It was 1996. I was employed in the kitchen at Earl's in Medicine Hat. I loved that job. My passion for cooking was born in that kitchen.
When you work in a restaurant you hear a lot of stories. The kitchen manager there was a great story teller. So while I was making a caesar salad on the line, I heard him tell a story about a motorcycle found on a farm right here in Alberta. He said he heard it from a friend of a friend but it was completely true. Good enough for me. The story:
This farmer had an old Harley Davidson motorcycle he wanted to fix up and needed some parts. He phoned Harley Davidson head office and gave them the serial number of the bike and they told them they would phone him back.
The phone rings some time later and it is Jay Leno. Jay Leno tells the farmer he will give him $50,000 for the bike. The farmer is completely shocked and asks Jay why he would pay so much for this rusted piece of junk. Jay tells the farmer to go look under the seat on the bike. The farmers runs out to the barn and follows Mr. Leno's instructions and there it sits, a little engraved plate which says "To Prescilla, Love Elvis"
I LOVED that story. Wow, Elvis's motorbike in Alberta. Cool! So I went home and jumped on this new internet thing. I waited 10 minutes for the NBC page to load (it was dialup and slooooooooow) and sent off an email to Jay Leno himself asking if the story was true. I surfed around the site after that and found a FAQ page. A few questions in, my dreams of Jay Leno sending me an email were dashed. The story was an urban legend.
I felt a little stupid to be duped like that. Sooooo, since 1996, I have been extremely skeptical of any fowarded internet story that comes my way. And I am usually right.
I tell you all this because I was reminded of it by the 40th anniversary of the moon landing. Mythbusters, one of my favourite shows for reasons that are now obvious, was doing a thorough debunking of one of the biggest internet hoaxes out there: The Moon Landing Was Faked! Here's a clip - enjoy! And be on the look out for strange stories involving famous talk show hosts and motorbike parts!
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