Borne--And Born--Out Of The Fire

Sometimes natural--or human-caused--disasters can make it impossible to drive a car or truck.  Roads might be impassable, gasoline supplies could be low or non-existent or wind, rain or other conditions might reduce visibility or eliminate it altogether.

During such crises, some people ride bicycles to stores that might still be open,  to check up on relatives, friends or neighbors or even to rescue or transport victims.  Last month, after Hurricane Harvey struck the Gulf Coast of Texas, Jeff Whitehead pedaled 300 miles from his home in Laguna Park, a town near the center of the Lone Star state, to the coastal community of Rockport "just to do whatever I could to help," he explained.  He could not have made that trip in his car due to the destruction wrought by the storm.

Other times, however, it's not the disaster itself that makes driving impossible:  it's, ironically, other drivers.  A mass exodus from a storm, wildfire or other catastrophe can lead to huge traffic jams on roads leading out of the afflicted area.  That is what happened to Charity Ruiz when she evacuated her Santa Rosa, California home in the wake of wildfires that have singed their way through the northern California wine country.

The traffic tie-up stopped her in the middle of a street on fire.  She feared, not only for her own life, but for those of her two daughters--and yet-unborn baby son.

Yes, she is pregnant.  In fact, she is due to have a C-section next week. (That is on hold, because the fires closed the hospital in which she was scheduled for the procedure.) That makes what she did to get herself and her children out of harm's way all the more heroic.

She ran back to her house and grabbed her bicycle, which is equipped with a toddler trailer.   With her two girls in the trailer, she pedaled through the fire.  

Her greatest worry, she said, was tipping over and falling.  "I just kept yelling at the girls, 'Tell me if you're OK'," she recalled.

After riding for a while, a Good Samaritan in a Jeep drove them to a friend's house, where they were reunited with Charity's husband Mike.

The family is now staying with relatives in San Jose.  And one day, Charity Ruiz will be able to tell her son of all that she did to bring him into this world!

Jeff Whitehead Is No Crazier Than Any Of Us

No matter how much you've cycled, it seems that any time you decide to pedal any further than the nearest corner, someone will tell you you're crazy.  

That is what happened to Jeff Whitehead when his neighbors learned he was riding from his home in Laguna Park, near Waco, to Rockport, in another part of Texas.

About 300 miles separate Laguna Park from Rockport.  Jeff Whitehead wasn't going that distance to train for a randonnee or race, see a monument, meet some personal goal or visit a friend or relative.  At least, he wasn't going to see any relatives or friends he knew before he took his ride.

The people he would meet in Rockport became his friends--and, some might say, relatives after he arrived.  You see, he was motivated to take his ride by seeing the television coverage of Hurricane Harvey, which devastated so much of the Lone Star State's Gulf Coast.  "I decided that it was just time to come to do whatever I could to help," he explained.

The destruction wrought by Harvey would make driving a car impossible.  That was one reason why Whitehead decided to ride his bike.  Another is that being on two wheels, instead of four, and not being surrounded by metal and glass "made it easier to go around talking to people" because his mode of transportation had him "in the same boat as they are."  Still, he realized that because he could take that ride, he was luckier than they:  "I did it through a choice; they didn't have one."

His neighbors still might think he was crazy.  To me, he's no crazier than any one of us who's gone out of our way to help strangers--or ridden a bike 300 miles.  In other words, he's as crazy as any other dreamer or hero.  And I'm sure the folks in Rockport appreciate whatever form of insanity Jeff Whitehead might possess! 

Cycling After The Tide

This sign should have given me some idea of what I was getting myself into:

From 91st Street in Howard Beach--where I saw the inverted sign--I took the bridge into Broad Channel and the Rockaways.  

Broad Channel is a bit like the Louisiana, with colder weather.  It's only a three to four blocks wide, with Jamaica Bay on either side.  Some of the houses are built on stilts; many of the people who live there have never been to Manhattan.  In Broad Channel, it seems, there are as many boats as there are cars or trucks.  Some of them were torn from their moorings and were "beached" in the middle of streets, or in front of houses:

But, not surprisingly, there was more to come.  The retaining wall that separates the bay from the entrance ramp for cyclists and pedestrians of the Cross Bay Bridge was gone.  So was most of a restaurant that stood beside it.

When you arrive in Rockaway Beach, you come to a McDonald's.  You know how powerful the storm was, and how much desperation there is, when you see this:

But the contents of that restaurant weren't the only things gone from Rockaway Beach:

This sandy lot was, just four weeks ago, a community garden and flea market.  But something that had been a part of Rockaway Beach for much longer was also gone:

There was a boardwalk here. It extended from Far Rockaway, near the border with Nassau County, to Belle Harbor, about five miles  along the beach.  Gone, all of it, gone:

Much of Riis Park was cordoned off.  But the part that was still open felt utterly desolate:

There were dunes along this stretch of beach.  I don't know how long those dunes stood, but given the force of the storm, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that they were destroyed in an instant.  

At Riis Park, I met another cyclist. Together we rode to a beach club to which he'd once belonged.  Its parking lot was full of sand, and doors of cabanas were pulled off their hinges.  

He had to go home to his sick wife, but I continued toward Breezy Point.  In normal times, it's a sort of gated community:  One enters it through a kind of tollbooth where security guards stand watch.  Normally, when I ride my bike, they barely notice me at all.  Today, though, a female NYPD officer was checking people who entered.  "Ma'am do you live here," she intoned.  I probably could have lied that I did, or said that I was a volunteer who was meeting other volunteers.  But that didn't seem right:  I could only imagine how residents might have felt about an interloper like me.  

What I had seen up to that point was worse than what I'd seen in the news accounts.  I'm sure it was even worse in Breezy Point; for now, that assumption will have to suffice.

I'll close this post with an observation:  It was, or at least seemed, much colder than I expected.  Of course, that would be par for the course in an area, especially on a day as windy as today was.  However, I also realized that many of the houses and other buildings were empty and still had no electricity or heat.  Perhaps it really was colder due to the loss of ambient heat that normally radiates from buildings.  (It's one of the reasons why, on summer days, central city areas are usually hotter than the "ring" neighborhoods or suburbs.)  So it's not hard to understand why people who are sleeping in tents or in the open air are coming down with frostbite and other ailments.

I hope they can all go home soon.