Posted by Sam McCurdy
On Wednesday 27th January, President David Button inducted our newest member and his good friend, Andrew Somers, to the Club.
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Andrew has been attending Zoom meetings for some time and more recently we got to meet him in person at Holm Park. As stated in a previous article, David and Andrew have been involved in the HPV events with St Margaret's and Berwick Grammar School's teams.
As two of my grandchildren are keen HPV participants, I am familiar with the annual 24-hour events conducted at Maryborough and Wonthaggi, which draw teams from all over Victoria. The beauty of these is that the parents not only help with the organisation of the teams, but at Wonthaggi, they can even drive an HPV machine in the event on a rostered basis.
Andrew has become infamous with the local HPV crowd for an incident at the Wonthaggi event a few years ago. While driving the adult machine at around 2:30 am, he took a wrong turning into what proved to be a shortcut, thereby cutting off about half of the circuit. He has been reminded of the incident every year since. That shortcut was jokingly referred to as "Somers Way" and the HPV group had a mock road sign made up to say so. When Andrew competed in following years, the St Margaret and Berwick Grammar School HPV community would gather at that corner to prevent him taking that route again and to cheer him on mercilessly.
Unfortunately, no one ever removed the mock sign "Somers Way", so that over time it has been accepted as a legitimate street name and is even recognised on Google.
Welcome to the Club Andrew. I don't think anyone can top that story of incidental infamy.