A Curious Message

I (R) chatted with a young fellow named Robert from Colorado while standing in line at the international students’ orientation days. He was interested in my bicycle and said he’d like to get a bike while he’s here & do some touring, and we exchanged email addresses & phone #s. The other night we got a phone call. G answered it and was very quiet for a long time, listening to a message, so I came over to see what was up. She seemed puzzled, even serious, and I was getting worried. She replayed the message for me, and it took me a while to figure out that this was a computer reading a text message. It was a female voice and the message sounded like poetry or some kind of code, so I was flabbergasted until I heard “Robert” and remembered that the first line was, “So I got a bike . . .” I was so flustered, though, that I just hung up, so I've lost the message and I can’t for the life of me find the scrap of paper that I wrote his info on. Tonight, though, when I told that story, one of our new Canadian friends over for Thanksgiving said, “I think I know Robert,” so I may be able to return his call—and we may even be able to take the bikes for a ride!

Update: I bumped into Robert at Queen’s & found out that he had indeed got the message from Des, but his bike has a flat tyre (note NI spelling!), so the ride is still postponed. Meantime, I’ve been cycling in to Queen’s a couple days per week, so I’ve been keeping the clothes washer busy!