It Could Have Been Me

Today I could have posted something faux-spooky or silly for Halloween.  But, as today is the one-year anniversary of a tragedy that hit close to home, I am going to repeat my post from the day after Halloween:

It could have been me.

I could not get that phrase out of my mind as I rode to work this morning.

It could have been me.

Today dawned bright and clear for me, as it did for them--yesterday.  A beautiful mid-autumn day, sunny, a little chilly but not unpleasantly so, with strong breezes shaking leaves turned red and yellow from their branches and rippling reflections of the sky, glass, steel and concrete at the mouth of the Hudson. 

In other words, the sort of day people picture in their fantasies about bike-riding in New York.

It could have been me.

And so they went for a ride, for fun.  I was riding, too, in an entirely different part of town, from my job back to my apartment.   Though they weren't going to work, many others who followed their path, on bike or on foot, no doubt were.  I myself have ridden along that path, to work and for the same pleasures they were enjoying.

I could have been one of them.

Five came from Argentina--old friends celebrating the 30th anniversary of their graduation from their high school.  Another came from Belgium, with her mother and sister.  They survived because they weren't with her.

I could have been her.

So could any of the kids who were leaving Stuyvesant High School at that very moment.  No doubt some of them sauntered along, or pushed or shoved each other (as high school kids are wont to do) into or along the path.  They would hang out with other kids.  Or they would go to practices in sports they play, languages they are learning, plays in which they are performing or skills for tests they will take and essays they will write in the hopes of getting into the colleges they or their parents choose.  One assumes that one day, at least some of them will be part of some 30th anniversary celebration, wherever in the world they may be.



They could have been among them.

Still others walked dogs, pushed strollers and held hands as they strolled along the nearby piers.  Or they sluiced through crowds on skates and skateboards.  They were all mere blocks away from the 9/11 Memorial and even closer to--though, as fate would have it, a world apart from--the Argentinian and Belgian tourists on bicycles.

I could have been with them.

For a time in my life, I was riding daily along the stretch of the Manhattan Greenway known officially as the Hudson River Greenway-- or more commonly as the West Side Highway Bike Path-- along the stretch that separates Greenwich Village, SoHo and Tribeca from the river.  At that time, it was part of my route to work.  Before and since then, I have ridden there for pleasure--sometimes as part of a city jaunt, as the tourists did yesterday; other times en route to a ferry or bridge that would take me to another part of my ride.  More often than not, I rode alone, but sometimes I'd accompany whomever I happened to meet--along the way to my job or wherever else I happened to go.

They could have been with me.

Every time I pedaled along that path, I was home within a few hours.  Today I will be home about 40 minutes after I leave work and get on my bike.  They, I am sure, thought they were going home, too--today, tomorrow, next week or the week after. 

I could have gone with them.

But they are not going home.  They probably never even imagined that they wouldn't:  They could not have foreseen the way their rides, their vacations, their journeys, would end.

It could have ended that way--for me, for anybody.

The Argentinians, the Belgian, never suspected that under a clear autumn sky in New York, death would descend upon them.  They certainly never expected it to come in the form of a van jumping the barrier that kept all of the other West Street traffic away from them, or for said van to be driven by someone who knew nothing about them except that they were riding bicycles peacefully.  On their bikes, they never expected to meet the fate of the folks sipping drinks at Le Carillon or listening to music at the Bataclan.  Or the ones enjoying a fireworks display on Bastille Day or shopping in a Christmas marketplace.  Or simply out on a summer day.

No one expects it to end that way.

Of those five Argentinians and the Belgian who went for a bike ride--and two others who went for a walk--on the West Side Bike Path, all that remain are mangled bicycles and shards of clothing and other personal items.  They went for a stroll, they went for a ride, and each of them is gone, gone, gone.

It could have been me.


I can only be grateful that it wasn't.  My thoughts are with the victims.

Terrorists Attack Cyclists In Tajikistan

When I was a student, I often worked the "lobster shift".  This meant riding my bike home in the wee hours of morning through a couple of dangerous neighborhoods.  

