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ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin have staked out hard lines in their week-long summit in Anchorage, but this man could be the biggest winner in Alaska: the owner of an older Ural motorcycle, who unexpectedly hopped on a new one and rode off into the sunset.

Mark Warren, who worked for years as a fire inspector for the Municipality of Anchorage, said he had no reason to expect more than a routine day of running errands on his old bike would catapult him into the international spotlight, or the Russian government’s good graces. Yet that is what transpired when a Russian television reporter and crew stopped to interview him last weekend. That interview, which became a viral sensation in Russia, apparently led to Warren receiving a new Ural Gear Up with sidecar, made in olive-green and manufactured on August 12, within days of when the TV crew pulled him over. The company that distributes Urals to the U.S. market is now based in Woodinville, Washington, but the original company was based in the Russian city of Chelyabinsk, in western Siberia, and was founded in 1941. The motorcycles are assembled in Petropavlovsk in Kazakhstan.

Warren said he had a Ural already — a pre-owned, used bike purchased from a neighbor — and keeping it in working order was a challenge. Parts are scarce, he said, and when they become available, it’s a mad dash to buy them.

“They asked me about it. I told them about all the trouble I had with it,” Warren said of the TV crew. “It went viral, it went crazy, and I have no idea why, because I’m just a super-duper normal guy.”

In an interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday, he said: “They just interviewed some old guy on a Ural, and for some reason they think it’s cool.”

The surprise that came afterward, Warren said, still floors him. On August 13, less than two days before the Trump-Putin summit in Anchorage on the war in Ukraine, the Russian journalist who first interviewed Warren gave him a call. He had good news, the reporter said. “They’ve decided to give you a bike,” Warren recalled being told.

He initially thought it was a joke, or worse. “Free motorcycles don’t grow on trees. How in the world do you get a free motorcycle from Russia? It doesn’t happen,” Warren said. But Warren was reassured after the summit, the Trump-Putin meeting on Ukraine, a three-hour session held at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson on the edge of Anchorage. Both leaders left Alaska that day. Warren got another call, this one informing him that the motorcycle was already in Anchorage.

The directions were simple: meet at a local hotel the next day. Warren and his wife went, unsure what to expect. In the parking lot were six men, Warren said, whom he assumed were Russian. The olive-green Ural Gear Up sat in the parking lot.

“I dropped my jaw,” Warren said. “I went, ‘You’ve got to be joking me.’”

What the Russians wanted in return for the motorcycle, Warren said, was pretty straightforward: a photo of him and his new ride, another interview, and some video footage of Warren riding the motorcycle. Warren complied. Two reporters and a man who identified himself as with the Russian consulate hopped in the sidecar as Warren rode around the lot in a circle, the cameraman on foot, jogging to keep up.

Still, he remained skeptical. He knew taking a gift from a foreign government, especially Russia, made him suspect in his mind. “The only reservation I had is that I might somehow be implicated in some nefarious Russian scheme,” Warren said. “I don’t want a bunch of haters coming after me because I got a Russian motorcycle. … I don’t want this for my family.”

The only paper he signed, Warren said, was to officially take possession of the motorcycle from the Russian Embassy. The document stated what Warren had surmised: The motorcycle had been made on August 12, the day before Warren got word that he was getting a new one.

“The obvious thing here is that it rolled off the showroom floor and slid into a jet within probably 24 hours,” Warren said. “It got here in record time.”

Warren said he is happy to have it, even with the political overtones that accompany the Trump-Putin summit. It’s worth $22,000, he said, and he had no reason to expect anything more than an interview from a passing news crew. Still, he said, the world of American and Russian politics is far from his mind as he rides the new motorcycle.

“If somebody whadtold me a week ago I’d be in this situation, I’d have told you you’re nuts,” he said.