With all the finesse of Jay and Silent Bob (mysteriously without the silence) we had been hinting to our women folk that buying mopeds and commencing on a charity trip around Europe was a great idea. Our hinting consisted of trawling ebay and giggling like school girls. Not a pretty sight for men of advancing years (El Diablo) and facial hair (The pair of us).
We had some false starts. A frankly ridiculous mini chopper. Unrideable. Glorious. Luckily outbid. Some Mad Ass bikes. A local dealer suggested we look elsewhere if we wanted to traverse most of Europe. So in the end we settled on Chinese scooters. Chinese choppers. REGAL RAPTORS.
"Why?!", I hear you scream, did we decide upon regal Raptors. The answer my friends is that they looked very very cool. And just a little bit silly. And I am all for silly cool things.
Fast forward a few weeks, countless reruns of the long way round, speculative bidding on ebay and a growing sense that 'hell maybe we can do this?!' and we find ourselves driving back to Scotland with two Regal Raptors bobbing along behind us, strapped to a bike trailer.
I have to admit they certainly are very cool. And yes, just a little bit bonkers. But now I am also thinking that this might just be possible.
Living in the North of Scotland you would have thought that when we look at something on Ebay the first thing we would check is how far away the item is. Well we don,t. Just like everyone else we are seduced by something tempting and cheap. That is my best explanation for how Andrew and I set off to spend the weekend doing a round road trip of the best part of a thousand miles with a borrowed bike trailer to collect 2 Chinese mopeds.
We finally arrived on the outskirts of Leicester in the dark on saturday night (thank God for satnav) and collected "Stan" (short for Satan) Previous owner Jenny had loved Stan but he was misfiring and after several abortive attempts at getting him fixed she had put him on Ebay as "non- runner for spares or repair." Jenny and her kids were great but we had no time to lose as aging relatives were anxiously waiting our arrival and we were still 2 hours away.
With Stan safely tied on to the trailer we got to Derbyshire where we spent the night, and after enjoying Joyce's hospitality for supper/ breakfast we set off for Barnsley to get bike no.2. The down side of sat nav is that it takes you by the direct route no matter what the weather. The route over the Dales in an inch or two of snow was a bit scary at times. What were those people doing out jogging in a blizzard by the way?
Eventually found Lucy's (Lucifers) previous owner. In fact we knocked her out of bed to deliver Lucy safely to us. What great people! They looked after us really well before we set off for the return leg of our marathon journey back up north. Fortified by a steady supply of coffee in cardboard cups, Burger King and magazines we finally got back home.
Unloading the bikes we just could not wait to get started getting Stan going and making the modifications necessary to prepare these bikes for an epic journey - this time under their own steam, not on the back of a trailer. (thanks to Ray for the loan of his trailer by the way)
Welcome to our new look website.
The Kernow Cowboy website started in 2004 as a small online country music news site.
Over the years the Kernow Cowboy site has developed its online presence with a selection of news items, interviews, reviews and star profiles and also through the sponsorship of NASCAR stock car racing team Tibbetts Racing.
Today Kernow Cowboy presents the best of country lifestyle news and events from the US, Austalia, Canada, Great Britain and around the world.
We have a number of exciting plans for the next 12 months including the continued sponsorship of the Tracy Tibbets stock car team and also a charity road trip with a difference as Tony (my father in-law) and I plan a tour of Europe ' The wrong way round' on 50cc mopeds.