Friends and family members worried about my safety. I didn't. Feigning bravado, I'd say, "I can pedal faster than trouble."

That actually was true.  It still is--well, most of the time.  But back then, in my youthful stupidity, I thought no harm could come my way when I was in the saddle.

If I still had such a belief, it would have been shattered last Halloween, when terrorists plowed a pickup truck into a crowd of cyclists on the Hudson River Greenway, near the World Trade Center.  That hit close to home for me, as I have ridden that lane many times.  Even if the site weren't so familiar to me, I think I would have felt more vulnerable after such a horrible attack.

I was reminded of it yesterday, when I heard news reports of a similar attack in Tajikistan.  As in the Manhattan attack, the driver in the Central Asian republic claimed to be acting in the name of Allah.  

 A woman helps a cyclist wounded in the Tajikistan attack on Sunday.  AP photo by Zuly Rahmatova

But there was a further, even more gruesome twist:  In Tajikistan, after the car rammed the cyclists, the driver and passengers poured out and attacked the cyclists with knives.  

The result:  four dead cyclists. Two were American, one Dutch and the other Swiss.  In a way, it parallels the carnage in New York last fall, when all of the victims were foreign tourists--who, like those who died in Tajikistan, almost surely had no inkling of the terrible fate that would befall them.

Who Were They?

Yesterday I wrote about the tragedy in my hometown:  On a sunny, breezy autumn afternoon, a man drove a rented van onto the bike path that rims the Hudson River and mowed down eight cyclists.

Authorities are saying it was a terrorist incident.  That it is, whether or not Sayfullo Saipov, the driver said he committed the act in the name of Isis or some other group, or simply out of his own private rage or torment.  Terror is something that strikes, as Albert Camus wrote in The Plague, la mort est descendue du ciel clair--like death out of the clear blue sky.  Who goes for a ride on a beautiful fall afternoon--whether as part of a tour or a way to unwind after work--and expects to meet his or her destiny at the hands of someone whose face he or she will not see?

In yesterday's post, I mentioned six of the eight victims.  Six came from Argentina, another from Belgium.  I had no information about the other two victims, or the names of the six I mentioned.  Today I will provide those details, for they deserve to live on, even if it's in the confines of a bike blog and through my own limited talents.

Anyway, I learned that the other two victims were, as I somehow suspected, local residents.  In fact, one of them lived almost his entire life literally just a few wheel revolutions from where he was run down.

Nicholas Cleves

That benighted young man was Nicholas Cleves, a 23-year-old software developer who had recently graduated from Skidmore Colllege, less than a four-hour drive from the city.  Before going to Skidmore, he'd spent his whole life in downtown Manhattan where, according to friends and family, he grew up "biking everywhere."  

Darren Drake

The other local victim came from across the river, in New Jersey, where he served on the local board of education in his hometown of New Milford.  Darren Drake would have been 33 years old in two weeks and worked as a project manager in Moody's Analytics, just steps away from the bike path.  

Ann-Laure Decadt

Ann-Laure Decadt, a year younger than Drake, was riding with her mother and two sisters.  They were going to return to Staden, their hometown in the West Flanders province on Belgium, on Friday.  Now they and her husband are waiting for the US authorities to release her remains and no doubt thinking of when and how to tell her two sons--one three years old, the other three months--about her.

 (L to R) Hernan Ferrucci, Alejandro Pagnucco, Ariel Erlij, Hernan Mendoza and Diego Angelini

The other five victims, as I mentioned in the previous post, came from Argentina. They were celebrating the 30th anniversary of their graduation from a high school in Rosario, a town about 350 kilometers northwest of Buenos Aires.  

Hernan Ferrucci, Alejandro Pagnucco, Ariel Erlij, Hernan Mendoza and Diego Angelini were childhood friends.  Their lives since graduation had taken them to far-flung corners of the world but they met again, in a faraway city, as middle-aged men. I would not be surprised to find out that they talked about reuniting again, perhaps five, ten or twenty years from now--or for some occasion or another.

