Get Better Gabe!

Author's Note: I usually try to keep things light on here, but something sad and important happened and I have to tell the Internet about it.

As a cyclist, one is reminded every day that the streets can be hazardous. Pot-holes threaten to do anything from jar your wrists a bit to untrue your wheel to cause a bone-breaking crash. Drivers are often rude and/or clueless. It's just part of riding on top of a two-wheeled device in a country build around four-wheeled, walled vehicles. But it keeps us in shape and gets us sunlight and endorphins and is overall worth whatever risks and annoyances we may face.

And yet, every once in a while, something devastating happens. A week ago, my friend Gabe, a fellow NYC cyclist, was in a pretty serious collision with a car out in San Francisco. Details of the accident are still on their way through the SFPD bureaucracy, but they're less important at this stage. What we do know is that Gabe took a pretty bad hit. He's in the hospital now, in the capable hands of many doctors, family by his side. And he's got over a hundred people back in NYC pulling for him and waiting for scraps of good news to come in. The news is slow, as is typical with these sorts of injuries.

News like this does not make me fear cycling. It makes me angry, and sad, and more likely to tell friends to wear their helmets (Gabe was wearing his). But it does not make me afraid to ride around the city. If anything, it reminds me how important it is to do what I love, and to enjoy the sunshine—even in muggy New York August afternoons. We're all pulling for Gabe. And we're all out on our bikes, reminding cars with our very presence to share the road.

To follow Gabe's progress, go to GetBetterGabe.com. To make a donation to help Gabe's family cover medical expenses, rent on the room they've sublet in SF, and plane tickets, use this PayPal link: http://bit.ly/qs555.