Fred (Tony) Nelson, Suzanne Sippel, Deborah Bradley, Lorenz (Larry) Paulik, and Melissa Fevig-Hughes.
Fred (Tony) Nelson, Suzanne Sippel, Deborah Bradley, Lorenz (Larry) Paulik, and Melissa Fevig-Hughes.
Tuesday, June 7, 2016
Location:
5500 block of North Westnedge Avenue
Kalamazoo , MI
United States
Five ghost bikes were installed for five cyclists, fatally struck by a driver while riding together in a group. The ghost bikes were installed as part of a memorial ride that brought hundreds out in their memory.
From: Michigan Live
KALAMAZOO, MI — Two mothers, two grandparents devoted to serving their church.
These are the victims of the deadly Kalamazoo bicycle crash of June 7, 2016.
Five bicyclists died when a blue Chevrolet pickup hit them as they
were riding north in the 5500 block of North Westnedge Avenue in Cooper
Township. Four more bicyclists were seriously injured.
The bicyclists were members of the Chain Gang bicycle group, who had
started a 28.5-mile ride from a county health building on Gull Road.
They were about five miles into the ride when they were hit.
The group was struck behind by the pickup around 6:30 p.m. Police
have said the driver is in police custody, and a determination on any
charges against the driver will be made Thursday.
They are:
Debbie Bradley, 53, of Augusta, a mother and a parishioner of St. Ann Catholic Church and a former nurse with Gull Lake Community Schools
Suzanne Joan Sippel, 56, of Augusta, a data manager with the Kellogg Biological Station, a Michigan State University education and research institute
Lorenz John (Larry) Paulik, 74, of Kalamazoo, a grandfather and a dedicated parishioner at St. Thomas More Catholic Student Parish
Fred Anton (Tony) Nelson, 73, of Kalamazoo, an active parishioner at St. Thomas More, a grandfather and community member
Melissa Ann Fevig Hughes, 42, of Augusta
The four bicyclists who were injured are:
Paul Douglas Gobble, 47 of Richland
Sheila Diane Jeske, 53, of Richland
Jennifer Lynn Johnson, 40 of Kalamazoo
Paul Lewis Runnels, 65, of Richland.
Johnson has a femur injury, Kalamazoo County Sheriff's Lt. Jim
VanDyken testified at a probable cause hearing Thursday. Gobble was
being treated at Borgess Medical Center and was in serious condition.
Runnels has severe body lacerations and Jeske has head injuries and leg
lacerations, VanDyken said.
All stories, and more photos from the Kalamazoo bicyclists tragedy.
From the Wall Street Journal:
By
Jason Gay
Kalamazoo, Mich.
The road looks like it could be almost anywhere in America.
Two
lanes, ruler straight, it can be taken in and out of town. Where the
horror happened, up on North Westnedge Avenue, there’s a small hill,
nothing major, just a gentle roller, past a string of greenhouses and a
county park.
When I visit, there’s still debris scattered at the
scene. The shattered pieces of a bicycle’s tail light. A set of tire
levers, used to change a flat. A broken-off piece of sunglasses. A
fragment of a carbon fiber frame—which, upon closer inspection, turns
out to be part of a “dropout” that holds a bike’s rear wheel.
It is both heartbreaking and difficult to comprehend.
Then,
against a chain-link fence, you can’t miss them: They are covered in
flowers, ornaments, and handwritten notes. Throughout the day, people
stop to look at them, to pay respects, and to confirm what happened on
this road on Tuesday, June 7 was real.
Five bicycles, painted white.
“It’s bike church,” Doug Kirk said flatly. “There’s a
camaraderie. I’ve been riding seriously since 1982, and I’m close to
quarter million miles now, but riding in a group? It’s just so much
fun.”
We were sitting in the Water Street Coffee Joint near the
train tracks in Kalamazoo’s downtown. It was three days after the
tragedy which had shaken Western Michigan and the country: nine cyclists
on an early-evening group ride struck by the driver of a pick-up truck,
right near the line where Kalamazoo ends and Cooper Township begins.
Nine riders. All nine hit.
Four of the cyclists were injured and hospitalized.
Five were reported dead at the scene.
