a hard article to write.
“A beautiful day for a bike ride”
This story was my shot. I’d just had a piece published in Adventure Cycling, Liberal Education had asked to see a draft of a feature I’d pitched, and now The Ann Arbor Observer wanted to give me a chance. After nine months of rejections, my writing was finally getting some attention.
Of course, I got the story assignment three days before deadline — and an hour and a half before I had to go to my job at the climbing gym. I immediately began feverishly researching and writing. As I got to know the story better — cyclist, father, and all-around good guy Ed Erickson is riding his bicycle to raise money for charity when he gets struck and killed by some husk of a human being hopped up on benzos at 11 in the morning, the SECOND time she’d been charged with operating a vehicle while intoxicated, by the way — I felt a wave of emotions. Guilt that I initially thought about this tragedy as “my shot.” Anger at the unfairness of the situation. Sadness on behalf of his wife and kids, and then self-recrimination — who am I to feel sad on behalf of this guy’s family, I’ve never met them. Pressure, not just because of the deadline, but because if nothing else, Ed Erickson deserved a well-written article.
Then there was the fact that the more I learned about Ed, the more he reminded me of Doug. Obviously there’s the bike connection, but they’ve also both spent time living and working in Japan. I started getting scared on Doug’s behalf. The drivers here in Michigan make the drivers back in Jersey look positively sane, and the shoulders here are more pothole than pavement. I found myself wanting to say, “Be safe,” when he leaves the house — a phrase we detest. (Be “safe”? What is “safe” supposed to mean, exactly? Am I supposed to stop taking risks for your benefit? Tell ya what, why don’t you be safe, and I’ll keep living my own life.) I had three 8-hour shifts at the rock gym that week, so when I wasn’t cleaning up chalk dust and teaching folks how to belay, I was living/breathing/eating/sleeping this story.
There’s a special kind of relief, a specific feeling of freedom that comes from handing in a story. There’s nothing more you can do; it’s in the readers’ hands now. But this one was harder to let go. I still think about Ed Erickson, even though I was never lucky enough to meet him. I’ve talked about him to people. It feels good to say his name, invoke his memory, let this tragedy serve some purpose — drive safe, for god’s sake. Some stories you write, and some stories you feel. This story rewrote a little part of my own narrative, leaving a mark that I think will last well past its publication date.