Brisbane WICEN came out to the freezing cold town of Southbrook to assist the Toowoomba Endurance Horse Riders Association in the running of this year’s Hip Pocket Challenge. This normally takes place in March, and is usually one of the first events on our calendar, however Cyclone Alfred totally blew any chance of that happening away. So we bundled up our equipment (and ourselves) and headed west for the open plains. We all arrived on the Friday afternoon and set up base. Operations was pretty simple, with just simplex FM on the 2m band, no repeaters (other than cross-band).
The event from the WICEN perspective is on the Sunday, but there’s a small training ride taking place on the Saturday afternoon. Following the Easter event, I wrote some software to help record competitors arrival times at a checkpoint. We also had an older checkpoint software package that another member had written.
Simon VK4TSC wanted to get to know that latter software package, whilst I wanted to give my newly written software a test out, so we gratuitously headed out on the Saturday afternoon to the checkpoint to do some experimentation. We were joined by two of TEHRA’s volunteers who were the official checkpoint people for that afternoon. Both systems performed well, with mine having a few minor bugs that I was able to work around (and later fixed). The older package of course, having been around longer, most of its bugs have been discovered and rattled out long ago.
The real event from WICEN’s perspective was Sunday, and for most of us, it was a frigid start. Up at 03:30 and on the checkpoint at 04:23. Our checkpoint was just outside Eureka Stud, at the corner of Cambooya-Felton Road and Umbriam-Banchory Road. Like much of the area, there wasn’t much cover from the wind, and the biggest challenge was keeping warm as running a checkpoint does not involve much physical activity.
We had two rides to look after that day, some 80km riders would first arrive from the south, turning left down Cambooya-Felton Road. Later, we’d get 40km headed east and hanging a left to continue north along Umbriam-Banchory Road; some of them probably joined by 80km riders doing their second leg.
The day wound up being overcast, no direct sunlight. Whilst clear nights are usually cold ones, a bit of direct sunlight is greatly welcome on cold days, but no such luck. The challenge therefore was conserving body heat whilst still maintaining dexterity in one’s fingers. We had one call-out for a rescue float, with a horse apparently managing to kicking himself in a fore-hoof with one of his hind-hooves in an overenthusiastic gallop. The horse in question showed great embarrassment from his predicament.
All in all, the event was a success. The ride organisers here are pretty on-the-ball in terms of notifying us of withdrawing competitors and the checkpoint locations are well situated.
Normally we do this earlier in the year when it’s much warmer, but the cyclone meant travel to that region was far too dangerous to attempt, for WICEN operator and competitor alike. Apparently the winds whipped up by the cyclone also did quite a bit of track damage that needed rectification first.
That said, in spite of the re-scheduling and the colder weather, everything went well. This is a well-run event that we look forward to each year.