the Stalker

We know a guy named Shooter. We first met Shooter when we were in a "transitional" period in our lives (translated, that means we were sort of homeless). I was working as an estimator for an electrical contractor in Denver and Buffalo and I were literally living in our RV in a friend's back yard when I landed five jobs in the Aspen school district area. My employer opened up an office to run those jobs and I volunteered to "move" over there...actually it just meant driving the RV across the divide and parking it in a campground in Glenwood Springs. And that is where we met Shooter.

Shooter was living in a travel trailer in the same campground. He and his then girlfriend Debbie were driving school buses in the Aspen area. At that time Shooter was about 69 years old. They actually had the actor Don Johnson's (as in Miami Vice) kid on one of their runs. Anyways, we never saw Shooter's bike, which he said was stored in California and at the end of the school year, Buffalo and I went on the road catering with Bobbi Yum's Tex Mex Express. We eventually wound up in Ohio and occassionally heard from Shooter via telephone or the annual Christmas card.

Then for Buffalo's fiftieth birthday we decided to do a run to Sturgis and Shooter said he would meet up with us there. He showed up driving a van with his Sportster on a trailer. By then he was about 75. We had never ridden with Shooter until meeting there, and his riding skills were beyond poor. He would not lean the bike whatsoever and it was painful riding behind him as he wouldn't go over 35mph. It was punishing to be the rider assigned to follow up in case Shooter dropped his ride, which, thankfully, the worst he did was slip once when parking it and sprained an ankle. We humored him, though, as we figured we would probably never see him again.

Then about a month ago we get a telephone call from Shooter and he is a couple of miles from our house with trailer and bike in tow! Thankfully it rained during his whole visit so we never had to off load his ride and about four days later, Shooter heads off to visit his daughter in the Pittsburgh area. Now during his visit, we spent alot of time bullshitting and I guess I mentioned that we had a trip scheduled to do the Dragon. So the Monday before we are to leave, Buffalo gets a voice mail on his cell phone from Shooter and he is at the Dragon is NC!!!

I begged Buffalo to call him back and tell him we did not want to join him, but Buffalo figured if we didn't call him back he would get the message and leave. Well, we pull into Robbinsville, NC, where we have a cabin rented to stay in during our riding (including the Dragon) and as soon as we get parked at the cabin, who calls us?? Shooter! Apparently, we had stopped in town to look up the address of where we were going, and we stopped in a parking lot across from the grocery store. We didn't even notice, but Shooter had his trailer parked in the grocery store parking lot and he must have seen us! Now I understand what being stalked is all about!

Buffalo had to firmly inform Shooter that this was OUR vacation that we had planned to take with just the two of us and he was not welcome. How could he even think we would want him to show up and just "go along" for OUR vacation?? I mean, you don't want to be mean to a 79 year old guy, but WTF? So that's the stalker tale.

Hope the Harley Gods forgive us for blowing off the old guy...