Voices Of Crash Victims

He'd planned to go for a bike ride.  Twelve days later, he woke up.  "I didn't fully understand what was going on or why I was there," recalls Paul Gobble.  Still, he doesn't "recall feeling surprised" that he was in a hospital bed.




Paul Runnels was on the bike ride Gobble couldn't recall.  Like Gobble, he spent "nearly two weeks in the hospital" after that ride.  The last thing he remembered is pedaling to the right of the white line on the side of the road and hearing fellow riders shout "Car back!"




Jennifer Johnson's last memory of that day's ride, which she led, was seeing the sign for Markin Glen Park.  The next thing she remembers is waking up, seeing her right arm tangled in a fence and burrs in her clothing.  Scanning her body, "I struggled when I couldn't find my right leg," she recounted.  "I found it very acutely over my right shoulder."

Sheila Jeske met Johnson, Runnels and Gobble in a parking lot for the ride. Her next memory is from hours later, at 9:15 pm, in the hospital.  Doctors asked whether she knew what had happened.  "I said I knew I was on a bike ride and I asked where Deb and Suzanne were," she testified.

Debra Bradley

Suzanne Sippel

She was referring to Debbra Bradley and Suzanne Sippel.  They would not remember the ride:  They did not survive it.  Nor did "Larry" Paulik,"Tony" Nelson and Melissa Fevig-Hughes.  

"Larry" Paulik

"Tony" Nelson

Melissa Fevig-Hughes

Jeske, along with Runnels, Gobble and Johnson, described the ordeals they have lived through since the day Runnels heard "Car back!"  Although they are all riding again, they endure all sorts of pain and continue to undergo therapies and even surgeries.  Gobble, who suffered a brain injury, sometimes struggles with finding the right words.  Still, he and the others, were determined to testify, no doubt in memory of their cycling buddies who met them every week for over a decade.

Their testimony came this morning, on the second day of a murder trial for Charles Pickett Jr of Battle Creek, Michigan.  In addition to five counts of second-degree murder, he also faces five counts of driving under the influence:  The police allege that he had metamphetamine,  muscle relaxers and pain pills in his system at the time he plowed his blue Chevy pickup truck into the group of cyclists who called themselves "The Chain Gang."

Now Jeske, Runnels, Gobble and Johnson are linked in two other ways:  They survived a horrific crash, and they are giving voice to their friends who died that awful day.

Torment In The Torrent

I recently taught Dante's Inferno.  In it, Hell is divided into nine circles, each reserved for particular kinds of sinners and each with its own punishments.

(As best as I can tell, I'd end up in the third ring of the seventh circle.  But I digress.)

One thing that has always struck me about the punishments meted out in each part of Dante's Hell is that they are not only retributive (at least, according to notions of divine justice prevailing in his time);  they are also meant to torment those who are sentenced.  At least, that is how it seemed to me.

Sometimes it seems that the torment is worse than the punishment itself.  I think it's because the resulting pain, humiliation and embarrassment endure for even longer than any physical torture.  Plus, folks whom you believed to be friends or allies--or, at least, fellow travelers--will pepper you with "witty" comments or taunt you with laughter.

At least, that was the experience related described Dublin-based writer Cal McGhee in his Broken Bicycle Blues.  As if it weren't bad enough to get thrown from his bike into a parked car, all of his attempts to call would-be rescuers failed:  The Vodafone customer you are calling is not accessible at the moment.

Oh, but it gets worse:  He starts to walk his bike in the pouring rain.  He doesn't get very far when the "innards of the back tyre unravel and intertwine with the wheel, rendering it absolutely 'bolloxed'."  So, unable to roll his bicycle alongside him, he has to carry his machine--until he no longer can.  

Then, "not equipped with any weaponry," he saws at the tire with a key in an attempt to cut the tire off.  But that key proved no match for the tire and snapped in half.

That key was--you guessed it--his bike key.

Having endured the ordeal of flat tire, crash, broken key and the jeers of other cyclists who passed him, he finally reaches home, where he is "greeted by the beaming smile of a child."  He reaches out to embrace the tyke when he notices how grungy he is and stops himself.

"That's how I died," he informs us.

He asks that no flowers be brought to the funeral.  Instead, he requests donations that can go to "an experimental business heralding a new regime" in which "cyclists in peril" will be "rescued and fed curry sauce until they are restored to full health."

Will that ease the torment of other cyclist seeing him walking and carrying his bike?

First Time To The Point

It's hard for me to believe now that on Saturday, I took my first ride to Point Lookout since December, or possibly earlier.

Also, it was my first ride to the Point with Bill--and his first ride, ever, there.  The tide was out, revealing a sandbar where, in warmer months, kids skip and dogs skitter.  We saw a couple of teenagers wade into the water, which reached just above their ankles, to the sandbar.  In my younger days, I might've done the same, or even joined them.  But the ocean water is still only about 8 degrees C (45F), and I know it will warm up fairly quickly during the next few weeks.  I can wait.

Instead, the pleasures of such a ride are the sun, wind and vistas--like the one we saw on the Marine Parkway-Gil Hodges Memorial Bridge:

The sky, as beautiful as it was, didn't look quite spring-like. But we were looking at it about two hours later than we would have in, say, January.