They Left Their Bikes. I Hope They Made It Home.

 Twenty-two years ago today, some young men who believed they fighting for Allah hijacked three passenger airliners. Inside one plane, passengers fought the hijackers and diverted them from careening  it into the Pentagon. Instead, the plane crashed into a field, killing everyone on board.

No passengers, crew members or hijackers survived the other two flights, either. One hit the Pentagon. The other slammed into the World Trade Center—just a couple of miles upwind from where I lived at the time.

In previous posts, I commemorated 9/11 anniversaries by discussing the essential workers. Some rode bicycles to their jobs. Others—who delivered everything from contracts to quesadillas—rode bikes for their livings.

Some of their bikes were found weeks, months, even years, later.  Some of them, alas, were never heard from again.  We can only hope they made it out of the WTC area. If they did, I hope they made it home, wherever that may have been, wherever that is.

Dreams And A Memorial

Lately, I've had some very strange and vivid dreams.  Perhaps it has something to do with my crash. Or the pandemic might've brought them on:  I've heard other people say they've been having "weird dreams" and "nightmares" since COVID-19 ravaged cities and countries.

There are two other times when I can recall such deep, detailed night voyages, if you will:  During the weeks and months after my gender reassignment surgery and in the aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

My post-surgery dreams--some of which were beautiful--may have had something to do with the anesthetics and other drugs.  On the other hand, what I experienced in late 2001 and through much of 2002 (and on a few later occasions)  may have been a reaction to the pain and grief I experienced around me.  Other people, I learned, also had odd and terrifying dreams during that time, so in that sense our psyches (and, in some cases, our bodies) were responding to the attacks in the same way many of us would process the current pandemic.

Some of my dreams involved bicycling to places that weren't physical locations as much as they were rapidly-changing series of images.  In others, I would retrieve a bicycle--which I may or may not have ridden or owned in my waking life--in places I'd never anticipate, like the house of someone I knew in the dream, or some place that looked like a bunker or butcher shop.  Or I was trying to retrieve something--or even a person--while riding my bike.

I rarely talk about my dreams with anyone, though a few have figured, one way or another, into my writing.  I am mentioning them now because 19 years ago, the last event (before the current pandemic) that "changed everything" took place.  I am talking, of course, about the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.  Although I did not know anyone who died, or was even injured in them, it was impossible to escape the grief and sadness if you were here in New York.  Someone I'd never seen before, and haven't seen since, cried on my shoulder.  Someone else--an old riding buddy--rode to the site and stayed for three weeks afterward, helping in any way he could. (He was a welder and metalworker.)  One night, he called me, in tears.  I told him he'd done more than anyone had a right to expect of him, and he should go home and spend time with his girlfriend.

He did. Others didn't, though.  Some of them--messengers, food deliverers or others who would now be called "essential workers"--locked their bikes to a rack by the Towers.  A year later, only one of those bikes was retrieved. 

Bike rack at 9/11 Memorial

Perhaps I was trying to retrieve one of them in the dreams I've mentioned.  Or, perhaps, one of them was me.

No Identity For Delivery Worker

Unless you've been living under a rock for the last 17 years, I don't have to remind you that today is the anniversary of one of the most tragic events in US history.

On this day in 2001, four flights were hijacked.  One crashed into a Pennsylvania field after some passengers tried to subdue the hijackers.  Another hit the Pentagon and the others, as everyone knows, crashed into the World Trade Center.

Even at this late date, remains are still being recovered and victims identified.  But there are some that, perhaps, may never be known. 

One of them, it is said, delivered breakfast sandwiches to office workers in the Towers and never came out.  His bicycle became an impromptu memorial:

Photo from Raisch Studios

To this day, no one seems to know his name.  More than likely, he was an immigrant, possibly illegal.  I can't help but to think that status, as well as his the fact that he was "just" a guy making deliveries on a bicycle, made him a low priority for those in charge of identifying victims.

I also can't help but to wonder how many more like him died that day, after pedaling down lower Manhattan's valleys of asphalt and glass to bring orders of bacon-egg-and-cheese-on-a-roll to folks at their desks.

The 9/11 Memorial Trail

You all know what happened fifteen years ago today.  In fact, you probably remember where you were that day.  Perhaps you knew someone who lost a family member or someone else he or she loved; you may know someone who was affected in some other way, whether physically or emotionally.

