Eric Boehlert's Last Ride

 With his intense, knowing face,  shock of hair at the top of his head and focused eyes behind black-framed glasses, he looked like a combination of a philosopher, Indigenous warrior, surgeon and professor.  

He pretty much had to be all of those things to do what he became known for.  Being a cyclist also helped, I'm sure.  He biked around his hometown, where he "loved living," according to his wife and, she added, wore "protective clothing" and used lights when he rode at night.  

I can well understand why he loved living in Montclair, New Jersey:  It's about 25 miles from New York, my hometown, and has anything one would like about a city and a college town:  cafes, galleries and an active cycling community, of which he was a part.

Note that I am talking about him in the past tense.  On Monday night, he met his end while out for an evening ride.  In one way, his ending was like that of too many cyclists in the Garden State, and elsewhere in the United States:  He was struck by a motorized vehicle.  But said vehicle wasn't a car, bus or truck:  It was a New Jersey Transit commuter train that many of his fellow town residents take to and from New York or Newark.

I wouldn't have been surprised if he'd written or otherwise called attention to some hazard or another for cyclists or pedestrians, or for the need to provide the education and infrastructure that would make those modes of transportation and recreation safer and more enticing as an alternative to driving.  I say that because he spent so much of his life exposing all sorts of hazards and, more important, what brings them into, and continues their, existence.

If your go-to source of (mis)information is Faux, I mean, Fox News, or even if you take everything printed in mainstream media (which, of course, does not include this blog!) at face value, you probably were not a fan of Eric Boehlert.  While he was labeled, usually with justification, as "liberal" or "leftist," he was just as willing to take on the New York Times as OAN and even, at times, the publications for which he wrote and the programs on which he appeared. "We can't fix America if we can't fix the press" was not just a catchy sound-bite; it was his operating philosophy.

As his evening ride was part of his life, to and at the end. I, and his many fans--and fellow cyclists--extend our sympathies to his wife, Tracy Breslin and his kids, Jane and Ben.