Doug
Kirk shook his head. Tall and training-fit, the 64-year-old has been a
longtime cyclist in the region, a past president of the Kalamazoo
Cycling Club, and a club ride leader for 15 or so years. He didn’t know
the killed and injured riders very well. But like everyone who rode a
bike in Kalamazoo, he was still trying to process what had happened.
“It’s a community,” he said.
ENLARGE
Police and rescue workers attend to the scene after multiple bicyclists were struck by a vehicle in a deadly crash on June 7.
Photo:
Chelsea Purgahn//Kalamazoo Gazette/Associated Press
How did it happen? Why did it happen? If law enforcement had
an idea, the Kalamazoo county prosecutor, Jeff Getting, was keeping that
information closely held. Toxicology results have yet to be made
public. This was known: That night, three separate calls had been made
to police prior to the bike incident, reporting erratic driving by a
pick-up truck of similar description.
The driver, a 50-year-old
man named Charles Pickett Jr., of Battle Creek, had been apprehended. On
Thursday, Getting, the Kalamazoo prosecutor, stood on the steps of the
county government building in a blue suit and read off the charges,
which included five charges of second-degree murder.
“What we are
alleging is that the defendant, Charles Edward Pickett Jr., acted in
wanton and willful disregard of the likelihood that the natural tendency
of his actions would case death or great bodily harm and, as a result,
did kill and murder Fred (Tony) Nelson, Suzanne Sippel, Deborah Bradley,
Lorenz (Larry) Paulik, and Melissa Fevig-Hughes.”
The deceased
ranged in age from 42 to 74 years old. There were additional charges
related to the four injured survivors: Jennifer Johnson, 40, Paul
Gobble, 47, Paul Runnels, 65, and Sheila Jeske, 53.
Pickett would
plead not guilty to all of the charges at his arraignment the next
day—reached Tuesday, his court-appointed lawyer, Alan Koenig, declined
comment. Denied bond, Pickett Jr. remains held in jail.
It felt
so senseless and inexplicable. A devastating photograph would appear in
the hometown Kalamazoo Gazette: a circle of crumpled bikes recovered at
the North Westnedge scene, frames bent or smashed into bits, wheel rims
dramatically curled and tangled.
These bikes belonged to riders.
Jennifer. Paul. Sheila. Paul.
Tony. Suzanne. Debbie. Larry. Melissa.
Parents. Grandparents. Sons. Daughters. Spouses. Neighbors. Professionals. Volunteers. Athletes. Cyclists.
All
of them were members of the Chain Gang, an experienced local cycling
group that had been riding in and around Kalamazoo for more than a
decade and a half.
“Friends,” said Paul Selden, the founder of Bike Friendly Kalamazoo.
It was the nightmare.
ENLARGE
In this photo taken June 9, mangled bicycles are tagged as evidence at the Michigan State Police crime lab in Kalamazoo, Mich.
Photo:
Mark Bugnaski/alamazoo Gazette/Associated Press
Tuesday night had been a panic. Reports began coming in, about
a bad scene involving a vehicle and bike riders, but details were
fuzzy. If you rode a bike in Kalamazoo, you probably heard from
somebody.
“On
Facebook
you started seeing all kinds of posts—‘Are you OK?’ ‘Check in
please,’” said Kathy Kirk, Doug’s wife, a serious cyclist herself.
“It
became a frenzy,” said John Kittredge, another local rider, who also
sponsors local cycling events. “‘Please call me.’ ‘Please text me
back.’”
Doug Stevenson co-owns the Alfred E. Bike shop downtown,
where there’s almost always a shop ride on Tuesday nights, led by
Stevenson’s son, Cullen. That Tuesday had been unseasonably windy and
cool. Cullen went on Twitter and cancelled the ride.
Still, Doug
Stevenson’s phone rang a bunch of times that night, and also at the shop
on Wednesday, too. So did Cullen’s phone. They were callers who dreaded
checking in, who just wanted to be sure.
ENLARGE
The names of the victims written on a memorial.
Photo:
Jason Gay/The Wall Street Journal
“We’ve never seen anything of this scale,” Doug Stevenson said quietly, as a pair of customers came in to pick up bikes.
