As we saw, Friday went pretty damn well, Sat started off in the same fashion really, i sent him up for first run, he came down happy, the weather was holding and the track was good. By the time we got to 3rd practice it had all gone well and he was up for it.
Mid morning he was getting play in the main pivot (again) so bearings out and new ones fitted but i think it's the spacer that holds it all together that's worn, so £40 out of the bank for that)
Sadly the feeling of "oh" came around soon after lunch as it was seeding and he was due down.. but after a gap, another rider appeared. I seem to cope fairly well with it though and wasn't hugely worried. 30s later a text message arrived "flat tyre, walking down".
By the time he arrived at the bottom he'd managed to find 2 flats, both front and rear. The bloke repairing wheels had run out of rims, 3 of our mates did 15 rims over the course of the weekend between them, yeah really.... wow... 15. I ended up giving one of our 27.5s to one of them for Poland World Cup in 2 weeks as he didn't know if he could get a spare for it.
So it was wheel stripdown and when i re-inflated the front it looked and seemed like he'd just blown the air, but i stripped it and checked wheel, tape etc...
Wheel 2 wasn't quite so smooth. I inflated that and it was leaking straight away, after whipping the tyre off it seemed it had a few little snicks in the tape, so i decided to re-tape it. But then my sodding Mobi washer seemed to have lost the ability to pump water as an o-ring had gone since it was last used. (£200 later an order for a Worx Hydroshot was placed at Screwfix for collection Mon). So i couldn't get the wheel clean easily.... GRRR.
Eventually i re-taped it and threw the tyre on, it STILL wouldn't stay up, so the tyre is very suspect and i think he's damaged it on or around the bead. A new Argotal came out of the box and that went on. It stayed up fine. We then noticed that the rotor had been fitted incorrectly by the previous owner, so that was flipped.
The bike was then all back together and due to the forecast i'd fitted 2 x Argotals for the coming rain.
Sausage pasta was thrown together and people fed... It was then an early night in the tent/gazebo.... But that went about as well as you'd expect in FW as the overnight rain and wind came in hard... I didn't sleep well.
Sunday was a short practice and the boy looked at the rain, fitted his kit and went out. He came down shaking his head.... Eeeek.
"gears don't work, they're all over the place and the chain dropped off the cassette."
So it was a bit of work again on it, setting the high/low screws and sending him out for his last practice. The rain was still light but the wind was getting up.
"still no good"
I then diagnosed an issue with the SRAM UDH, it was coming loose.. maybe a thread issue, maybe something else, but it went in the bin and a new UDH was fitted... high/low set, brake aligned and ready to go.
We tested it in the car park and all seemed OK enough.
The wind and rain was playing a factor now and the early Youth riders got the best of it.. "got blown of the track 3 times" from the later of the Youths we know was a pattern.
The boy was down early out of the list due to his DNF in seeding with Seb in front of him (who borrowed our wheel, but not fitted it for race). Seb didn't come down though and on live timing hadn't gone through split 2.... It seemed he'd killed his 4th wheel of the weekend. Massive dent in it... Damn.
The boy came down and looked OK, but had clearly had a lying on the floor moment looking at the sky, there was mud on his trousers and shoulders... Arses....
He'd got blown about a lot up top and exiting the woods he went for an inside line and got in wrong and went down. But he was up and OK. He came over the line and the ending was a P38. Not what we wanted from the weekend that looked pretty positive early on, but we can't change it and can't do a lot about it.
But the bike held up fine (apart from hie brake lever which he's broken the adjuster (another £80 on top) and he got down in 1 piece.
It was then packing all the wet things away, it's amazing just how much stuff you have when cooking, gazebo, camping, tables, kit etc for a weekend.
5 hours later we're in a TravelLodge getting some kip before a 5am start to get back for school.
Pics if/when i have some energy back. There'll be some stories about bike stuff too maybe
