I was twenty-nine years old and completely desperate after my car engine died, leaving me unable to work. I found an online listing for an old Harley Davidson motorcycle that needed work and cost exactly ninety-eight dollars. I visited the seller at a quiet, abandoned repair shop where an elderly man handed me a folded piece of paper and asked if I had family nearby. I used my last remaining money to purchase the rusty motorcycle and pushed the heavy machine two miles to my home.
The next morning, I was sitting on my newly purchased motorcycle in a Walmart parking lot in Riverside, California. A stranger approached me and quietly insisted that I shouldn’t be riding the bike. Before I could fully defend my purchase, dozens of loud motorcycles rolled into the parking lot and formed a tight circle around me. The crowd of terrified shoppers assumed the bikers were members of the Hell’s Angels and expected a violent confrontation to erupt.
The stranger demanded to see the folded paper the elderly seller had given me the previous day. He carefully examined the strange symbol and the nine handwritten names and dates listed on the page. A police officer arrived to investigate the tense situation, but the bikers remained completely calm and explained they were not there to cause trouble. The stranger produced an old photograph showing the elderly seller standing next to my exact motorcycle alongside the same bikers currently surrounding me in the parking lot.
The stranger explained that three years ago, a tragic accident on an Arizona highway claimed the lives of nine bikers riding alongside the elderly seller. My new motorcycle was the only machine to survive the devastating crash that night. The seller had kept the bike to remember his fallen friends, but eventually decided to sell it to someone who desperately needed a second chance in life. The bikers explained they had been searching for the motorcycle simply to see who it had chosen next. They helped me start the engine and told me to keep riding forward before peacefully leaving the parking lot.