Mark
Rose had been one of the founders of the Chain Gang back when it
launched in 1999. Rose had been motivated to start the club going after
getting into indoor spinning classes. “I was pretty much a novice,” he
said.
Kalamazoo is good biking country—not far out of town, there
is beautiful terrain and country roads and a converted railway that
runs all the way to Lake Michigan. There are thriving scenes for road
riding, gravel riding, mountain biking and thick-tired “fat biking” in
the cold winter. If you want to ride your bike, you can always find
people in Kalamazoo to ride with.
The Chain Gang was not set up
to be a hardcore competitive group. It had a “no-drop” rule, Rose
said—if a rider could not keep up the pace, or he or she had a
mechanical problem or flat, they wouldn’t leave you behind. Someone
would drop back to help. The idea was to look after each other and have a
nice time. Often, they’d go for a beer afterward.
“It was casual,” said Rose.
Rose
had been outside working in his yard on Tuesday when his brother, Brad,
called and left a message, about an incident involving cyclists, with
multiple fatalities. The location made Rose nervous. He knew that was a
Chain Gang route.
ENLARGE
A cyclist takes a
moment to place a flower at one of the ghost bikes during the
Peace-Pedal-Pray memorial ride in Kalamazoo, Mich., on June 12
Photo:
Chelsea Purgahn/Kalamazoo Gazette/Associated Press
“It was pretty obvious to us, because of where they were,”
Rose said. “I was in disbelief. I called [Brad] back and said, ‘You mean
people were injured?’”
“He said, ‘No. There were fatalities.’”
Later,
Brad Rose would travel to the parking lot where the Chain Gang had
started its Tuesday night ride. He recognized some of the vehicles,
their bike racks, still in the parking lot.
Chain Gang cars.
What happened in Kalamazoo breaks a heart a hundred ways. It
breaks a heart on the facts alone: so much loss, so much grief. It
breaks a heart for the families of the cyclists and their close friends,
who feel the impact most deeply. It breaks a heart for the community.
Kalamazoo already suffered a tragedy this year that attracted national
attention—a mass shooting which had killed six.
For cyclists,
Kalamazoo breaks a heart because this is the deepest fear. It also
breaks a heart because these group rides are essential to the sport.
Group rides are often where bike riders become cyclists, where they
learn handling techniques, etiquette and essential skills like pace
lines, in which riders take turns (“pulls”) at the front and then gently
rotate to the back to protect themselves from the wind.
ENLARGE
Cyclists ride to the memorial site during the Peace-Pedal-Pray memorial ride in Kalamazoo, Mich.
Photo:
Chelsea Purgahn/Kalamazoo Gazette/Associated Press
“It’s where it all starts,” said Brent Bookwalter, a pro
cyclist for BMC, an elite professional team, who grew up in nearby Grand
Rapids and this July hopes to compete in the Tour de France. “I
wouldn’t be where I am without that great community of caring people in
Western Michigan.”
Group rides become families. Some of them
stick together for decades, even if the riders might not be able to
recognize each other in street clothes, without helmets and Spandex.
“You know people by what they ride,” said Tim Krone, who owns
Kalamazoo’s Pedal Bicycles shop. “’Hey, you’re red Fuji guy!’” A group
ride might be as important an outlet to a cyclist as anything in his or
her life. There are fast rides and slower rides, but the beloved rides
are the ones in which everyone looks out for each other and maintains an
agreed-upon pace, making the group feel like a single, fluid organism.
“There’s
nothing like it,” said Kathy Kirk. “And you know exactly when it comes
together and when it falls apart and you’re like, ‘God, that was
great.’”
The day after the tragedy, Doug and Kathy Kirk met up
with some of Kathy’s teammates and collected and painted three of the
five white bicycles now on North Westnedge. Known as Ghost Bikes, these
bicycles are often installed at the scene of cycling fatalities, a
chilling reminder of lives lost.
On Wednesday, June 8, hundreds
of people gathered in downtown Kalamazoo for a “Silent Ride” to
commemorate the victims and the injured. The mood was raw—part mournful,
part heartened to see so many cyclists on the road.
