Please dad, don’t….

a)      Wear that in public

b)      Dance like a fool

c)      Drive that thing

d)      All of the above

It would seem that teenage girls are genetically programed so that after a certain number of days on this planet they reboot. One day they just wake up and realise that their funny, joke telling, Lycra wearing, energetic old man, with the moves like Jagger, is not cool at all, in fact he is a complete prat!

The other benefit of this teenage reboot is that they also inherit the wisdom of the universe. Overnight they know everything, you can’t say, do or ask anything without being told that “I already know”. The result of all this is that they are now very clear about how they should be bought up and what is and what isn’t acceptable parent behaviour.

In our house, the rebooted teenagers are also placed under increased pain and suffering because apart from dad being a complete embarrassment, the other part of the dynamic duo, she who can normally be relied on to keep him in check, has not only joined him in his Lycra clad lunacy, she is even more excited about this Billy Cart Buffoonery than he is.

It would seem that as you get older you long to be younger and when you are young you can’t wait to be old.

And so there is a certain degree of trepidation in our house as the weekend of our Red Bull Billy Cart race approaches. The girls are not sure how this is going to play out. Robyn and I are very clear how it will go. We are ready to rock, roll, boot scoot and descend the course (with no care for life or limb) in our beautiful John Deer Billy Cart Tractor.

It would seem that the Billy Cart concept, aside from being excellent marketing for Red Bull, is really all about feeling young.

The concept of building your own vehicle has the same effect now as it did when you were a kid. The moment you make a plan, start scavenging for bits and pieces and get the tools out you are transferred back to simpler times. To a time when the only screen you were interested in was making a window screen so you didn’t eat all those bugs and flies as you raced down the hill at the back of your house. 

In a recent interview for the local press I was asked what my motivation for participating was. I would have loved to have offered something a little more profound, but the reality is it is purely about having a good laugh!

So the race weekend will be a chance for all of us young and old to have fun and to create some memories.

As embarrassing as it may be for some, I am sure that in the future we will all sit down and reminisce about the time Mum and Dad went Billy Cart Berko.

Here are some videos which plot our journey to the start line:

The Build Part 2

The Build Part 1

Application Video