If you have the time... take a moment to listen to this story.
48 hours before the ride, my partner Tim takes ill. It will be the first ride he's missed a ride due to illness in all the years we've been running the tour company. He's the healthiest guy I know. Another couple bows out at the last minute and I cancel my unneeded hotel rooms wrapping up all the preparations.
So it's Thursday evening, the night before the ride. The wife, the kids and I are headed home from the store as I'm going to be gone for the next four days.
It's 6 pm. The phone rings.
It's a man in a bar. In the San Jose Airport. In the Bay Area. Is this "Pashnit" he asks? Yes.
He hands the phone to the man next to him and the other fella comes on with a thick sounding melodic Scottish accent. I've flown over from Scotland he says to go on your tour. The tour is tomorrow morning.
Do you have a bike? No.
Do you have any gear? No.
Do you even know where we're going? Not really, never been in the United States before.
I'll call you back I say taking down the cell number of the man in the bar. I call Eagle Rider, the Harley rental folks in San Jose. It's now 6:30 pm, they close at 5, and they have no answering machine.
A voice picks up, it's Gloria, the owner. Hi Tim, How are you, she says. Gloria, I need a favor. Call this number I say, giving her the cell number of the unknown man in the bar sitting next to our Scotsman.
Thirty minutes late, now 7pm, I call our unknown man at the bar back. He hands the phone to the Scotsman- Well?
I've got a bike he says, I can pick it up at 9am tomorrow. Great I say, we'll meet you in Santa Cruz. The ride is in 12 hours. And with that, Robert was able to room with me, he had a bike, and we were set. All the way from Dunde, Scotland, no plans.
Robert, who flew all the way from Scotland to attend the Grand Tour of Pashnit California.
In short, Robert described himself as a 'Fatalist'. My dictionary tells me that Robert was with me because some things in life are simply meant to be- that some events in life are supposedly predetermined by some agency beyond human control, an inevitable succession of events. For some reason, we were supposed to be together on that ride.
Robert was with me because of what he called 'Voluntary Redundancy', a term I've not heard before. In Scottish terms, it meant early retirement, and he was here with me after 20 years of working in the IT field and needing to get far, far away. He had done some homework on the internet about motorcycle tours and simply got on a plane and flew to New York, than the Bay Area. Other than that, we knew next to nothing about Robert, only that he was here with us.
The Road Glide that Eagle Rider was able to provide at the last minute.