John
Kittredge said he sought out faces and bikes he knew. He wanted to be
with his friends. “We talked a lot about how life is short, and how when
you’re on a bike it’s the ultimate freedom,” Kittredge said. “It’s like
you’re 12 years old again.”
The funerals began this week. Early Tuesday evening, local
cyclists planned to set out and complete the ride the Chain Gang members
never got the chance to finish. Lance Armstrong intended to be one of
the participants.
Not far underneath the grieving in Kalamazoo,
there is anger. Cyclists already feel targeted, invisible,
deprioritized. The loss of life here was appalling, but there is too
much of this everywhere.
“Nine people?” said Mikael Henriksson, a
Western Michigan cyclist who twice competed in the Race Across America,
and left one of his old cycling medals at the memorial on North
Westnedge. “I’m sick of this…it’s become worse.”
Inside Alfred E.
Bike, Doug Stevenson pointed to a crumpled frame on the floor of the
store, dropped off by a bandaged customer recently struck by a car in
another, totally separate incident.
This is not a rare thing, Stevenson said.
ENLARGE
A sign outside the First Congregational Church in Kalamazoo, Mich.
Photo:
Jason Gay/The Wall Street Journal
“Throwing the book at this guy will make people more satisfied
that justice will be done,” he said of the June 7 incident. “But
really, it’s the road rage drivers, or entitled drivers who get mad
because they have to click off the cruise control momentarily. You wish
they could just tilt their perspective a little, so they could realize,
‘There are some bikers, I need to slow the heck down for five minutes.’
It isn’t such a big deal in the scheme of things.”
One night I
was in Kalamazoo, there was a candlelight vigil at the Saint Thomas More
parish, where two of the fallen riders, Larry Paulik and Tony Nelson,
were active members. Leaving the church after an emotional service, I
watched a mother and a pair of children ride away on their bicycles—the
two children riding in front, the mother riding in back. Amid all the
mourning, it looked like a beautifully defiant act. A car passed slowly.
The girl pedaling in front smiled and waved.
On a road not far away, another church posted a hand-drawn sign with a bicycle nestled in the center.
WE SEE YOU. WE LOVE YOU, it read.
It’s barely a week later. But Kalamazoo rides on.
Write to Jason Gay at Jason.Gay@wsj.com
Tuesday, June 7, 2016
Location:
5500 block of North Westnedge Avenue
Kalamazoo , MI
United States
Five ghost bikes were installed for five cyclists, fatally struck by a driver while riding together in a group. The ghost bikes were installed as part of a memorial ride that brought hundreds out in their memory.
From: Michigan Live
KALAMAZOO, MI — Two mothers, two grandparents devoted to serving their church.
These are the victims of the deadly Kalamazoo bicycle crash of June 7, 2016.
Five bicyclists died when a blue Chevrolet pickup hit them as they
were riding north in the 5500 block of North Westnedge Avenue in Cooper
Township. Four more bicyclists were seriously injured.
The bicyclists were members of the Chain Gang bicycle group, who had
started a 28.5-mile ride from a county health building on Gull Road.
They were about five miles into the ride when they were hit.
The group was struck behind by the pickup around 6:30 p.m. Police
have said the driver is in police custody, and a determination on any
charges against the driver will be made Thursday.
They are:
Debbie Bradley, 53, of Augusta, a mother and a parishioner of St. Ann Catholic Church and a former nurse with Gull Lake Community Schools
Suzanne Joan Sippel, 56, of Augusta, a data manager with the Kellogg Biological Station, a Michigan State University education and research institute
Lorenz John (Larry) Paulik, 74, of Kalamazoo, a grandfather and a dedicated parishioner at St. Thomas More Catholic Student Parish
Fred Anton (Tony) Nelson, 73, of Kalamazoo, an active parishioner at St. Thomas More, a grandfather and community member
Melissa Ann Fevig Hughes, 42, of Augusta
The four bicyclists who were injured are:
Paul Douglas Gobble, 47 of Richland
Sheila Diane Jeske, 53, of Richland
Jennifer Lynn Johnson, 40 of Kalamazoo
Paul Lewis Runnels, 65, of Richland.
