I want to tell you guys a story that happened last weekend. I was out on my old Sportster, riding in west Georgia, and, rolling down Highway 27 south, and I saw an absolutely terrible looking Geo Metro on the side of the road. Nothing exciting about that, because this thing looked like it shouldn’t have even made it to the road. What was amazing was that it had the hood up, and a guy clad in leather peeking around under it, cell phone on his ear, while a young woman and two toddlers sat in the car.
Since it was in a pretty low-visibility section of the highway, I had slowed way down, and that was when I noticed an awfully shiny Electra Glide with Arkansas plates pulled up beside it with an easy $10,000 worth of chrome “goodies” on it. Now, since I love bikes and telling you guys about them, and this looked like a good story, I pulled over and kicked down.
One of the toddlers was actually a little old lady that looked worse than the Geo. The young woman was her granddaughter, and the real toddler was her great-granddaughter. The biker on the Glide? Just a random guy who saw somebody in trouble and pulled over to help. He was actually on the phone with the young woman’s husband who was trying to get a ride to come out there.
Our big mean biker? The only name I got out of him was Gunny, but he had seen the family stopped on the side of the road and offered to help. He’d called the lady’s husband (the family didn’t have much money, much less any minutes on their cell phone so Gunny had used his phone to call the husband’s job) and he had told him what the issue was most likely – apparently this Geo loved to cook relays- and said he’d be able to get out there within an hour.
All this had taken place in the ten minutes before I’d gotten there. Gunny started poking around under the hood, moved the unused A/C system relay – the compressor was dead, anyhow- to the ignition and got them started up. He didn’t ask, he just did. He called the husband back and let him know that his family was on their way and what relays he had swapped around, and then he told the ladies to get back in the car and he’d follow them back to town where the husband was going to be.
Since I wasn’t in a hurry, I told Gunny I’d follow along, too. When we got to town – or what passes for it in that part of South Georgia, they pulled over at a gas station to wait on the husband, and since he still wasn’t there, Gunny bought the family a round of cold drinks and waited for the young man to get there.
I had to ask why Gunny was doing this, and all he would say was that his own rule was that if he saw a family or a lady broken down, he’d pull over, try to use what tools he had in his kit to get them back on the way, and if not, make sure somebody was coming for them. And he would stay until they were safe.
I pressed him for a “why” and all he would say is to smile and say “why not?”
So Gunny, thanks for being a great citizen, and to all you guys and gals reading this, think about what you did to help somebody this week. And make sure it’s enough.