Nottsnortherner:
To be fair only the first of my three Israeli trips was while I was at Promotor and that had to come at a cost! The occasion was July 1981 and I had been pencilled in for quite some time for a trip to Tehran along with 3 or 4 others to the Trade Fair. Unfortunately this trip was going to clash with the expected birth of my son and I made it quite clear to Stagg that I wasn,t going to miss the birth. Stagg begrudgingly agreed to me dipping out of the Tehran job but said the only other trip I could do that would tie in with the birth date was the racing car show in Tel aviv which was a deliver/fly home for a week/fly back job but I would have to give up my Scania as it had been prepared for middle east running. Now, Tom Miles idea of “middle east prep” was to glue a piece of mossie net over the roof hatch so I wasn,t too concerned about losing the truck, I thing Bobby Kean took it in the end and I went to Israel with the left-hook “Afro-Camion” which by then had been repainted in the traditional Promotor green. It finished up as a trip and a half to remember and all for the right reasons! I could go on but I,m sure I would be repeating myself as I think I,ve described the actual trip elsewhere in a previous post. Both my other two trips to Israel were when I was part of the “Motorvation” set-up so it wasn,t a case of having to argue with the Honey monster! The first of these two trips was almost a non event. It was back in the mid 2000,s at a time of hightened tension in the middle east and we had just had an IBM conference in Swtzerland or Greece cancelled as a result of the threat of a possible terrorist attack. The Septics knew about the proposed Israeli trip with the IBM exhibition trailer and weren,t too keen on a 16mtr trailer with huge IBM lettering making its way to Tel aviv so frantic discussions started to take place. Now it just so happened that the truck/trailer combo was due to be repainted on its return to the UK so the top brass in Trumpville agreed to let us go on the condition that all the IBM graphics were removed before we took off!..Word soon reached the Israelis that they were getting a plain black trailer and they were NOT happy!..Simple solution! extend the tour by a couple of days and we(the Israelis,that is) will put our own graphics on it ! So it was that the weekend of my arrival I was escorted to a local Israeli transport company yard where a local graphics company had been contracted to put back on the exact same graphics that had been taken off three weeks before!!. I could go on but your,e probably bored already so its" Shalom, L’hitraot" from me !
Definitely not bored Tony, just leaves us eager to hear more. Great post.