There’s Not a “Ghost Bike” for That
July 1, 2018
How a city treats its cyclists can say a lot about its people. Some cities are farther along than others in supporting and encouraging cycling in their communities, and, fortunately for cyclists, some places in the world are even known for being bicycle friendly. Other places still have a way to go, and some places are downright hostile and dangerous to cyclists.
If you have ever seen a white painted bike chained to a pole, you’ve seen a “ghost bike.” If you have not seen one or maybe did not know what you were looking at, a “ghost bike” marks a place where a cyclist was killed by a car. Intended to be standing memorials that provide some closure for the families who survive these victims, ghost bikes are haunting reminders to cyclists still on this side of the earth that at any moment, they too, could be killed.
Sam had seen and ridden by ghost bikes in his town, hundreds, if not thousands, of times. Not once did he believe he would nearly become the cause for one. Sam was no casual or occasional cyclist. Other than his son and his business, cycling was his life. Having picked up cycling at an early age Sam fell in love with his bike by the time he was 4 years old. In his early 30s, Sam began competitive cycling as a way to supplement his marathon running. He found a passion and a freedom in competitive cycling he had never known in any other athletic activity. In about 7 years, Sam had ridden over 50,000 miles and was riding faster and farther than ever. Regularly riding anywhere from 200-250 miles each week; he had completed more “century rides” (100-mile-rides) than he could count; was a member of a top fundraising team in a well-known local annual fundraiser ride; and had graduated to Ultra Cycling competitions, where qualifying rides were 200 miles or longer. His plan for after his son graduated high school was to dedicate even more time to cycling so he could eventually participate in Race Across America, a race that goes from one end of the country to the other.
Two weeks before the accident, Sam competed in a global competition called “the Festive 500” sponsored by Rapha, a cycling clothing company, through an athletic tracking app called Strava. The competition occurs every year starting at midnight on Christmas Eve and running through midnight on New Year’s Eve. Participants are to ride at least 500 kilometers within that 8 day stretch. Sam rode over 900 kilometers during that competition, his first time to participate ever. He finished within the top 200 out of over 72,000 global participants and in the top 30 of the 8,000 American participants.
Cycling also complemented Sam’s love for running. When Sam got hit by the car he was one week away from his seventh annual city marathon and third “double” event, a recent local tradition of having a 5K run the morning before the marathon.
In an instant, Sam’s plans drastically changed. It was an otherwise ordinary Tuesday afternoon. Sam had finished his daily 30 mile ride and was on his way home. Unbeknownst to Sam, a nearby Toyota Camry was also doing its daily thing--rushing on its way to somewhere—on a nearby busy street. At the back of a line of stopped cars at a red light, instead of waiting for the light to turn green, the driver swerved out of the left lane over into and through a zone where cars are not allowed to drive and gunned it, apparently trying to swerve around and catch the left turn signal which was turning red. That is when he hit Sam. At the point of impact, the car was estimated to be going 25 mph, while Sam’s bike was traveling at approximately 17 mph.
Had Sam not been in the physical condition he was in, he would have died instantly. The car hit Sam with such force, it knocked Sam out of his shoes (which were clipped onto the bike), knocked the water bottles out of their cages, and turned Sam into a human projectile that flew perpendicularly into and through the windshield. Sam’s head is what broke through the windshield of the car on impact—not his shoulders—his head. And, after ricocheting off of the car after flying through the windshield, Sam landed on his head on the concrete. Taken to the hospital with a broken neck, broken thumb, and what would turn out to be severe traumatic brain injury, it was not clear in those early moments whether or not Sam would ultimately survive this crash. And perhaps that is why Sam’s mother contacted Sam’s father.
But before going further in the story of what happened after the accident, we need to go into some of the back story of what happened before the accident.
(Cue classic flash back squiggly lines here.)
Decades before the accident, before Sam was born, Sam’s mother and father were high school sweethearts. They married shortly after college and had two children. Sam was the youngest. Though no one can know for certain when Sam’s father began cheating this time around, the family believes he began his affair with his secretary before Sam was born. Sam’s father did not want a second child and certainly did not want another son, so he apparently dealt with that by having an affair. By the time Sam was two, Sam’s father no longer lived in the house, having chosen to spend his time with his secretary instead of his family. Sam’s mother finally got the nerve to file for divorce when Sam was about 4 years old.
