Times was hard, Tex knew that he was going to have to make the long hard drive to New Mexico. The odds were stacked even higher against him given that he was starting from the small market town of Beccles in Suffolk, England. He couldn't afford any cows, but he did manage to save enough to buy six piglets. He didn't have a horse, but undaunted he wheeled his ageing bicycle out of the garden shed, donned his stetson, squinted at the early morning sun.
He was well known locally and discounted by most as a harmless eccentric.
He knew little of driving dogies, but instinctively believed that the piglets would know what to do. On this occassion his instinct let him down.
It was market day. Pandemonium ensued.
Ladies screamed, trays of vegetables went flying as traders dived in vain at the high speed squealers, apple carts were upset and milk was spilt. Eventually a pair of healthy young farmers, adept in the entrapment of recalcitrant livestock managed to contain the wee beasties.
"You've gone too far now Tex", they said,"You can't keep them here"."I int goin to, we're off ter Amurica" Tex retorted indignantely. The guys laughed, "Come on then, we'll give you give you a lift to Yarmouth". The ensemble was cajoled into the back of a Land Rover, the two you young men were still chuckling as Tex made his way onto a container ship bound for Rotterdam, pushing a shopping trolley laden with a large grunting and squeaking cardboard box.
Modern ships are equipped with all manner of electronic navigational and pilotage equipment, they virtually sail themselves. The last thing the man on watch remembered seeing as what should have been the floor writhed uder his foot, was the contents of his coffee cup splashing liberally over a twinkling array of buttons and screens. His forehead made headlong contact with a computer keyboard with sufficient velocity to render himself unconcious. Some little grunts scampered away.
The force with which the ship struck a North Sea gas rig at full speed caused sufficient damage to send the vessel to the bottom of the sea.
Pigs are excellent swimmers, Tex wasn't so confident, it was dark, cold, his head went under. Two strong hands gripped him firmly by shoulders and then he was up on the deck of an antique looking forty footer. He was soon bundled in a thick blanket in front a warm fire surrounded by a thickly bearded figure, three children, and what could have been either a child or a monkey.
The bearded face beamed.
"Bet you thought that was it",came a piraty drawl. Tex was speechless, he appeared to inside what looked very much more like an 18th century captains cabin than the exterior suggested.
"We knew you were going be there, oh and by the way you may be a cowboy now, but three hundred years ago you were a pirate"
The captain did his best to explain, most of it went over Tex's head, but after he got through the cosmic alignments, the gravitational shift, the idea that they were off to do what could loosely be described as falling off the edge of the planet and landing three hundred years backwards, he began to realise that he had never felt so much at home before.