Johnson has a femur injury, Kalamazoo County Sheriff's Lt. Jim
VanDyken testified at a probable cause hearing Thursday. Gobble was
being treated at Borgess Medical Center and was in serious condition.
Runnels has severe body lacerations and Jeske has head injuries and leg
lacerations, VanDyken said.
All stories, and more photos from the Kalamazoo bicyclists tragedy.
From the Wall Street Journal:
By
Jason Gay
Kalamazoo, Mich.
The road looks like it could be almost anywhere in America.
Two
lanes, ruler straight, it can be taken in and out of town. Where the
horror happened, up on North Westnedge Avenue, there’s a small hill,
nothing major, just a gentle roller, past a string of greenhouses and a
county park.
When I visit, there’s still debris scattered at the
scene. The shattered pieces of a bicycle’s tail light. A set of tire
levers, used to change a flat. A broken-off piece of sunglasses. A
fragment of a carbon fiber frame—which, upon closer inspection, turns
out to be part of a “dropout” that holds a bike’s rear wheel.
It is both heartbreaking and difficult to comprehend.
Then,
against a chain-link fence, you can’t miss them: They are covered in
flowers, ornaments, and handwritten notes. Throughout the day, people
stop to look at them, to pay respects, and to confirm what happened on
this road on Tuesday, June 7 was real.
Five bicycles, painted white.
“It’s bike church,” Doug Kirk said flatly. “There’s a
camaraderie. I’ve been riding seriously since 1982, and I’m close to
quarter million miles now, but riding in a group? It’s just so much
fun.”
We were sitting in the Water Street Coffee Joint near the
train tracks in Kalamazoo’s downtown. It was three days after the
tragedy which had shaken Western Michigan and the country: nine cyclists
on an early-evening group ride struck by the driver of a pick-up truck,
right near the line where Kalamazoo ends and Cooper Township begins.
Nine riders. All nine hit.
Four of the cyclists were injured and hospitalized.
Five were reported dead at the scene.
Doug
Kirk shook his head. Tall and training-fit, the 64-year-old has been a
longtime cyclist in the region, a past president of the Kalamazoo
Cycling Club, and a club ride leader for 15 or so years. He didn’t know
the killed and injured riders very well. But like everyone who rode a
bike in Kalamazoo, he was still trying to process what had happened.
“It’s a community,” he said.
ENLARGE
Police and rescue workers attend to the scene after multiple bicyclists were struck by a vehicle in a deadly crash on June 7.
Photo:
Chelsea Purgahn//Kalamazoo Gazette/Associated Press
How did it happen? Why did it happen? If law enforcement had
an idea, the Kalamazoo county prosecutor, Jeff Getting, was keeping that
information closely held. Toxicology results have yet to be made
public. This was known: That night, three separate calls had been made
to police prior to the bike incident, reporting erratic driving by a
pick-up truck of similar description.
The driver, a 50-year-old
man named Charles Pickett Jr., of Battle Creek, had been apprehended. On
Thursday, Getting, the Kalamazoo prosecutor, stood on the steps of the
county government building in a blue suit and read off the charges,
which included five charges of second-degree murder.
“What we are
alleging is that the defendant, Charles Edward Pickett Jr., acted in
wanton and willful disregard of the likelihood that the natural tendency
of his actions would case death or great bodily harm and, as a result,
did kill and murder Fred (Tony) Nelson, Suzanne Sippel, Deborah Bradley,
Lorenz (Larry) Paulik, and Melissa Fevig-Hughes.”
The deceased
ranged in age from 42 to 74 years old. There were additional charges
related to the four injured survivors: Jennifer Johnson, 40, Paul
Gobble, 47, Paul Runnels, 65, and Sheila Jeske, 53.
Pickett would
plead not guilty to all of the charges at his arraignment the next
day—reached Tuesday, his court-appointed lawyer, Alan Koenig, declined
comment. Denied bond, Pickett Jr. remains held in jail.
It felt
so senseless and inexplicable. A devastating photograph would appear in
the hometown Kalamazoo Gazette: a circle of crumpled bikes recovered at
the North Westnedge scene, frames bent or smashed into bits, wheel rims
dramatically curled and tangled.
These bikes belonged to riders.