Except, I don't think any of them envisioned being joined in fate with three strangers who were much younger but whose lives, like theirs, were cut short--for reasons neither they, nor anyone besides the driver who mowed them down, can understand.

I Could Have Been...

It could have been me.

I could not get that phrase out of my mind as I rode to work this morning.

It could have been me.

Today dawned bright and clear for me, as it did for them--yesterday.  A beautiful mid-autumn day, sunny, a little chilly but not unpleasantly so, with strong breezes shaking leaves turned red and yellow from their branches and rippling reflections of the sky, glass, steel and concrete at the mouth of the Hudson.  

In other words, the sort of day people picture in their fantasies about bike-riding in New York.

It could have been me.

And so they went for a ride, for fun.  I was riding, too, in an entirely different part of town, from my job back to my apartment.   Though they weren't going to work, many others who followed their path, on bike or on foot, no doubt were.  I myself have ridden along that path, to work and for the same pleasures they were enjoying.

I could have been one of them.

Five came from Argentina--old friends celebrating the 30th anniversary of their graduation from their high school.  Another came from Belgium, with her mother and sister.  They survived because they weren't with her.

I could have been her.

So could any of the kids who were leaving Stuyvesant High School at that very moment.  No doubt some of them sauntered along, or pushed or shoved each other (as high school kids are wont to do) into or along the path.  They would hang out with other kids.  Or they would go to practices in sports they play, languages they are learning, plays in which they are performing or skills for tests they will take and essays they will write in the hopes of getting into the colleges they or their parents choose.  One assumes that one day, at least some of them will be part of some 30th anniversary celebration, wherever in the world they may be.



They could have been among them.

Still others walked dogs, pushed strollers and held hands as they strolled along the nearby piers.  Or they sluiced through crowds on skates and skateboards.  They were all mere blocks away from the 9/11 Memorial and even closer to--though, as fate would have it, a world apart from--the Argentinian and Belgian tourists on bicycles.

I could have been with them.

For a time in my life, I was riding daily along the stretch of the Manhattan Greenway known officially as the Hudson River Greenway-- or more commonly as the West Side Highway Bike Path-- along the stretch that separates Greenwich Village, SoHo and Tribeca from the river.  At that time, it was part of my route to work.  Before and since then, I have ridden there for pleasure--sometimes as part of a city jaunt, as the tourists did yesterday; other times en route to a ferry or bridge that would take me to another part of my ride.  More often than not, I rode alone, but sometimes I'd accompany whomever I happened to meet--along the way to my job or wherever else I happened to go.

They could have been with me.

Every time I pedaled along that path, I was home within a few hours.  Today I will be home about 40 minutes after I leave work and get on my bike.  They, I am sure, thought they were going home, too--today, tomorrow, next week or the week after.  

I could have gone with them.

But they are not going home.  They probably never even imagined that they wouldn't:  They could not have foreseen the way their rides, their vacations, their journeys, would end.

It could have ended that way--for me, for anybody.

The Argentinians, the Belgian, never suspected that under a clear autumn sky in New York, death would descend upon them.  They certainly never expected it to come in the form of a van jumping the barrier that kept all of the other West Street traffic away from them, or for said van to be driven by someone who knew nothing about them except that they were riding bicycles peacefully.  On their bikes, they never expected to meet the fate of the folks sipping drinks at Le Carillon or listening to music at the Bataclan.  Or the ones enjoying a fireworks display on Bastille Day or shopping in a Christmas marketplace.  Or simply out on a summer day.

No one expects it to end that way.

Of those five Argentinians and the Belgian who went for a bike ride--and two others who went for a walk--on the West Side Bike Path, all that remain are mangled bicycles and shards of clothing and other personal items.  They went for a stroll, they went for a ride, and each of them is gone, gone, gone.

It could have been me.


I can only be grateful that it wasn't.  My thoughts are with the victims.