General: Fun with the AA

Well, last weekend turned out to be rather tough! Friday was our first show for 2010 with Think Bikes and it was in Somerset doing an indoor performance for a press conference announcing which towns the Tour of Britain was passing through.

We haven't done many indoor shows, and so I invested in some protective flooring from floorprotec. These came in 8x4 sheets, so I bought 24 of them and cut them all in half (took a while). Then using gaffa tape I created hinges, connecting 6 sheets at a time together, for a concertinaed section of flooring. Using 8 of these, we could quickly cover the area we wanted to, then simply gaffa tape the gaps!

This worked out really well, leaving no trace on the gym floor underneath. We had some great photos taken of us, which we put on our Facebook/Twitter pages - but this one was probably my favourite.

This year I've moved away from using a van and instead decided that I would use a trailer. A company in Devon is custom building it for us and I'm really excited about - although it's now over a month late I ended up renting a box trailer from a company in Forest Hill nr. Catford. I paid £100 + VAT for 4 days of rental, which I thought was very reasonable (although still an expense I shouldn't have incurred).

I also bought myself a Renault Laguna 1.9 DTi RT SPORT a couple of months back, specifically for towing. Although I've been having a niggling noise coming from it whilst on roundabouts that nobody I showed it to could work out. Towing to Somerset was no problem at all, although I used more fuel than I was hoping too - let's hope when my own trailer arrives it'll be more economical being 2.5ft shorter (in height).

Then came our second show of the weekend in Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk. Unfortunately, 30 minutes into the journey, that niggling noise became somewhat apparent as my gear box made several clunks and grinds before leaving me stranded at the side of the road on a somewhat precarious bend.

Luckily, Police in a Land Rover saw us and towed us to the nearest parking area. As part of my bank account with Lloyds TSB, I have the highest AA cover possible, although up until this point - I've never had to use it!

Pretty obviously, my car was not going to get repaired on the road side - so now came the point of working out what to do. My policy comes with support for a courtesy car for 3 days - superb I thought! However, being a Sunday, there was nowhere that had any vehicles with a tow bar. I was given the choice of having my car and trailer towed home (missing the show - and income) or having the car and trailer towed to the event (and costing me a small fortune to have them both towed home later). Neither of which was ideal.

After a fair amount of talking, we managed to come up with a compromise, that technically, I shouldn't have been given. He sent for a truck to pick up my car and take it home to Kent. Then he stuck the trailer on the AA Van and drove us and the trailer to the show so we could perform.

This meant we were only a couple of hours late and able to fulfill our requirements, but it also meant we were abandoned in Suffolk with a rented trailer and no way to get home.

Thankfully, we were still entitled to our courtesy car - so we had the trailer stored securely at the event premises, and then found ourselves a lift to the nearest Enterprise car rental place where I was given a brand new Vauxhall Corsa. Let me add at this point - how cool is cruise control!! My aching legs soon recovered, I can tell you that much.

Unfortunately, things weren't over just yet. (sigh). I still needed to recover the trailer. So the next day I started phoning round for somewhere with a tow bar. Even with the fact it was now Monday on my side, it was a tricky task, but I found a company in Brentwood, some 25 miles from me, that had a Renault Kangoo with a tow bar. A little pricey at £65, but I didn't have a huge amount of choice in the matter.

So then I drove my rental vehicle to pick up yet another rental vehicle, before heading to Suffolk to pick up the rental trailer. I managed to get where I needed to, just as the office was shutting (very lucky!), picked up the trailer and started the journey home.

I then had to unload half a tonne of rig into my new rented garage (thank you Hannah for being torch girl) and then dropped the trailer off the next morning. Thankfully, Rob the trailer guy was nice enough not to charge me for the extra day - he'll definitely get my business again!

All in all, what could have been a disaster probably only set me back £90. However, it still would have cost me a lot less had the AA been able to give me a car with a tow bar. So on one hand - I'm really pleased with the service I got, but on the other, it could have been avoided...

Now I'm left with a broken Laguna sitting in front of my house. Thankfully I managed to pick up a second hand gear box from ebay for £180 and found a local mechanic to fit it for £120. The gear box came from a vehicle that had only done 88,000 miles (unlike the 148,000 mine has done) and so I managed to get him to throw the clutch in for free as well, in the hope that it will be in better shape than mine.

Now I just have to hope that my custom build trailer will be ready for our next show on May 16th...