In March, we wrote about Tom Heidenberger’s memorial bike ride to honor the memory of the 33 flight crew members that were killed on 9/11/2001. Tom and his riders have now completed their journey.
Bike riders travel 3,800 miles to honor 33 victims of 9-11
The cyclists made the pilgrimage from Los Angeles to the three crash sites to raise money and awareness of the Sept. 11 memorials.
Thomas Heidenberger ended his cross-country bike ride this month the same way he started: asking himself what the heck he was thinking.
He knew, of course. He had done it for his wife, Michele, a flight attendant killed aboard a hijacked airplane on Sept. 11, 2001. He had done it for all 33 airline crew members killed that day.
The ride had taken him and four other riders from Los Angeles to a wind-swept field in Pennsylvania, a gaping hole in Manhattan, the scarred Pentagon in Washington. They did it to raise money and awareness for Sept. 11 memorials, and they dedicated each day of their ride to one of the crew members.
Image: Cyclists complete journey arriving at Pentagon.
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The Airline Ride Across America was supposed to raise $300,000 for the Sept. 11 memorials in Pennsylvania, New York and Washington. It has raised about a third of that so far, and Heidenberger hopes to raise the rest with his Web site, www.airlineride.org.
He’s working on a book about the ride, and talks about dividing it into 33 chapters, each with a short biography of one of the crew members killed on Sept. 11. He thinks he may call it Why I Rode My Bicycle for 3,800 Miles.
“It’s a good story, a happy story,” he said. “It’s a story about life continuing on.”
This is a very touching story where each day the riders dedicated their ride for that day to one of the 33 crew member victims. The last day’s ride was dedicated to Tom’s wife, Michelle, Read the whole story.