Alex Pretti Memorial Ride in Wheat Ridge
Yawp Cyclery
On Saturday, January 31st cyclists all over the world participated in memorial rides for Alex Pretti, the man who was shot in Minneapolis while coming to the aid of another. The event was launched by Angry Catfish in Minneapolis, and it brought countless thousands of people together. Thank you to all who attended. Below are the remarks with which we opened our ride. Stay strong and take care of one another.
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Hello. Welcome, and thank you for coming. Yawp! has had hundreds of group rides since we opened in 2014, but we’ve never done anything quite like this. I thought about not saying anything and letting events speak for themselves, but I think silence on my part might prove to be even more awkward than what I’ve decided to say. As the host of this ride, it’s probably my job to set a tone, because I don’t want us to get riled up and destroy public property, and I don’t want to feel like this event is performative. So I’d like to explain why I wanted to gather in remembrance of someone that I—and likely you— never met. This is probably obvious and could go without saying, but instead I’m going to make this take as long as possible.
The dead hold sway.
My mother-in-law, Jeanie, passed away last Thursday after a long battle with dementia. Although it wasn’t a battle. Not for her. She seemed to thoroughly enjoy her life in the immediate present in a way that I envy. To anyone who wants to live fully in the present, I can’t recommend anything more than dementia.
Each time grief enters my life it does something to my sense of time that’s difficult to describe. The losses may be years apart, but they feel continuous. It’s like grief pulls time inside-out through it’s own butthole. Or maybe it’s clearer and more polite to say that grief is a pond that I sink into with each loved one’s passing to relearn that those losses were never—and can never be—regained. My people are still slipping away, and I miss them even more now that time has passed. As I wrote this I was sitting at a desk made for me by my friend Blake, deceased. It is written in a notebook I made by hand for my friend Brian, deceased. Even though I am irredeemably introverted, we are likely here today because I’ve inherited an unexplainable drive to get people together from my extroverted mother, who, if she weren’t deceased already, would‘ve been killed the instant I said the word “butthole” in front of people.
We are most certainly here today because of my mother-in-law, Jeanie. About thirteen years ago she gave me a small amount of money, which I thought was enough money to start a bike shop. I couldn’t have been more wrong. She gave me enough to afford, say, a reliable used car, and it turned out to be nowhere near what I needed. The first two or three years were really tough. But all of the good things that have come into my life by way of this shop would’ve gone unknown without her, and if you are standing here today, or if Yawp! has benefited you in any way over the years, then Jeanie, whom you probably never met, holds sway over you.
Obviously we are here because of Alex Pretti. Alex was a stranger to me, but if you’re here you likely think he didn’t deserve to die, and whether you’re suffering from feelings of loss, anger, confusion, isolation, or whatever have you, you have chosen to seek community in this moment. This ride is a safe place for all of these emotions. Maybe you feel like you are going insane. You are not. We all feel insane. It is an insane time to have to live through. Whatever you’re feeling, you aren’t alone here today. This ride is happening all over the world because so many of us feel something akin to what you feel. This isn’t a protest, per se. We don’t have permits and as cyclists you know it’s dangerous out there even when you aren’t trying to block traffic. But if you are here in protest you are welcome. This is a show of support for our friends and family and fellow humans in Minneapolis who are living through what sounds and looks like hell. It is a way for us to be together when everything is scary, everybody is tense, and events seem determined to close The Doors between us. This is reckoning with a killing that, had it happened in a different instant, could have happened to someone you love but haven’t yet lost, or to you. It is how I choose to let Alex, in his death, hold sway over me. Or, in the annoyingly astute words of John Donne, “Each man’s death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind. Therefore, send not to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.” John Donne died in 1631, which was I think before women existed, or I’m sure he’d have included you in his poem, too.
I’m going to pour one out for Jeanie, and for Alex Pretti, and for everyone on my list of departed and yours. That cousin of yours who drowned or the friend who committed suicide. The non-Hodgkins lymphoma. The ladder mishap. The heart attack. The trundle bed accident. The government sanctioned homicide. None of it makes sense. The only thing that does make sense is coming to the aid of others.
In the annoyingly relevant words of someone else deceased, “I woke up this morning and I got myself a beer, because the future’s uncertain and the end is always near.”
A moment of silence, please. [Pour out beer.]
Let’s ride bikes and enjoy this day.
