14 November, 2016
This is What’s Trending Today:
American singer Bruce Springsteen might need to write a new song after his motorcycle broke down in his home state of New Jersey.
Springsteen is known for his songs that tell about life in New Jersey’s small towns.
The Associated Press news agency says that Springsteen was riding his motorcycle last Friday in a large park near Wall Township when the bike stopped working. The singer then waited for help.
Some motorcycle riders helped Bruce Springsteen after his bike broke down in New Jersey.
Help came when three other motorcycle riders stopped on the road. The bikers did not know it was Springsteen when they decided to stop.
Dan Barkalow is one of the bikers who stopped to help.
“Bikers gotta stick together,” he said.
Barkalow and his friends quickly recognized the famous singer.
Barkalow said Springsteen was “a nice guy, real down to earth.” The group talked about music and motorcycles.
They were not able to get Springsteen’s motorcycle running again, though. The bike’s battery had a problem. So Springsteen got on the back of one of the motorcycles and the four men rode to a local bar to wait for a ride.
Another of the bikers, Ryan Bailey, said “it was nice to help out.”
When the story appeared on Facebook, hundreds of people praised the group for stopping.
“This is a fantastic story about humans being decent humans,” one wrote.
But, some people said on social media that they would not have helped Springsteen because he campaigned for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in the recent presidential election.
But another Springsteen fan wrote: “I would have carried his bike for him all the way home … it’s never been about politics.”
And that’s What’s Trending Today.
I’m Jill Robbins.
Dan Friedell wrote this story for Learning English. Ashley Thompson was the editor.
Would you have stopped to help Bruce Springsteen? We want to know. Write to us in the Comments Section or on 51VOA.COM.
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Words in This Story
down-to-earth – n. informal and easy to talk to
fantastic – adj. extremely good
decent – adj. polite, moral, and honest
breakdown – n. a failure of a machine to function : an occurrence in which a machine (such as a car) stops working