From the desk of Extreme Trifle HQ

The established method of pioneering is to be the first to achieve something, and then when this has been done you have to go one better. So once Edmund Hillary went up Everest the only way to better it was to go a harder route or do it without oxygen. And now that somebody has walked in space, no one will take any notice until someone breakdances in space.

The Extreme Trifle philosophy has always been to go one step crappier. That's not to say easier, just low on budget, low on glamour, and low on expectations. Now you may have seen something on the telly called the "Long Way Round". This was an epic bike trip involving a quite good actor and his unknown actor mate, who is now a well known mate, though still not a good actor.

They went round the world on state of the art BMW motorcycles. We can't beat that, but we can certainly out-crap it. Which is where a 6hp, £150 moped comes in, a.k.a "the steppy".

A short history of "steppy" powered escapades

In 2003 we attempted to deliver pizzas from England to Sicily. After 9 days in the saddle we had only got as far as Rome, and the pizzas were starting to grow mushrooms that we hadn't added. "Pizzas to Palermo" was abandoned before our pizza boxes became a bio-hazard.

In 2005 we chopped some steppy's in half and with the aid of some scaffolding and glue made them 8 feet long. The result was probably the worst handling motorcycle of all time.                   "Cheesy Rider" was born, resulting in a 2,500km trip to the Faro rally in Portugal where we entered what was left of our bikes in the Custom Show. We came an easy last place on every count and thankfully didn't get beaten up by the beardy leather waistcoat brigade.

In 2006, "Ring Sting" saw us attempt to break the lap record at the Nurburgring. We did indeed set a new record...for the slowest ever lap at 22 mins 49 seconds. Though to be fair that was in the wet and included a crash.

With a proven track record of failure now it's time for the biggest cock up in our history.  18,000kms from England to Siberia to navigate the infamous "Road of Bones". In fact we've already messed it up once having spectacularly failed to get out of Europe last time round.

The Rules

In keeping with tradition there will be slack preparation and an over reliance on cables ties and duct tape to see us through. As every pizza delivery boy knows, a steppy doesn't handle properly when it leaves the factory so exceeding it's load limit by a factor of ten will be hilarious.

Expected difficulty rating  

This rare 5 Tyre award is in recognition of the ridiculousness of the whole idea. Clearly we haven't thought this one through. which is a good thing, cos' if we did we'd scare ourselves and we're all out of clean pants.