
[Scrutineering is a compulsory vehicle safety check to ensure that the vehicles comply with the regulations, are safe to ride and safe to race. Scrutineers check everything from the lights, brakes, horns, wheelbase, wheel track, turning circle and any sharp edges.]
Fortunately ‘BY-09’ passed with ease and from the track it was up to the Murray Bridge Hotel to check into our accommodation before heading to the pub for tea with the rest of the Bendigo crew.
The story continues...
Because there is simply so much to tell you about the weekend, we’ve broken it up into 3 parts:
- The journey there (Getting the bus bogged),
- Friday (Qualifying),
- Race day, racing through the night and victory!
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