16th of July, 2017, Foley Road, Woodville
For once Mum had the weekend free so she got to come to the trial. She hadn’t been to one in while so she was pretty excited.
The trial was quite different from the ones we usually have there since all the trees have been cut down. It was almost unrecognisable. It was slippery farm land with rocks and hills rather then banks and tree roots and such.
Setting up had been a bit of a challenge. The far side of the creek was covered in slash. This is where we normally have most of our sections. It had also rained for much of week and the setters (Phil Stevenson and Warwick George) were reluctant to use the creek too much when they set up the event on the saturday, partly because they were worried it might not drop enough by the next day.
The trial started at the bottom of the first paddock below the car park (one and two), through the quarry (three), along the creek and fence-line (four,five and six), and then back on to the hillside beside the quarry (seven and eight). There was quite a bit of variety packed into a very small area.
I was riding with John Lawton, Mark Sidebotham and Warrick George. Warrick found it a bit too easy, Mark had it pretty sussed, but John and I found a few things to muck up. I was quite annoyed with myself because the only sections I should have had trouble on were one, two and maybe seven. The rest were very easy and it was frustrating when I got points on four and eight. John would have also been kicking himself for making a meal of two.
My favorite section was three. I cleaned it all day which is nice. It was basically just some banks with a few corners. On the last bank every time I went up I wheelied over the top, or at least it felt like that to me.
I also liked four. I cleaned it on the first and last laps. It started in the creek, going over a knee-high rock. My back wheel slipped off three of the four times I did it. Luckily it never took the flag out and I didn’t dab. Then it was out of the creek, around some corners, over a few logs and out. I was getting my points just before the last log on a tight corner.
I wasn’t a big fan of one and eight. One had a rock at the start which I struggled with all day. I was a bit afraid of falling off it, which doesn’t help. I didn’t like eight because it had a log that was slightly off the ground. It was easy and I could do it but I didn’t like it, so I didn’t have fun on it.
Mum rode with Tony Hildeston from Hawkes Bay. It had been a whole year since mum had done a Manawatu trial – her last one was also at Foley Road. She really liked it but struggled a little with the slippery conditions. Tony rode Clubman, but tackled the Presidents line in the quarry and was pretty happy at clearing it.
It felt like an easy day but there were only five clear rounds out of the 48 ridden. It’s quite hard to get a clean round! Callum seemed to have the measure of the day and both him and his dad were rewarded with clean rounds. Very well done.
I had a good day and (with the exception of stupid errors on seven and eight on my last two laps) was happy with my score.