Highlands - Portable Track Event (02/05/2009)

The Highlands Event in Toti proved to be very good even though it had its challenges throughout the day.

The day started off with the imminent threat of rain. It held off though pretty well right up until the very end.

On arrival, I noticed that we were not setting up at the "change room enclosure" as was negotiated by Phil. Apparently the location of this site was not very good and was away from any sort of pedestrian thoroughfare. There was a cancellation at one of the big tens and Mandy the organiser told us we could set up in there. We thought that this would be brilliant as it was right nest to one of the pedestrian entrances and as we know, it's all about location.
We proceeded to set everything up and then waited for the gates to open so we could weave our magic.

The gates opened and...... nothing! The people were paying to get in, walking past our tent and not even looking at us. The tent that was protecting us from the elements was the very thing that was causing our downfall.
Even getting Mike and Phil to stand at the entrance pointing people to our stand was proving to be pointless as I think we only had two paying customers.

We got together and made an executive decision to move our track into the outdoors on the main field next to the dancing tents. Erlo volunteered to get his two gazebos from home just in case it rained.

Like the well oiled slick machine that we are, we got the track moved across in record time and we already had "customers" waiting for us to be ready as well as lots of questions from interested persons.

The rest is history. We ended up selling 144 tickets which was not bad considering that most of the morning was wasted.
It was a long day but thoroughly enjoyed by all.

A big thanks to Phil, Mike, Ashwin, Erlo and Costa for all the effort they put in during the day.

Costa telling the troops how to hold their controllers (again).

A brief lull as we moved to our new location on the main field.

The interest is good and the numbers were excellent.

Location next to the dancing tent was a winner.

We had racers of all ages enjoying our track.

We had to cover the track as the sun was causing the track to expand.