If you see a big, scruffy-looking guy with a Triumph motorcycle and an English accent on the Mother Road, it just might be rugby star and World Cup winner Steve Thompson, according to the Daily Mail in London.
The 31-year-old is tackling the fabled Route 66 on a Triumph motorbike which has been parked outside England’s Surrey HQ in recent days.
Not content to just put in the miles, he has chosen to adopt a striking Wild West look, hence the deliberate lack of grooming.
‘I’m doing Route 66 – riding from Chicago to Los Angeles with a couple of mates,’ he said. ‘I’ve been growing the beard for a while and I’m one of these people who can’t just grow it in a week. It has taken my three months to get this far!
Nearer the time I will shave it down so when I am on the England tour all I will have left is a handlebar moustache. I am going to have these nice motorbike goggles, a short hairstyle and my handlebar moustache – the complete look.’ […]
‘It’s one of those things a lot of us have talked about for ages,’ he said. ‘We’ll be having a few beers and saying, “Come on, let’s go and do Route 66 on the motorbike”. I got my licence last year and thought, “Why not?”. If it’s ever going to happen, now is the time to do it.
The story includes an information box titled “Why Route 66 is So Significant.”
Good ol’ boys in America shouldn’t start anything with Thompson about his funny-sounding accent. Those rugby guys are tough; the sport is like playing football, but without the pads.