Jennifer. Paul. Sheila. Paul.
Tony. Suzanne. Debbie. Larry. Melissa.
Parents. Grandparents. Sons. Daughters. Spouses. Neighbors. Professionals. Volunteers. Athletes. Cyclists.
All
of them were members of the Chain Gang, an experienced local cycling
group that had been riding in and around Kalamazoo for more than a
decade and a half.
“Friends,” said Paul Selden, the founder of Bike Friendly Kalamazoo.
It was the nightmare.
ENLARGE
In this photo taken June 9, mangled bicycles are tagged as evidence at the Michigan State Police crime lab in Kalamazoo, Mich.
Photo:
Mark Bugnaski/alamazoo Gazette/Associated Press
Tuesday night had been a panic. Reports began coming in, about
a bad scene involving a vehicle and bike riders, but details were
fuzzy. If you rode a bike in Kalamazoo, you probably heard from
somebody.
“On
Facebook
you started seeing all kinds of posts—‘Are you OK?’ ‘Check in
please,’” said Kathy Kirk, Doug’s wife, a serious cyclist herself.
“It
became a frenzy,” said John Kittredge, another local rider, who also
sponsors local cycling events. “‘Please call me.’ ‘Please text me
back.’”
Doug Stevenson co-owns the Alfred E. Bike shop downtown,
where there’s almost always a shop ride on Tuesday nights, led by
Stevenson’s son, Cullen. That Tuesday had been unseasonably windy and
cool. Cullen went on Twitter and cancelled the ride.
Still, Doug
Stevenson’s phone rang a bunch of times that night, and also at the shop
on Wednesday, too. So did Cullen’s phone. They were callers who dreaded
checking in, who just wanted to be sure.
ENLARGE
The names of the victims written on a memorial.
Photo:
Jason Gay/The Wall Street Journal
“We’ve never seen anything of this scale,” Doug Stevenson said quietly, as a pair of customers came in to pick up bikes.
Mark
Rose had been one of the founders of the Chain Gang back when it
launched in 1999. Rose had been motivated to start the club going after
getting into indoor spinning classes. “I was pretty much a novice,” he
said.
Kalamazoo is good biking country—not far out of town, there
is beautiful terrain and country roads and a converted railway that
runs all the way to Lake Michigan. There are thriving scenes for road
riding, gravel riding, mountain biking and thick-tired “fat biking” in
the cold winter. If you want to ride your bike, you can always find
people in Kalamazoo to ride with.
The Chain Gang was not set up
to be a hardcore competitive group. It had a “no-drop” rule, Rose
said—if a rider could not keep up the pace, or he or she had a
mechanical problem or flat, they wouldn’t leave you behind. Someone
would drop back to help. The idea was to look after each other and have a
nice time. Often, they’d go for a beer afterward.
“It was casual,” said Rose.
Rose
had been outside working in his yard on Tuesday when his brother, Brad,
called and left a message, about an incident involving cyclists, with
multiple fatalities. The location made Rose nervous. He knew that was a
Chain Gang route.
ENLARGE
A cyclist takes a
moment to place a flower at one of the ghost bikes during the
Peace-Pedal-Pray memorial ride in Kalamazoo, Mich., on June 12
Photo:
Chelsea Purgahn/Kalamazoo Gazette/Associated Press
“It was pretty obvious to us, because of where they were,”
Rose said. “I was in disbelief. I called [Brad] back and said, ‘You mean
people were injured?’”
“He said, ‘No. There were fatalities.’”
Later,
Brad Rose would travel to the parking lot where the Chain Gang had
started its Tuesday night ride. He recognized some of the vehicles,
their bike racks, still in the parking lot.
Chain Gang cars.
What happened in Kalamazoo breaks a heart a hundred ways. It
breaks a heart on the facts alone: so much loss, so much grief. It
breaks a heart for the families of the cyclists and their close friends,
who feel the impact most deeply. It breaks a heart for the community.
Kalamazoo already suffered a tragedy this year that attracted national
attention—a mass shooting which had killed six.
For cyclists,
Kalamazoo breaks a heart because this is the deepest fear. It also
breaks a heart because these group rides are essential to the sport.
