Pre-rally Meet

Last weekend to cheer ourselves up a bit took a trip to the pre-rally meet at the Fat Cat Bar in London. Some teams attended in their rally cars but because Marvin has drawn his last breath we went by bike. We booked into the hotel to be told we had to pay £20 to park the bike outside overnight! A quick phone call to the bar confirmed they had secure parking there, and even better FREE secure parking so we used our usual ever decreasing circles approach to navigation and soon found ourselves at the Fat Cat.
We walked into the bar and soon spotted a group of like minded idiots - oops sorry ralliers who were watching a video being shown by the 'Send a Cow' charity. We didn't get a chance to introduce ourselves as it seems we were recognised by most people there - our reputation must have preceded us. As the day wore on and the beer kept flowing we chatted to many of the teams there, with great names such as Team Orca, Paula the Panda, Two Men went to Mowgolia and The Mongol Mini amongst many others! It was good to put faces to people we know from the Mongol Rally Forum. Stories were swapped, routes discussed and a great time was had by all. It looks like there are five 2CV rally teams signed up so far. We missed meeting Leo from Madrid and we wont see the Red Rats till the rally... a bit far to fly from Australia just for a meeting, but it was good to find the other teams were no better organised than us! In fact I seem to remember us volunteering to give them advice!!! Somehow they all seem to think we are really organised! All too soon we had to leave and staggered our way hotel-wards,luckily finding a cab fairly quickly.
Morning came and after a great breakfast we grabbed a cab back to the bar and set off back north. On the way back we were hoping to solve our transport problems, but things are never that easy...............