On July 20, Paige Hicks, a leader on the 2010 Providence to Seattle (P2S) Bike & Build trip, was killed in a fatal accident. She was 21.
Paige was stopped on the shoulder of a road in rural South Dakota, when she was struck by a wide load being pulled by a semi truck. Reports have found that both Paige and the driver of the truck were acting within their rights and appropriately as cyclist and motorist; the accident was the result of a freak confluence of events, with an incredibly sad and tragic result. Details about the accident and Bike & Build’s response to the tragedy are available here.
The past two weeks have been a whirlwind, and a lot of thoughts and feelings have been swirling through my head. This is the first fatality on a Bike & Build trip, and the absolute worst case scenario for Bike & Build and our community. It is an incredibly sad event that we have been actively working to prevent over the past several years.
I traveled to St. Louis last weekend to be with the P2S group and Bike & Build’s staff as they met with Paige’s family and attended her memorial services. Though I had only met Paige briefly, earlier this year at a Bike & Build leader training retreat, there are certain things that I felt I knew about her through her involvement with the organization – as a two-time participant (she was part of the Providence to San Francisco trip in 2009) and a 2010 trip leader.
As Bike & Build’s founder, I feel a bit of a paternal instinct towards everyone who takes part in one of our trips in a way that seems very obvious to me, yet is difficult for me to explain beyond that. This feeling towards Paige is amplified – I feel this way towards all Bike & Builders, but feel more strongly to those who come back for a second trip, and also those who are trip leaders, and enable this experience for others. It takes a certain type of person to complete Bike & Build once, and a very special person to lead a trip and do it twice.
There were two things which were most striking to me in St. Louis.
The first was how accomplished Paige was, and how vividly she had lived. At 21, Paige had biked across America with Bike & Build, run on her high school cross-country team and completed a marathon, lived and study abroad in Barcelona, been elected to be a co-captain for her college ultimate frisbee team, and worked as a peer counselor – all while working towards a degree in biology at Brown. Remembrances by her friends and family painted a vivid picture of her as a generous, kind, and delightfully colorful woman. She loved Harry Potter (and had named her bike Firebolt), was a fluid speaker of Pig Latin (winning Pig Latin endurance contests, and oftentimes enlisting others in conversations), wore her trademark bright purple sunglasses (at times leaving pairs with friends), and loved the Muppets (this scene, Love Led Us Here, from The Muppets Treasure Island was played as part of the memorial service). The quirks that made Paige different and potentially vulnerable were things that she embraced, making her all the more special and endearing her deeply to her friends and family. In learning more about Paige, it struck me that it’s at once both easier and much harder to say goodbye to someone who had lived so richly, seemingly beyond her years.
I was also struck by how big a part of Paige’s life Bike & Build had become. Through photos and objects displayed at the visitation session, in talking to Paige’s friends and family, and in hearing remembrances at the memorial service, it became clear how strongly Paige felt towards Bike & Build, how committed she was to the different components of the organization, and how great of a match she was for the program. Seeing the photos of Paige on Bike & Build and the objects on display were upsetting to me at first, but quickly made me glad that Paige had found Bike & Build, and thankful for her involvement in and commitment to the organization. In many ways, it had been a perfect match.
As tragic a situation as this has been, the silver lining of the past two weeks has been the response and strength of the Bike & Build community. There has been an outpouring of support towards Paige’s family, the P2S group, and Bike & Build from so many members of our community. One particularly touching tribute was an effort to make and collect chalk messages in memory of Paige. Bike & Build riders use chalk to leave messages for each other on the road while they are riding, and the messages were a way for the community to memorialize Paige in a unique Bike & Build style. (An album of the chalkings could be found here on Facebook.) Seeing the kind and generous response of the Bike & Build community this past two weeks has made me proud and thankful to be a part of it.
