THE FORECAST CALLS for storms.
It’s the day before the last Bo Bikes Bama, our final opportunity to ride our bikes with the greatest athlete of all time. In our hotel room in Auburn, my teenage son, Austin, reassembles his road bike, broken down and carefully packed for the flight from Idaho.
After 14 years, the motleyest fondo in cycling is coming to an end. When we lived in Alabama, our family did Bo Jackson’s charity ride every single year. Over the past seven years, we’d missed the spring ride and the community it created. Hearing this year was The Final Ride, my son and I planned a homecoming trip for the bittersweet victory lap.
Austin was 6 the first time he did Bo Bikes Bama. I towed him in a Burley bike trailer as he passed out Easter eggs. At 8 he was the youngest rider to pedal the 20-mile loop around Auburn, crushing the hills and becoming an unofficial mini-mascot. At 9, he raced a boy up the climbs, shook Bo’s hand, and mailed him a hand-written thank you note:
I think it is great that an NFL player star like you takes the time and energy out of your day to do this. In a few years I might be able to catch up to you! … Thank you for putting on Bo Bikes Bama. Your fre friend, Austin Freyer
Then we moved to Idaho. Seven years flew by. Austin elongated into a lean, taut 17-year-old cyclist on a national devo team, training 15 hours a week for mountain bike nationals. He’ll finally be able to catch up to Bo. That is, if it doesn’t storm.
“One hundred percent chance of rain,” a volunteer says. “Like an inch. At least.”
If lightning strikes, the ride will be cancelled. If not, we’ll ride in the rain. In 14 years of Bo Bikes Bama, they’ve never once had bad weather. Maybe the lucky streak has run out for an outdoor event held at the peak of tornado season in the heart of Dixie Alley.
It is muggy but not yet raining, so we take our bikes on a spin around Auburn. Bo Jackson is ever present: on a ’90s “Bo Knows” poster in a sneaker boutique; in a photo in the local bike shop; embodied as a bronze statue in front of Jordan-Hare Stadium.
I’m a University of Alabama grad, but I’m far from the only Crimson Tide fan with a soft spot for Auburn’s most famous Heisman Trophy winner. If I had to pick one athlete for my son to look up to — in any sport — it would be Bo Jackson. Not for his ability to bulldoze a wall of linebackers, bat the stadium lights out, or snap a bat over his head like a twig. As superhuman as those feats may be, I admire the human side of Bo not everybody knows.
As we roll past Toomer’s Corner, I check the forecast. Slight chance of severe weather. It would be a bummer to fly 2,000 miles only to get stormed out. But then, it would be a fitting end to a ride that exists because of a storm.
APRIL 27, 2011 was the deadliest day of the biggest tornado outbreak on record. The three-day storm unleashed 349 tornadoes on 21 states, from Texas to New York. Of the 324 people killed, 252 died in Alabama, our former sweet home, and the state where Vincent Edward Jackson grew into the legend we know as Bo.
In Alabama, it’s hard to find anyone who doesn’t remember the day when 62 tornadoes raked the state. The awful winds peeled roads from the earth, crumpled steel buildings like wads of foil, and hurled an SUV like a matchbox car into a water tower. In a typical year, only one EF-5 — the biggest tornado — is recorded in the U.S. On this day, there were four.
Thirteen minutes is the average time between tornado warning and impact. When the sirens wailed over Birmingham, my husband grabbed a mattress and I buckled a bike helmet on our 4-year-old son. In our laundry room — the smallest room, lowest floor, middle of the house, away from windows and doors — we huddled around Austin.
The power flickered out. In the dark, we watched on our phones as the Tuscaloosa tornado blendered toward us, live on the Birmingham sky-cam. Meteorologist James Spann told our neighborhood to take cover. I thought: What do you say to your child if it’s the last thing he ever hears?
That tornado stayed on the ground for 80 miles, inhaling homes and chicken coops and spitting them out like shrapnel. That single tornado — one of six or seven on the ground at once — killed 65 people and injured 1,500.
It missed us by 8 miles.
Elsewhere, people were crushed or beaten to death by shards of homes they trusted to protect them. The swiftly moving monster scoured mile-wide swaths of emptiness, scarring the land with tracks so big they could be seen from space.
From the ground, it looked like some supersized bush hog had mowed indiscriminate corridors through the Alabama pines. Small-town sidewalks glittered with broken glass, and churches collapsed into piles of brick.
Tornadoes are the Russian Roulette of natural disasters. In hurricanes, floods and earthquakes, the damage is more evenly distributed. Tornadoes are acutely erratic, wiping one home off the face of the earth, but leaving the house next door unscathed. Those of us spared are haunted. Why them? Why not us?
This was life-altering. But outside of the South, many people have no memory of this storm. A few days later, Osama bin Laden was killed. Weeks later, an EF-5 tornado wiped out Joplin, Missouri. The media moved on.
Bo Jackson had long ago moved with his wife and kids to Chicago. But he still has extended family in Alabama, and often comes back to visit. He wanted to help his home state.
That year, while watching the Super Bowl, he dreamed up an offbeat idea: a charity bike ride. He’d pedal across the state, leading a philanthropic peloton like Forrest Gump on a bike. Wherever he goes, the media follows, so he’d tow them through badly hit areas. Their cameras would draw attention — and help — to forgotten rural towns.
The route would begin in northeast Alabama, in the foothills of the Appalachians. Like a stage race, it would advance in segments, around 50 miles a day, through a devastated landscape. This five-day tour de tornado would launch before the one-year anniversary of the storm.
For serious road cyclists, 50 miles is a weekend ride. For non-cyclists, riding 50 flat miles is a pretty tall order. Pedaling 50 hilly miles — for five days in a row — is grander than a fondo. Some might call it a sufferfest.
