There are occasions when things go a bit awry, and its testament to the professionalism and experience of your event crew that your show can still happen.
For this relatively simple two day event in Athens, we were shipping the entire audio visual production from the UK, and we had allowed an entire week to allow the truck to arrive two days before the event.
However, it was the end of November, and the summer ferries that crossed the Adriatic had switched to their winter timetable. To all intents and purposes, this meant they weren't really running at all. Not at convenient times to suit our journey plan at any rate.
To make matters worse, off season maintenance on two major tunnels had closed the routes through the Austrian alps. This forced the driver to go the even longer way round, and then as he traversed through Serbia, blizzard conditions held him for several hours, eventually forcing him even further east and into Bulgaria.
The crew flew out on the Monday, for a Tuesday morning start on the rig. We had planned to rehearse with the client around 3pm on the Tuesday when we heard news from the driver.
He wouldn't be arriving until midnight on Tuesday.
Our show was going live on Wednesday morning, and the client would not be happy delaying their rehearsal.
As Project Manager on the job, it was my responsibility to do what needed to be done, s
Whatever that might be.
So, in the spirit of 'The show must go on', I contacted a local Greek supplier who thankfully had enough kit available to get us through the rehearsal.
We had brought a few laptops in our hand luggage, and fortunately the venue had two projectors already installed in their room.
So with the last minute help of our local Audio Visual supplier we were able to run the 3pm rehearsal with the client, and almost everything was working exactly as it should be.
Our embattled driver finally arrived at the venue at 1am, and we offloaded the final few bits that we needed off the truck, and got stuck in to the final parts of the rig.
My heroic crew; Andy, Simon, and Jakek all managed to get to bed before 3, and despite our general tiredness at 7:30 the following morning, the show went really well for the next two days.
It was quite a stressful few days, and I was delighted to be waving the truck off at the end of the show.
But in this game, there is no rest for the wicked, and my next job was in Madrid the following day, so I hopped on the flight and promptly fell asleep.
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