On this date last year, I wrote about a particular source of the shock and grief that day's events generated:  a lot of people, including a messenger whose bike was found a month later, went to work but never made it home.  As terrible as the deaths of firefighters and police officers were, they go to work every day with the knowledge they might not see their families or friends at the end of the day.  Messengers, as well as accountant, lawyers, maintenance mechanics and most other kinds of workers and professionals, do not have that spectre hanging over them:  They know that, barring some sort of accident, on any given day they are unlikely to encounter any situation that will end their lives before the day is over.  

I have been fortunate in that sense:  Through nearly all of my working life, I have been in jobs and professions where there was little chance of encountering any life-threatening danger.  Even when I was a bike messenger--arguably the most dangerous job I had--my situation was safer than that of any police officer or firefighter.  Even though I was living alone, there are people who would have been shocked by my not making it through the day.

On this date two years ago, I wrote about a bicycle rack recovered from the ruins of the World Trade Center.  When I learned about it, all I could think about were the people who rode the bikes locked to it. (At the time I wrote, only one bicycle had been claimed.)  Did they commute to offices in the Towers?  Did they live or work in the nearby buildings, stores, coffee shops or other businesses that served the ones high above lower Manhattan?   Were they among the ones who never made it home?  Or were they so traumatized that they didn't retrieve their bikes--or that they left New York altogether?

In the end, there really is no way to ameliorate or memorialize not only those for whom, to paraphrase Albert Camus, death came out of the clear blue sky, but those who have yet to recover the possessions, jobs, lifestyles and sense of themselves they might have had before disaster struck.  And that is exactly the reason why we try, and must continue to do so, in whatever ways we can.

One group of people who is commemorating the tragedies of that day fifteen years ago is doing so in a unique way:  They are creating the 9/11 Memorial Trail, which will connect the World Trade Center  with the Pentagon and Shanksville, Pennsylvania:  the sites of that day's attacks.  Some of the network will consist of already-existing lanes such as the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal towpath, the Delaware and Raritan Canal towpath and sections of the East Coast Greenway.  When finished, the network will be a 1300 mile (2100 kilometer) triangle linking the three sites.

Along the Delaware and Raritan Canal towpath, which would become part of the 9/11 Memorial Trail.

As much as I love the idea of the trail, and hope to pedal the parts of it I haven't already ridden, I also hope that no more such memorials will be necessary.

The Messenger Who Didn't Come Back

I'm sure I don't have to tell you what happened fourteen years ago today.

Here in New York, it seems that almost everyone knows someone who was touched by the events of that day.  If we don't know someone who's alive today because he didn't go to work-- or whose mother, father, brother, sister, lover or friend went to work and never came back-- we know someone who's somehow connected to such a person.

Before the Towers fell, they were magnets that pulled in and propelled hundreds of messengers every day.  For over a year, I was one of them.  I, and they, picked up letters, contracts, invoices, receipts, lease agreements, work orders, certifications, resumes and other testaments to the daily fugue of moments lived in anticipation of returning, again, to the sanctum of the familiar.

Most people go to work every day and expect to return home safely.  Among the exceptions are firefighters, police officers and other first responders:  All of them know, or know of, someone who went to work one day and never made it home.  Most lawyers or accountants cannot say that.  Nor, for that matter can most bike messengers:  Even with the crazy drivers hurtling through the maze of city streets, most who pedal through the urban jungle can expect to make it through the day intact.

One of the reasons, I believe, why the events of 11 September 2001 left so many people in various states of shock and grief is that it was one of those rare occassions on which so many people who expect--or are expected--to be home at the end of the day didn't make it.  In other words, it's one of the few times so many people could truly understand what it's like to live with, and love, a first responder who, on any given day or night, might not come home again.

The families and loved ones of those who didn't make it back have their own mementos and monuments: photos and the like.  And there are also those tactile but mute testimonies to those whose fates we may never know--like the messenger who was riding this bike when making a delivery to Cantor Fitzgerald or some other organization in the World Trade Center:

Photo by Anthony Catalano

This bike was still parked by St. Paul's Chapel a month after the Towers fell.  The rear of it faces Church Street, directly across from the east side of the World Trade Center site.   It seems that family and friends turned it into an impromptu memorial for the messenger, who was never seen or heard from after parking it.