Chair’s Chatter

Well hello fellow LAMkins, I hope the riding season has well and truly started for you. For those that attended the Norfolk training weekend, wow, what a weekend, we had a fantastic time with lots of ORs taking place and we even had 5, or was it 6 check tests, so fingers crossed for some good test passes soon. We also had one Trainee Observer pass his Local Observer test, so another Observer to add to the ranks, well done. The weather was really kind to us and it was wonderful, sunny and quite warm, the complete opposite of a few years ago where myself and my Associate took shelter for a 3hr lunch break to keep out of the torrential rain!

From the noise level in the dining hall at the hotel, I think everyone was on a high, as this was the first time Norfolk was able to take place since April 2019 so it was really nice to be back.

The weekend was relatively incident free, we had a zipper incident where the zipper on Mr H’s jacket split and he asked our Training Coordinator for some help getting the zipper down to the bottom, but unfortunately it came off in his hand (honestly officer) so his weekend was cut short as he had no jacket, I mean, who carries a spare??

We had 2 punctures, one on the Saturday morning whilst still at the hotel so that unfortunately took the Associate out of action for the day and the other as we were leaving the hotel on the Sunday morning to head back home. The moral of this story is always carry a puncture repair kit and more importantly know how to use it! The person who had the puncture had no puncture repair kit and probably no idea how to use it anyway, fortunately for him he was in a group, it would have been a different story if he had been on his own. However, it was like watching the 3 stooges, one person had the know-how and an electric tyre inflator, the second had a mushroom gun (but had obviously not yet had a need to use it, thank goodness you can get YouTube on the side of the road), I had a very un-fancy puncture repair kit but it would be an exaggeration if I said I knew how to use it. To be honest my puncture repair kit has been used several times, but on other people’s bikes! Anyway, about an hour later the nail/screw had been removed, hole reamed, hole plugged and tyre re-inflated and we were able to get on our way again. I hasten to add we had only gone about 10 yards out of the hotel car park when the puncture was discovered.

Have any of you thought about becoming an Observer or wondered what it entailed? An email or Chimp should be coming out shortly inviting you to find out more and possibly start training, so keep an eye out for that.

For those of you who were kind enough to ask, yes I did get Bentley back from the kennels who was very happy to see me and when he came home he absolutely stank to high heaven! Lord knows what he had been up to! So at the first available opportunity I took him to the groomers, he was there for 2hrs and when I collected him, he smelt lovely and looked lovely, had had a hair cut and was perfectly groomed and what did he do at the first opportunity? Yup he rolled in fox poo and for those of you that know, you know! He absolutely reeked. He was happy as Larry, I was not!

Anyway, gotta go, got a puppy class to go to, just like LAM, you never stop learning.

Stay safe and get those routes planned for an awesome summer of riding.

See you soon

Jane x