For one brief moment

I took this photo just yesterday while riding Sharey to show how barriers on multiuse paths could stop a motor vehicle from entering it, such as just happened last week in New York City, resulting in the murder of eight bike riders (including a mom of two children like me). I realized after I took the photo that I caught the white ghost bike in it, which commemorates the death of a 14-year-old girl who was crossing here from the high school across the street when she was killed by a driver of a motor vehicle.

Little did I know that before the day was done, another ghost bike would be needed at another spot in Atlanta where I ride my bike often, after a driver being pursued by the police hit and killed a 37-year-old man riding his bike in a bike lane.

For one brief moment, it makes me want to stop doing one of the most normal and healthy things in the world. I think of the guy who called me an a**hole. I know he is out there. I wonder if he would try to kill me. I wonder what’s next for bike riders everywhere.

But then today, I get to teach a second class to a woman who had never ridden a bike before in her life. During our first class two weeks ago (before I went to Boston and New York), she balanced, coasted, and pedaled on one of my bikes. “I feel liberated,” she told me, a smile exploding across her face. She was then gifted with a new bike of her own from her adult daughter. The same one as Schwinneola.