RBRR Drivers Meeting

We had the pleasure of hosting the Club Triumph Round Britain Reliability Run (Northern) drivers meeting again last night. Tim Bancroft and Jason Chinn (part of the organisational team) pitched up early to help me prep the old museum buildings ready for the evenings entertainment. Cars were moved out to reveal tell tail oil stains on the floor that Tim immediately declared a health and safety risk! Suitably armed with a mop and bucket and some neat traffic film remover (steam cleaner heavy duty detergent) he set about making the floor spick and span. Meanwhile yours truly trawled the place for chairs, and only having found 20 odd decent comfy ones I resorted to steam cleaning off the green stuff growing on the white plastic garden variety I collected from outside. Having done a half passable attempt at cleaning the floor Tim hung the CT and RNLI banners, whilst Jason supervised, and talked about pies (that boy has a one track mind).
The meeting was set to start at 20.30 sharp. Tim was starting to panic half an hour or so before the kick off when only half a dozen crews had turned up. Representatives of 60 odd crews had turned up Monday night for the southern meeting leaving Tim to expect 40 odd tonight. Then they came! Piling into the car park came a steady stream of Triumph's (well done guys) until we were well and truly packed out. We have never had so many people on the premises at one time, it looked like Tim would be talking to a capacity crowd.
What a phenomena the RBRR has become, the buzz surrounding it has to be experienced first hand to appreciate the madness of those who wish to spend 48 hours circumnavigating the UK. Serial RBRR's (and I include myself here as this is my eighth RBRR) would probably find it difficult to explain/justify why we keep coming back time after time to what might seem to others as organised torture. All I can say is to really understand it you have to participate, and until you do you aint never going to understand the highs (and lows) of the best driving event bar none.
Now for the staticions. Over 80 cups of tea and coffee were drunk last night (the water boiler has a meter on it) and it could have been more but it ran out. That's never happened before, but if someone had pointed it out to me I could have soon filled it up again! Over 400 biscuits were scoffed (rich tea, bourbons, and so on, you get the picture) with a handful of damp ones left over for me to have for my breakfast this morning.
Roll on RBRR I'll see all you mentalists, as Mr Bancroft calls us, a week on Friday at the Plough.