Vests

[glennMember]

As we are all probably aware by now we had a slight hicup on a ride on sunday,, for those not there heres how it happened.
15 blokes ripping through the scrub having an absolute ball, last stop of the day we said farewell to the ride leaders as they were heading home and we knew the way back to camp, all good right up until diddel says wheres trent, we all said he left with charlie so all is good, diddel says,no our trentAKA ausblue,aka tony,the faces all dropped when it was realised AB was not with us, no-one could really remember when he was last seen, if you seen the scrub we were in you would appreiciate our concerns, we sent a search party both ways and ensured we would wait there for all to return, luckily tony had the nouce to find his way home and when he answered diddels phone call and told dibbel he was safe we all let out a sigh of relief.

Now how can this same thing be minimised from happening to you or someone on a ride?

I recon both lead and sweep should wear a vest so you dont accidently overtake the lead and miss a corner, and regular head counts are undertaken.

Cmon lads give us your thoughts.

Boony

[ChrisMember]

Yep boony this was discussed on our ride on sunday I reckon green for the front, orange for the sweep and pink in between

[glennMember]

green and orange I agree with,not sure about the pink.

[GregMember]

Yeah that’s the way they normally work Boony, I dont wear one but my jersey is hard to mistake as will my new one be

I wouldn’t stress about it Boony from reading AB’s take on it he would have missed a nuclear bomb as he was concentrating in the creek crossing when he passed the leader one of those things, like shit happens :laugh:
Why he needed notice why there were no other tracks in front of him, well that could be the mushrooms :laugh:

TB

[Jeffrey SmithMember]

I don’t think it really matters what colour as long as they have a pretty vest to be easily identified. Everyone should know who is sweep and who is lead anyway.

[GregMember]

Boony wrote:

Quote:

green and orange I agree with,not sure about the pink.

So what happens if no one has a green vest, the rides off?

Common sense on the day, listen to the riders brief and stay alert. Oh and the leader should kick anybody of that goes past him

TB

[ChrisMember]

Boony wrote:

Quote:

green and orange I agree with,not sure about the pink.

O.K brown for you boony :laugh:

[ChrisMember]

Pack a yellow and orange ribbon in your pack and worst case tie around your arm.

[DeanMember]

Yeh like TB says sometimes shit happens, but in Trents defence when you get in the zone sometimes you dont take in everything you should.and the little things can turn into big things.

Ollie

[glennMember]

yep shit does happen.

that ride was so well organised and we still mislayed a rider, I`m not stressing I`m just throwing it out there for discussion and to maybe prompt others

[alanMember]

Trailboss wrote:

Quote:

Boony wrote:

Quote:

green and orange I agree with,not sure about the pink.

So what happens if no one has a green vest, the rides off?

Common sense on the day, listen to the riders brief and stay alert. Oh and the leader should kick anybody of that goes past him

TB

if your the leader think you would no if someone overtook you be a good exuse to get on the gas and do as TB said :woohoo:

[Dwayne OMember]

Yeah, We always normally have both vests in action as well as that Polka Dot thing out front :laugh:
Yesterdays ride started out in a similar manner I think, I heard the brief from Henk & it was pretty standard stuff! He also said he was a SLOW OLD FART,, that bit I didn`t believe for a millisecond :laugh:

Tony was just enjoying his new found zone on the TM I think & overlooked his position in the pack :silly: Still one lucky bugger though

[Craig HattonMember]

We have started using vests, green for sweep and orange for lead, great as a quick reference, also if we stop like at/after a creek or something lead parks bike in middle across track

hatto

[TrentMember]

Morning all

I’ve been contemplating starting this exact thread but I’ve been wary that the internet can often distort the tone of the discussion and the last thing I wanted to do was make it seem like I was trying to lay blame on anyone. I recognise that it was a mistake that I made by accident and there was a bit of discussion on Sunday about what could be done to avoid it but really it was a difficult one to pin anything on.

I personally think that vests are a good thing and even more so when you don’t “know” the lead well enough to pick them out in a group and even more so if the lead is going to change through the day. I can say for sure that I noticed people at the river crossing and I believe I would’ve seen if they had a vest on but obviously I can’t say for certain.

I’ve also learnt that I should be more mindful of who it is I overtake no matter what and also be more diligent about riding through intersections without a corner man posted. People make mistakes and we have to accept that and deal with it as best as we possibly can.

As fate would have it, I came across a corner earlier in the day without a posted marker and stopped with my hands in the air so everyone would know I didn’t know for certain and Murph pointed out some tracks so we kept on. With that in the back of my mind later in the day I slowly went straight through the intersection that you guys turned right at after I’d unknowingly overtaken the lead. Most of the track after that looked like river bed with stones scattered all over but I should have realised earlier that I needed to look hard for trails before keeping on. Had I done that I could’ve backtracked to the creek and waited without as much concern for fuel but since I didn’t I’d gone so far I was worried I would run out.

I’m also keen to hear people’s honest view on whether I did the right thing after I realised I was separated. Don’t fear offending me, I won’t learn unless I hear the experienced view.

I had 2 concerns in my mind and could only control one of those. Getting out of the bush unscathed was one and doing what I could to avoid having 20 blokes risking themselves looking for me was the other. I rationalised that I could only control my actions and that a group of 20 would be better at looking after each other than I would be at looking after myself and took the approach of finding the safest way out ASAP.

As I’ve said I backtracked and it turns out that I waited at a couple of sections that you blokes went through but I only waited for about 15minutes because I could only see a single track – not 20 tracks. I don’t blame myself for my actions but with hindsight I feel like maybe I should have gone further back to where I positively knew I was with the group. If I had’ve done that but did run out of fuel I might have sat there out of fuel alone for the night.

But then from the searcher’s perspective, how far do you backtrack once you realise you’ve lost someone but you’re also low on fuel?

I also had it in my mind that given it was getting on for time we must have been heading back to camp and no one would notice I was missing until the group reached camp so maybe I could get back there in time to catch them before they went looking.

I’m glad to see this has become an open discussion, as I said in the other thread this is a free lesson for all of us and if we’re all open enough hopefully we can all benefit.

Cheers.

[TrentMember]

EAGLE`02 wrote:

Quote:

Tony was just enjoying his new found zone on the TM I think & overlooked his position in the pack :silly: Still one lucky bugger though

Mate to be honest I was running on adrenalin and fumes and didn’t want to stop and think about how buggered I was. I did hit the zone throughout the day but I’d pretty much just got through the pain barrier when this occured and compared to some of those blokes I wasn’t belting it by any means.

EAGLE`02 wrote:
Yesterdays ride started out in a similar manner I think, I heard the brief from Henk & it was pretty standard stuff! He also said he was a SLOW OLD FART,, that bit I didn`t believe for a millisecond :laugh:
[/quote]

Interesting note here, I wasn’t the last to reach the briefing by quite a few but I did only get there as it wrapped up and Henk started his bike so I asked someone what was said and how many corner men we were using. Didn’t get into what to do if you’re lost because everyone was starting up and we probably got carried away. Had I of known that the lead rider said return to your last point of contact and we will run the track slowly in reverse if we lose someone things may have been different but I can still see opportunities for missing each other so it’s not fool proof unfortunately.

The more you think about it the more it really hits that this was the best possible outcome for what could have been a bloody ordinary situation. Most important thing each party can do is keep your head and be prepared.

[Author]

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