While this is clearly a blog on an Excel website, as a change of pace, from time to time I will post on meaningful, but unrelated topics. This is the first such post. It is a decades-old true biker anecdote from Reader’s Digest (as I vaguely remember it):
I am an elderly grandmother living alone in middle America, struggling to make ends meet on a fixed income. As usual on Saturday afternoon, I was at the laundromat in our small, run-down, back-country strip mall doing the week’s laundry. After I had gotten the washing machines started, I was sitting out front in the fresh cool air and the relative quiet, reading a well-worn magazine. In a few minutes, a group of rough-looking bikers arrived on their noisy choppers. They were headed West and were stopping to gas up at the mom & pop convenience store across the road. As the rest of the group headed into the store, I noticed one particular mean-looking biker who kept staring in my direction. As he continued to stare, I quickly began to feel vulnerable and very uncomfortable. Thankfully, he eventually turned and went into the convenience store.
Soon they all came out munching on snacks and began to gas up their bikes. My fears returned when the one biker resumed staring at me. Then he turned to his companions and said something, nodding his head in my direction. Soon thereafter, the group mounted their bikes, restarted their engines and resumed heading West … all but the staring biker. When they had gone, he gave me a big smile and a nod of his head as he donned his helmet, mounted up and headed back East all alone … presumably toward home and family.