Last Thursday night we got a series of frantic text messages from two different friends asking if we were OK. Of course we were OK, we’d just been in the backyard. It was a nice mild evening, and everything was fine. Only everything was not fine. Just two miles away two cyclists were killed.
Word spreads quickly in a small town. A fireman heard a scanner and called the bike shop and the local bike shop started calling and texting people and some of them thought, “Two people,” and thought of us. We spent the night with eyes a little bit wider, and a lot more sad.
On Friday we learned it was two guys who grew up around here were killed on their way home. They were hockey players. Both had skated at Boston College. Both became pros. One was a star in the NHL. The other had returned to their high school to coach the team. It seems the driver was drinking, had been drinking for sometime, and in his own little rush, swerved right through them, killing them just a few miles from where they were headed.
One of the guys has two young children. The other was expecting his first kid later this year. They were to be in their sister’s wedding this weekend. And now, there’s a growing memorial on the side of the road.
I went by there this afternoon to see it. It’s a stirring little thing, a series of small town gestures that barely registers in the terrible anguish that has been visited upon their families and friends.
This weekend, through the Center for Sports Communication & Social Impact we started a survey for cyclists in the area, and we’ve been impressed by the number of responses we’ve received, but not at all surprised by what their telling us. We’re going to going the survey and have several ideas about what we can do with the data we’re collecting.
In the meantime, my lovely bride did two interviews with the local media today. One with ABC 6.
She did another interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer, which hasn’t been published yet.
They’re asking us, these cyclists who’ve all encountered scary situations, how they can help. The local bike shops want to get involved too.
We went to one of them this afternoon, the ones that were looking for us on Thursday night. They are fed up with losing with losing their friends, worrying about their customers, and making these calls. We listened to them talk about all of it. The stories they can tell. They’re planning a big community meeting, they have the ear of some local lawmakers. Maybe something good will good from this awful mess.
For Johnny and Matty. For our neighbors who ride, from the people we wave at on the road and see on Strava. For all of us.
