6/17/2023 0 Comments Footlight barThe first call to 911 came in at 9:25 and an ambulance was dispatched. Witnesses told reporters who soon descended on the scene that they’d seen Hightman’s body fly up into the air.Ī ghost bike marks the location on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan where Robyn was killed. At 9:24 there was a tremendous thump and within seconds, two lanes of the street were littered with a smashed black Lazer helmet and other gear. Their next stop, a building on Broadway between 24 th and 25 th, was two blocks away. Robyn was in the righthand lane, exactly where an experienced rider would set themselves up for a right turn unto 24 th Street. Hightman crossed West 23 rd Street, and it’s an open question now whether the Freightliner box truck with New Jersey plates was behind them or to their left. The dispatcher at Samurai Messenger Service had directed Hightman to head uptown toward the Flatiron District. At 9:16 a.m., Robyn picked up a parcel on Broome Street in Soho and turned onto Sixth somewhere around Prince Street. It was a crisp Monday morning-June 24 th, the fourth day of summer. Hightman cruised northward on Sixth Avenue through Chelsea. It was the first hour of their second day as a New York City bike messenger. Hightman had texted a friend two days earlier and expressed a desire to “ride bikes and suffer a little bit,” and now, cranking back into Richmond as the sky turned purple and then black, they were riding for all those reasons and at least a couple more. People endure long bicycle rides for all sorts of reasons-to push themselves and to cleanse themselves, to find themselves and sometimes to lose themselves. That evening, Hightman would upload the 203-mile masterpiece to Strava with a simple comment: “Honestly, sans being wildly dehydrated, this wasn’t all that bad.” Imagine this young person, who two years earlier hadn’t ridden more than a few miles at a time, pedaling westbound after 10 hours of riding, still churning out 18 miles per hour-on track to finish an 11-and-a-half-hour double century. The second century will be completed a few minutes slower than the first. Robyn will spin that 49x16 fixed gear until the sun goes down. Eight minutes later, Hightman arcs their black All-City Cosmic Stallion back onto the Cap Trail. Along that solitary 101-mile journey, Hightman has rumbled over more than 55 wooden bridges and ridden past freshly planted corn fields and found respite in long stretches shaded by sycamore and white maple. They’ve just finished a round trip on the Capital Trail, a multi-use path that connects Richmond to the state’s original capital in Williamsburg. Hightman―who chose to use the pronouns “they” and “them”―has been in the saddle for almost six hours on a hot day without a stop, and unclips before filling up a few water bottles. It’s a Saturday afternoon in May, and the 20-year-old is piloting a track bike into Great Shiplock Park. No, it’s more fitting if this story opens along the James River in Richmond, Virginia. That heartbreak in New York City, which hardly defines the life of Robyn Hightman, will come soon enough. This story does not begin or end on Sixth Avenue. Robyn Hightman at Kissena Velodrome in Queens, NY, April 27, 2019.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |