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ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Far removed from the talk of Vladimir Putin’s security teams in downtown Anchorage stands the small brown house where one of the unlikely winners of this week’s summit between the U.S. and Russia lives.

Meet the guy the Russian government gave a brand-new motorcycle to after a run-in with some journalists during Putin’s visit to Anchorage.

A pensioner who served in the fire service for decades in Anchorage — a city Putin drove through in a black limo Friday — Mark Warren is the man behind the wheel of the Russian-built motorcycle.

“Bikers are like mountain climbers: You’ve got to have the right bike, and I got the wrong bike,” Warren said of the problem he had with keeping a Ural on the road.

But during Putin’s visit, Ural has been all he has been thinking about since.

Mark Warren is known for fixing the fires in the city

Warren, who has retired as a fire inspector with the Municipality of Anchorage, was one of them. Like him, many bikers were biking during their errands on July 10 in Anchorage when a Russian TV crew spotted him and asked for an interview.

Warren said that when he was interviewed by the reporter, he never anticipated that his bike and his interview would make him famous in Russia.

He was minding his own business when the Russian journalist asked about his Ural. The interview was taken to social media, and it became viral, and that’s when the Russian Embassy took notice.

“We went up there, got a bike and took him for a ride,” said Denis Karagodin, the journalist who first interviewed Warren, when he returned to Anchorage after the summit.

Warren got the gift of his life.

After a three-hour summit at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson on Friday, he got a call from Karagodin to visit the hotel the next day.

“I had assumed it was a prank,” he said of the call from the Russian Embassy officials.

Warren said he got another call after the summit from the Russian Embassy officials, “They have the bike here,” was the response he got from them.

“I went and met them in a hotel parking lot,” said Warren of the Aug. 13 event.

In the parking lot, he saw six people, whom he thought were Russians, and his new bike was parked by the side. Warren had to take the photos and another interview, and the Russians took videos of him driving the bike.

“I didn’t expect that I was going to be the winner in this jackpot,” Warren said.

Warren’s sidecar motorcycle, which was given to him as a gift from the Russian embassy

The bike is as fancy as it can get: A Ural Gear Up with a sidecar made in olive green, and Warren was the only person to take it, as he was riding it home from the hotel lot after the Embassy officials had gone.

Warren later revealed that he purchased a used Ural from a neighbor, but his old Ural didn’t get a simple part, and it was tough to keep the Ural on the road.

Ural, a motorcycle that is now manufactured in Petropavlovsk, Kazakhstan, with its U.S. distribution and sales operations based in Woodinville, Washington, was established in western Siberia in 1941.

Warren said he has had problems with the availability of the spare parts, and often than not, there was always a long line of people seeking the parts more than he had.

The Russian Embassy, on the other hand, Warren said only asked to be photographed with him as he sat on the motorcycle and another interview with a cameraman following behind while he circled the hotel parking lot as two reporters and a man, who he believed to be with the Russian consulate, sat in the sidecar of the motorcycle that he was told was new.

“I just about fell off the motorcycle,” Warren said after looking at his new gift.

At the moment, Warren still has second thoughts about the entire episode

Warren was on the verge of tears at the time of the interview. He had only thought he could be trapped by the Russians with their plan to keep him quiet with an unwanted gift.