short stories / By Heidi Walters

Ghost Bike

(Dec. 4, 2008)  As you drive east on Highway 299, nearing Blue Lake you might be startled by the white bicycle chained to the fence a couple dozen feet off the highway. Next to it someone has hung two wreaths.

The “ghost bike” marks the spot where Blue Lake resident Greg Jennings, 42, died on Aug. 25 as he was bicycling home from his office at the Bureau of Land Management in Arcata, where he worked as a forest ecologist.

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Jennings had been commuting religiously by bicycle for three years, said his wife, Lisa Hoover, in an e-mail Monday. “He acted upon elements in his life that were important to him: independence, resourcefulness, physical well-being, noticing the change of seasons and having a low impact on the planet,” she said.

But that day in August — a clear day — at 5:35 p.m., a pickup truck driven by Alan Bear, 27, of Hoopa, swerved onto the shoulder and struck and killed him.

On Tuesday, Humboldt County District Attorney Paul Gallegos said his office has decided to file criminal charges against Bear: felony vehicular manslaughter, and providing false information to a peace officer. The charges are similar to those recommended by the California Highway Patrol in its report to the DA’s office on Sept. 20.

The news no doubt will be cheered by the local bicycling community, as well as by Jennings’ friends and family.

“Greg was thrown about 170 feet,” said Jennings’ dad, Jim Jennings, on Monday, the day before the DA’s decision; Jennings got a copy of the report from the CHP. “This driver went off the road to hit him. As far I’m concerned, he wasn’t operating a truck at that point, he was driving a guided missile that weighed between two and three thousand pounds going 65 or 70 miles an hour. And he hit a defenseless person.”

Jennings said his son was doing everything right. “Everything,” he said. “The reflective gear and the helmet. He was on the shoulder of the road — in fact, he was practically off the road he was so far over.”

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