XX WSD XX
Just want to quickly get this down, because things happen, I DON'T write them down and time passes. I have just a few minutes left before Babcia Ela gets back with baby from their morning walk and then time is truly at a premium. More on that later. (I love that little peanut more than I have words to say).
Last night on the way home from the gig I stopped at Fairway - great grocery store @ 130th under the West Side Highway. I usually have about 10 minutes to micro shop before they close at 11.
So I did my thing, and left the store. I happened to notice a random bicyclist going north on the greenway which passes right by Fairway, and which could have been me on so many nights before, right around this exact time - 7 minutes after 11. Not so much these days b/c Monika and I do the baby handoff around 5:15 and I have to hustle down to my gig. Latest I can leave on the bike is 5:05, 5:10.
Anyway, when I came out to the van to drive home I heard an EXTREMELY loud motorcycle blast by on the highway above. Fairway sits down in this little area right next to the Hudson River and also a huge water treatment plant. They elevated the roadway to avoid all of this.
The decibel level of the motorcycle actually kind of startled me - and I'm not unaccustomed to loud noises in that parking lot. The Metro-North Harlem River Line runs right through on yet another, lower trackway and there is a train around 11 that whooshes through.
So I get going and in about 2 minutes I'm on the on ramp to get on the WSH. Should be smooth sailing at this hour, but there are brake lights - alot of them. Can't tell if the problem is in the left or right or center lane as cars jockey for position to be in the lane that moves.
I take the right lane and up about 50 yards I see a ghastly sight. There, in the center lane, is a mod-bike, kind of a three wheeled motorcycle with a yellow shell and roll casing for the driver, all banged up and broken. Clearly this was the bike I heard moments before. And no emergency crews on the scene yet either. I passed just in time to overhear a motorist who had stopped say to another, "Someone HAD to have died, it was just TOO fast."
But when I got up to the wreck itself... no driver. An empty, broken, quiet, still shell. So it begged the question: I looked around for a body, nothing. Traffic was moving southbound fine. Past the wreck, northbound, fine. This part of the roadway is right next to the plant and on about an 80 foot elevated surface.
It hit me that the dude in all likely-hood must have been ejected right over the side and down to the bikeway below. !! Grisly.
You see these guys using the WSH as their personal motorcycle speedway and you know it MUST happen, but that was timing.
That original guy I saw on the bike very likely encountered the poor dude. Could even have fallen on the path itself. The path I take home many nights. Whoa. Just awful.
I passed the scene and went home, NY story #1,XXX,XXX,XXX,XXX,XXX,XXX,XXX,XXX.
