a fairground life

Dunkeld came and went without too much fuss, the Friday night again seen the local teen binge drinkers make an appearance. One chap was clearly on a mission to start some bother and ended up with a clip on the jaw for his efforts from a senior showman of pension age! His pals took him away before I knew anything of it. Just as well I suppose. Saturday was fine and clear and the games were well supported during the afternoon. The teens came down again after teatime. Just on 9pm I closed the DZ and started to pull it down."r" started on the skydiver just after 9pm. Mrs showman hung on with the miami until 9:45pm when she had had enough of them falling about drunk and closed up. The crew had arrived and by half midnight all the kit was packed up. Our next port of call was Blairgowrie and since pull on was Wednesday morning, all we had to do on Sunday was take our Caravan and DZ back down to the yard in Glasgow. Monday was a day off and Tuesday at 8pm "r" and I headed back upto Dunkeld. The next morning at 5am the alarm went off and we took the Miami and skydiver over to Blair. It was on 7am when we arrived on the carpark. Unfortunately there was a 46ft artic trailer parked on my plot for the skydiver and another small car on the plot for the rock o plane. I tried to couple up the skydiver unit to the trailer to move it, but the pin as too far under. So I coupled the miami unit to it instead, I drew the trailer forward the length of itself so I could set the Skydiver trailer. As I was putting the Miami Foden back out the way the contractor arrived and took away the trailer, if I had known he would have been so quick I wouldn't have bothered but I had visions of it being there for a couple of days! This is what happened with that small car until the police moved it on Friday morning! During building up I noticed the 100kva set didn't sound right. I decided to change the filters, fully expecting this to cure it. We also cleaned out the Racor fuel trap too as it was full of crap. After that the set would only run for a few minutes then die. This we repeated for a few times. We then decided to clean the gauze in the lift pump. It had a hole in it and the dirt was also in the pump. We cleaned this too but to no avail. That night we headed back to Glasgow to get a new lift pump. It was Friday before we retuned with the pump. "r" fitted it but the set still wouldn't go. He bypassed the Racor system by connecting the two fuel lines directly. The set ran fine after that so now we know where to look. Thats a job outstanding as we were now at opening time.During all this I had looked into the running light box and finally got it working again. The problem turned out to be dirty contacts on the EPROM chips! I removed them and clipped them back in and away it went in full 10x4 fashion!! For how long is anyones guess, but the ride looked good for that weekend. Friday was about on par and there were no teeny drinkers to speak of. We were all closed before 9pm. Saturday morning came and I got derv from the local garages for the journey away that night. The day's only minor issue was a slack wire in the skydiver ride plug. I smelt it as I passed. Luckily we caught it before it knacked the plug and it was an easy fix by cutting back the cable to a fresh bit. This all happened around 3pm long before the big rush. The street was closed again this year (more expense for the closure order) and business was good but not as busy as in previous years. This is the second year of the drink ban and although it did thin out the punters it made the whole event much calmer. There were only two idiots to speak of and I refused them admission on the miami for their own safety and other riders comfort. The police were out in force and cracking down on anyone with a bottle. At 10pm we were closed and at 12:14am the two rides were heading out of the town Glasgow bound. At 2:30 am we were back in Glasgow.

"r" had arrived 20 mins before me and I found him slumped over the steering wheel sleeping.