From that time on, Sam watched his father bounce from woman to woman, place to place, and business endeavor to business endeavor. Sam’s first memories of his father are visiting him in a barren apartment that the old man clearly had not been living in, but had rented for purposes of appearing to have a home for the kids to visit during visiting weekends. The reality of it, though, was that on most visiting weekends, the old man carted Sam and his brother around as props on his dating sprees, cramming as many dates as he could into a weekend, as he preyed on vulnerable women who desperately wanted to find a “Mr. Right” who would also be a faithful family man. Sam soon learned his father’s gig was to find women, charm them into believing he was interested in a committed relationship, use them as long as they would allow him to, and then move on to the next. For the old man, life was based on lying, cheating, and pretending to live a lavish lifestyle while using his women to fund his expensive tastes.
To say Sam’s relationship with his father was strained would be an understatement. From the time he was a child, Sam sensed that his father either did not like him or worse. Though parent-child relationships are often complex and there can be a myriad of innocent explanations for all sorts of behaviors, it is difficult to understand why Sam’s father never set up a bedroom for Sam at any of the places where he lived, even though he always had one for Sam’s older brother, or why Sam’s father would leave Sam unattended in the car while he would take Sam’s older brother to go to dinner, baseball games, or whatever else. Nor is it easy to understand why Sam’s father did not bother to console his nine-year old son after holding him up by his neck against the wall, and instead let him walk 6 miles home by himself. Yet, despite plenty of examples of this type of behavior, no one wanted to believe Sam as a child when he would say he felt like his father hated him.
Later in life, Sam tried numerous times to establish a relationship with his father and even worked for him for a short while immediately after college. Every time Sam would get close to his father, however, his father would show himself to be a person who could not be trusted. There is an old saying that a man who cheats on his wife cannot be trusted in business either, because if he is willing to lie to his life partner, he will lie to anyone. For years, Sam battled with his father’s dishonesty and exploitative behavior. Most of the time when Sam would speak up, it resulted in a big blow up, after which the two would go without speaking for months or years at a time. Usually, in order for there to be contact again, Sam would have to reach out to his father to try and mend fences and even then, never would the old man come around and admit any wrongdoing.
When Sam had his own son, he pledged to parent differently than his parents. And he did. He dedicated his life to his son and was the only consistent parent in his son’s life. His son’s mother left her son in Sam’s custody when the little boy was 4 years old. She would have terminated her parental rights had she not been persuaded not to by her attorney. She never once tried to get custody and would flit in and out of their son’s life on a whim. Committed to providing the most loving and healthy home possible, even in the face of these challenges, Sam arranged his entire life around raising his son. So, when Sam’s father’s antics began to threaten to have a negative effect on Sam’s son, Sam knew he had no choice but to protect his son above all else, even if that meant the young boy would not have any more contact with his grandfather.
The last time Sam was faced with having to make that kind of difficult decision and cut the old man out of their lives was nearly a year before the accident. The time before that it was a couple of years. The one family member who knew most about the tumultuous relationship between Sam and his father was Sam’s mother, whom he spoke to on a daily basis. She was who he confided in most often about what was going on in his life. She also knew exactly why it was important to Sam that his father not be in his or his son’s life.
So, the situation was certainly grim when present-day Sam was in the hospital after nearly being killed by a car, and the next thing he opened his eyes to was his estranged father standing in the room.
Sam’s mother had decided to call Sam’s father, most likely fearing Sam was about to die. In the movies, this would have been a great opportunity for one of those scenes where you bring out the tissue as you watch a heart-warming reunion between a man and his estranged father, and all is well and forgotten because everyone now knows life is too short to not have your family close to you. But in real life, seeing an estranged parent would be a stressful event for the healthiest of adults. To a brain injured person who has not been told he has a brain injury and has not had any time to even begin to understand the extent of his own injuries, it was sheer terror. It turns out the terror and pain Sam’s father caused would far outweigh the damage done by a speeding Camry.
Sam may have survived being hit by a car, but there really is no “ghost bike” or other pretty memorial for what he had lost and was about to lose.
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For more information about ghost bikes, you can read all sorts of articles on the internet. I find the following one particularly interesting: