Training Days

The first currently scheduled official ride out of the season is to Balmaha on the 6th April which is usually a nice wee run to get things started and not so far that on a cooler day that you end up freezing!

But ahead of that, the Road Crew need to get back up to speed. While we always have a Road Captain leading rides, sometimes we let a Road Marshal lead under supervision of a RC, to build their confidence and understanding of how it all works. And with two new members joining the crew, Andy ( Burnsy) Burns and Nicole Tanzabel it was an opportunity to let them learn some of the protocols for duties on the team.

As always Jigger makes it light-hearted and we always try to have a laugh but covering all the key points. It was not the nicest day but that probably only heightens the “realism” as we can rarely choose the conditions we ride in, otherwise, it would all be still, sunny days with no traffic! The crew also had to ride very carefully through one of the areas used for training as a lorry had spilled a substantial amount of diesel on some of the roundabouts, and conditions were very slick to say the least! Along with Jigger, we had Connor, and Paul Stark and Kenny getting up to mischief and providing feedback to the marshalls.

Jigger also took the opportunity to present Kenny with his Road Captain patch and a cheeky wee bottle of JD after completing the Road Captain training at HD HQ with Janice the weekend previous weekend.

Some challenging scenarios were run through and it got everyone’s grey matter working and starts the team working as a unit again ahead of a busy season ahead.

Then on Sunday a chance to bring all the training together as we took a healthy turn out of bikes, 28 in all, out to Largs via Port Glasgow, letting the crew turn around and take turns on different duties. Sunday was a perfect spring day, the wind had finally relented and we had pretty much horizon to horizon blue skies, at least first thing, and it was really very pleasant in the sunshine.

Sunday is also a great opportunity for the members of the chapter to throw off the winter cobwebs and get back up to speed with group riding, and lets new members, (we had quite a few new faces out with us), learn the ropes and see how it all works.

The only negative was the roads had been quite heavily gritted in some areas….so the bikes would need a good washdown after the ride! Whats new then?

For the first leg out Kenny was invited to lead the group as the new RC, Jigger made sure the route was followed correctly as he had recce’d it previously, but left Kenny to all the drop offs and briefing duties. No one got lost, so that was good then! We also had Davie Fulton, Connor and Raymond out providing valuable feedback to the crew and group along the way.

Then Lairdy took over for the leg from Port Glasgow down to Largs. With it being such a nice day it was busy on the route down and there were a lot of bikes at Largs but we managed to get parked up in our usual wee secret spot at the seafront.