David Sexton was hit from behind and killed by a car driver on July 1 while on his way to meet his partner Gordon. I don’t recall exactly when David joined Different Spokes but it was likely around 2008 or after. I recall he came to a club pool party and he was interested in bike touring overseas. Roger and I had ridden with private tour companies as well as the Bicycle Adventure Club, a coop to which we belong, and I recall that we talked at some length about our experiences. David was a frequent participant on club rides especially the longer ones. On one of the club rides he met another recent member Gordon and they soon became “bike buddies with benefits”. Both David and Gordon travelled extensively in North America and especially overseas in order to cycle tour. At some point David left the club for reasons I wasn’t privy to. But during the Pandemic he rejoined. The last time I saw him was actually on a ride I was leading in Tilden Park, an early “gravel” ride along with Doug O’Neill. That was a cursed ride. Shortly after we were on the Nimitz trail David’s pedal partially unscrewed from his crank. Our efforts to reinstall it were fruitless and he wisely turned around and headed to a bike shop. A bit later on the ride I was bitten by an unleashed dog in the park and ended up in the ER.
David was a careful cyclist. I don’t ever recall seeing him taking unwarranted risks unlike, ahem, some other Spokers. Everybody makes mistakes and it is impossible to be vigilant 100% of the time. It is also impossible to control the behavior of others especially car drivers. All of this is to say that as cyclists the possibility of a serious accident or death is a benighted reality even if we subconsciously push that prospect out of awareness. Accidents can happen in various flavors and death by motor vehicle is what we fixate on as cyclists despite the multitude of ways we could end up six feet under.
When I heard the news that David had died I was stunned. Something so common as being hit by a car—I mean, there are over 46,000 traffic deaths in the US alone every year and about 1,000 are cyclists—seemed bizarrely unusual despite being such a commonplace that we hardly blink an eye at another “accident” dully announced in the evening news. Until now most of us probably don’t know personally anyone else who has died while riding so it seems to be a dim prospect. Yet it isn’t. Those who’ve been Spokers for a number of years may recall Big Dave Fales who died while bike touring in Arizona in 2008. Dennis Nix, another longtime member who was a club officer in the ‘90s, died in 2015 while on his scooter after being hit by a car.
When I joined the club in 1983 it was just as the AIDS epidemic was starting to sweep through the gay community like a scythe. I can’t begin to recall the number of Spokers I knew who died of AIDS and there were plenty including some fellow travelers who rode with us yet didn’t join. Sometimes it was rumor mentioned on rides, sometimes other club members knew of another member who was ill; there were neighbors who were Spokers who were desperately sick and wan. Then came the obituaries in the BAR and starting to attend memorial services for friends and acquaintances. During this sad time I recall not one Spoker dying for any reason other than AIDS. It wasn’t until my late partner Tom —also a Spoker—died as the result of a head-on car crash that a non-AIDS death entered my consciousness. David died due to a car?? That doesn’t happen to us. Yet it does and his demise is an unwelcome reminder that death by many different modes is a constant presence just over our left shoulder.
We may push away that fear and continue with our daily lives filled with responsibilities, future hopes and goals, errands to be done, and the comfort of a nest egg growing and safely stowed away for an old age. But death comes when it wants, often unexpected and when it does what will all those things we obsess about mean? Will the moments of pleasure turning the pedals be of any comfort? We love cycling and yet cycling is inherently dangerous, perhaps not as dangerous as base jumping but dangerous nonetheless. We count the risks and deem them insignificant and so head out on a ride in search of an endorphin high, the pleasure of the wind on our face and basking in the sun, the warm company of good friends. Death makes everything insignificant and at the same time also immensely valuable and cherished. When a friend dies and we grieve the loss, everything else falls to the wayside and we are left to wonder what could have been, a future now irrealis. And then we pedal on anxiously glancing over our left shoulder.
The Chain Letter 