Don’t judge a biker by his jacket.

By Steve. On August 3, 2009 Under General Chit Chat

The other day I was reading a post by another member of Alex’s students group, in this particular post he described the discussion between himself and another member of the group in which they discussed the merits of mixing private stories or personal stories with blogs that contain information on how to do things or a particular subject. By the end of the discussion they had decided to indeed mix the two subjects, they said write three or four posts with useful comment example how to do things what to do or subjects with technical information. And then write a post with a story a personal story or a personal twist to it.

So in this particular post I would like to tell you a short story that happened to myself and a friend of mine over this last weekend. You will understand the title of the post when you get to the end of the story.

You may or may not be aware of the fact that I’m keen motorcyclist, now for the sake of this post it really does not matter whether you are a fan of motorcycles or not but it’s just a short story to illustrate a point more than anything else.

A friend of mine also named Steve has just purchased a new bike a Fire Blade, having picked up his brand-new bike last week he booked the first service at the same time. The first services booked for Monday, 3 August. With a view to putting a few more miles on the clock to enable him to take the bike to its service tomorrow he phoned me up over the weekend and said hey bud you fancy a ride on the bike, the obvious reply after looking at the weather forecast was yes if it’s sunny (don’t do Riding in the wet-takes too long to clean the bike afterwards).

So we duly arranged the time and place to meet, yesterday Sunday. Having met up and purchased a cup of coffee, we then proceeded to look over and drool over the new machine. Wow what a bike. That done we now have to decide where to go, there is a place in the Midlands you may have heard of it a famous playwright was born there, William Shakespeare. So we decided on Stratford upon Avon.

Most Sundays throughout the summer months and indeed most bank holidays many bikers from around the surrounding area visit Stratford, it makes a very pleasant afternoon having a walk round chatting with friends and generally catching up on news and gossip. There are one or two places one can get a decent cup of coffee and sandwich and there are generally some street entertainers which you can watch if you wish.

Having bought a sandwich and a cup coffee we were sitting on a low wall drinking and chatting, an old gentleman with a walking stick was trying to buy a cup coffee and a sandwich at the floating cafe. (At this point I feel I should explain in the marina where the narrow boats and pleasure boats are moored there are boats that had been converted into cafes where you can buy tea and coffee and cold drinks and sandwiches etc etc.)

So the gentleman dropped his walking stick in the water, now at this point there were many people in the queue waiting to be served. The people in the queue next to this gentleman just looked the other way and pretended nothing had happened. Steve and I just could not believe it, so we left our coffee and sandwiches and went over to help this old gentleman retrieve his walking stick. Having managed to find a walking stick in the murky water more through luck than judgement I hasten to add we went back to our coffee and sandwiches. One lady who had witnessed the whole event turned to us and said ” I would never expected two men in leather jackets to help that gentleman retrieve his walking stick thank you very much. ”

So now you see the relevance of the title of this post. “Don’t judge a biker by his jacket”. The point I think is not the fact that we helped the guy, more the fact that people standing next to him in the queue did nothing at all apart from turn away.

What a strange world we live in!!!