Group rides are often where bike riders become cyclists, where they
learn handling techniques, etiquette and essential skills like pace
lines, in which riders take turns (“pulls”) at the front and then gently
rotate to the back to protect themselves from the wind.
ENLARGE
Cyclists ride to the memorial site during the Peace-Pedal-Pray memorial ride in Kalamazoo, Mich.
Photo:
Chelsea Purgahn/Kalamazoo Gazette/Associated Press
“It’s where it all starts,” said Brent Bookwalter, a pro
cyclist for BMC, an elite professional team, who grew up in nearby Grand
Rapids and this July hopes to compete in the Tour de France. “I
wouldn’t be where I am without that great community of caring people in
Western Michigan.”
Group rides become families. Some of them
stick together for decades, even if the riders might not be able to
recognize each other in street clothes, without helmets and Spandex.
“You know people by what they ride,” said Tim Krone, who owns
Kalamazoo’s Pedal Bicycles shop. “’Hey, you’re red Fuji guy!’” A group
ride might be as important an outlet to a cyclist as anything in his or
her life. There are fast rides and slower rides, but the beloved rides
are the ones in which everyone looks out for each other and maintains an
agreed-upon pace, making the group feel like a single, fluid organism.
“There’s
nothing like it,” said Kathy Kirk. “And you know exactly when it comes
together and when it falls apart and you’re like, ‘God, that was
great.’”
The day after the tragedy, Doug and Kathy Kirk met up
with some of Kathy’s teammates and collected and painted three of the
five white bicycles now on North Westnedge. Known as Ghost Bikes, these
bicycles are often installed at the scene of cycling fatalities, a
chilling reminder of lives lost.
On Wednesday, June 8, hundreds
of people gathered in downtown Kalamazoo for a “Silent Ride” to
commemorate the victims and the injured. The mood was raw—part mournful,
part heartened to see so many cyclists on the road.
John
Kittredge said he sought out faces and bikes he knew. He wanted to be
with his friends. “We talked a lot about how life is short, and how when
you’re on a bike it’s the ultimate freedom,” Kittredge said. “It’s like
you’re 12 years old again.”
The funerals began this week. Early Tuesday evening, local
cyclists planned to set out and complete the ride the Chain Gang members
never got the chance to finish. Lance Armstrong intended to be one of
the participants.
Not far underneath the grieving in Kalamazoo,
there is anger. Cyclists already feel targeted, invisible,
deprioritized. The loss of life here was appalling, but there is too
much of this everywhere.
“Nine people?” said Mikael Henriksson, a
Western Michigan cyclist who twice competed in the Race Across America,
and left one of his old cycling medals at the memorial on North
Westnedge. “I’m sick of this…it’s become worse.”
Inside Alfred E.
Bike, Doug Stevenson pointed to a crumpled frame on the floor of the
store, dropped off by a bandaged customer recently struck by a car in
another, totally separate incident.
This is not a rare thing, Stevenson said.
ENLARGE
A sign outside the First Congregational Church in Kalamazoo, Mich.
Photo:
Jason Gay/The Wall Street Journal
“Throwing the book at this guy will make people more satisfied
that justice will be done,” he said of the June 7 incident. “But
really, it’s the road rage drivers, or entitled drivers who get mad
because they have to click off the cruise control momentarily. You wish
they could just tilt their perspective a little, so they could realize,
‘There are some bikers, I need to slow the heck down for five minutes.’
It isn’t such a big deal in the scheme of things.”
One night I
was in Kalamazoo, there was a candlelight vigil at the Saint Thomas More
parish, where two of the fallen riders, Larry Paulik and Tony Nelson,
were active members. Leaving the church after an emotional service, I
watched a mother and a pair of children ride away on their bicycles—the
two children riding in front, the mother riding in back. Amid all the
mourning, it looked like a beautifully defiant act. A car passed slowly.
The girl pedaling in front smiled and waved.
On a road not far away, another church posted a hand-drawn sign with a bicycle nestled in the center.
WE SEE YOU. WE LOVE YOU, it read.
It’s barely a week later. But Kalamazoo rides on.
Write to Jason Gay at Jason.Gay@wsj.com