Bike trek honoring 9/11 makes stop at Merrillville Fire Department

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On a 45-day cross-country bike ride with 20 of your brothers, there’s going to be one who makes you laugh until you cry and you want to heave over the side of a mountain in equal measure.

On this iteration of the Bay to Brooklyn Memorial Bike Ride, which honors the 343 firefighters who died in the World Trade Center on 9/11, it was California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection Deputy Chief John Byrne. The 20-firefighter team made a stop at Merrillville Fire Station #73 at the behest of team member Phil Hasier, a Merrillville Fire captain taking his inaugural ride.

Not only did Byrne manage to get six flat tires in one day heading out of the ride starting point in Santa Clara, California, but on his return to the ride after a two-week break, he started out just like he left —  with a flat tire. And then there was the matter of his riding shoes.

“I had this pair of riding shoes that I like for, like, seven years, and they started to delaminate, so to be ‘smart,’ I found the exact same pair on eBay in my size that were about five years old,” Byrne said with a smile as he looked down at his new pair, strangled with duct tape. “God gives you only what you can handle, and he gives me a lot: I’ve been down to one wheel, and then the seat of my bike fell off.”

Started in 2011 by retired Santa Clara Driver-Engineer Darrell Sales Sr., to honor the 10th anniversary of 9/11, the ride invites first responders from all over to bike cross-country, Sales said. The idea came about, he said, when he and his son, Darrell Sales Jr., were talking about how to memorialize the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attack, and his son recommended that they do a cross-country bike ride.

When Sales Sr. pointed out that his son didn’t have a Harley, Sales Jr. said he didn’t need one.

“His son told him, ‘We’ll do it with regular bikes,’” said team member Dave Lombardo, a retired Santa Clara driver-engineer who now lives in Bend, Oregon, and is on his third “mission” with the group.  “I can think of no better honor than what they’ve done.”

A ride such as this one takes a lot of planning, with Sales Sr. often making calls and lining up housing as they’re trekking through the country, said John Berlow, a retired lieutenant with the U.S. Air Force from Peekskill, New York, who, like Hasier, is completing his inaugural ride. To him, the mission feels like it’s being completed by “a rolling firehouse manned by family.”

“There are hard days and hard shifts, but we all know how to pull each other up,” Berlow said. “You have no choice, anyway, but living together pulls us all together.”

Lombardo agreed, saying that like all fire departments with their own quirks, each firefighter knows their role, so everyone falls into their mission spot quickly and with ease. And each rider brings their own element to teach each other, as well as the people in the communities in which they stop.

The conversations get awfully deep, too, added retired Ventura County, California, battalion chief Steve Winter, now of Middleton, Idaho, also on his inaugural ride.

“We’ve often talked about the one question you really don’t want to think about: ‘Would I have done what they did knowing what the outcome was going to be?’” Winter said.

Hasier met Sales Sr. and his band of merry bikers during the 20th anniversary ride in 2021, he said. He joined and escorted them on his bike to Hobart from Soldier Field in Chicago and was so moved by the experience, he committed himself to doing the next ride.

Off-road biking is definitely still his first love, he said, but seeing the country on two wheels is something you have to see for yourself.

“Seeing God’s creation from all directions as opposed to the inside of a vehicle is so different,” Hasier said. “We were riding on the Wyoming-Nebraska border on U.S. 20, which itself is kind of fun because you get to see where these roads go outside of where we live, and there were sunflowers growing through the cracks on the side of the highway. Seeing that is striking.”

Merrillville Fire Chief Ed Yerga said he’s extremely proud of Hasier.

“I support all my guys. We back each other 100%,” Yerga said.

Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.