This was back before e-bikes. Bo pedaled a custom carbon-fiber Trek Madone — a different one each day of the ride — to be auctioned off later to raise money for the Alabama Governor’s Emergency Relief Fund. He invited celebrity athlete friends to join him. It was a Level 1 recovery ride for Lance Armstrong. But Ken Griffey Jr., Picabo Street, Al Joyner, Scottie Pippen and actor André Holland huffed and puffed on the struggle bus with the rest of us mortals.
One of my favorite fellow mortals, Brittney Whorton, has ridden all 14 years of Bo Bikes Bama and raised more than $3,000. That first year, she rode through tears, thinking about her brother. On April 27, 2011, she’d been sitting at a baseball game in Auburn when her phone blew up with photos of Tuscaloosa. Her brother lived two blocks from Bryant-Denny Stadium and worked near McFarland Boulevard and 15th Street — ground zero.
She called and called, but the lines were either down or overloaded. More than a day went by without knowing whether her brother was dead or alive. Finally, her phone lit up with a text: I’m okay. It’s bad. I don’t have power. Hope this makes it out.
Brittney rode the final day of the first Bo Bikes Bama, rolling through forests of wind-warped trees, past homes that looked as if they’d been bombed. “Less than a mile in, I just started crying,” she remembers. “You’re met with people cheering with shakers, holding signs, clapping and yelling, ‘Thank you!’ I cried the entire day for one reason or another.”
She and I were there when Bo stopped the group — 200 riders or so — at a place he called “the blender,” where a lonely set of porch steps led to nothing more than sky. She stared at a tangle of fallen trees and noticed two flashes of light: rearview mirrors of vehicles buried under the trees. She turned to Picabo Street, her childhood hero, and said something Picabo would later repeat in a speech at the end of the ride:
“I wish that everybody could see this devastation in this manner. When you’re going 50 miles an hour, it’s easy to miss the little things. When you’re going 15 miles an hour, everything looks different. It’s so much more impactful.”
The ride ended with a party in Tuscaloosa, the biggest Alabama town hit by the storm, torn asunder by the EF-4 tornado that missed the University of Alabama campus by less than a mile. Tuscaloosa is the home of the Crimson Tide, the bitterest rival of Jackson’s alma mater. As I wrote in “What Stands in a Storm,” Bo’s choice to end in T-town was a pretty magnanimous move:
Alabama is a state where college football is a few prayers shy of religion, where a family containing fans of both the Auburn Tigers and the Crimson Tide is a house divided. This is a place where “Roll Tide!” and “War Eagle!” can mean anything from “Congratulations on the birth of your first child!” to “Fie upon thee, thou wretched miscreant! A curse upon your children’s children!”
In this stretch of the Bible belt, loving thy enemy as thyself is one thing. But loving the other side of the Iron Bowl is a job for Bo Jackson and Jesus.
BO BIKES BAMA starts with a Friday night reception and silent auction. It turns into a scrum of neck hugging, toasts and grip-and-grin photos with people who haven’t seen each other since the previous Bo Bikes Bama. It’s also the time to ask your favorite celebrity for a photo. Past superstars included Cam Newton, Scottie Pippen, Brian Bosworth and an occasional actor like Ben McKenzie from “Gotham” and “The O.C.” This year’s A-listers are Desmond Howard, Melvin Gordon and Ken Griffey Jr.
Every year, Bo also makes a speech and a toast. As one who overcame a childhood stutter, he speaks slowly and deliberately. Always from the heart, no notes.
“I never thought this would go on as long as it has,” Bo says tonight. “People around the planet know that we here in this state do things to help each other.”
During the era of Bo Bikes Bama, more than 10,750 riders have collectively ridden 380,000 miles and raised nearly $3.5 million. The money has been used to rebuild homes and construct dozens of community tornado shelters in the state. But Bo also built something that money can’t buy.
“We built a real community around this ride,” Bo likes to say. “We’ve become a family.”
Bo waves his longtime manager, Becky Daniel, onto the stage and drapes a muscular arm around her thin shoulders. “She’s like my second wife,” he says. “The only people who are allowed to call me out are my wife and Becky.” He acknowledges her as one of “the MVPs” of Bo Bikes Bama, along with core team members Rebecca Falls, Julie Ward and Rylee Roquemore. All women — no coincidence. It’s a nod to being raised by a single mother who worked three jobs to bring up 10 kids in a three-bedroom house. These women have run this show in health and in sickness — colon cancer, breast cancer and a double mastectomy — showing up for Bo on days when they might have called in sick.
Longtime event-team members Todd VandeBerg and Adam Kostichka join the women in presenting Bo with a gift: an Auburn-colored Madone, displayed in a giant wood frame. It’s the bike he rode the first day of the first ride, bearing the names of the 252 Alabamians who died.
On the bike he will ride this year, a line from the Bible is printed on the top tube, with a slight edit: I am my brother’s and sister’s keeper.
“I’m not ending the philanthropic things I do for this state,” Bo tells the crowd. “We’re just going to move on and do something else.”
A gust of wind and a few drops of rain signal the evening’s close. Folks tip back their plastic cups and cans of Bo Bikes Bama Session IPA as Bo reminds us why we are here.
“Let’s try to put some sunshine in someone else’s cloud.”
CRAWLING INTO BED, I check the weather. A tornado has touched down in Texas, along with hail “as big as baseballs.” Instability, muggy air from the Gulf — key ingredients of tornadoes — are drifting into place.
“Heads-up to anyone in the deep South to mid-Atlantic,” a meteorologist warns. “We do have a severe weather threat possible of producing large hail, tornadoes and damaging winds.”
The next morning around 5 a.m., I pull open the curtain and stare into the steel-wool pre-dawn. It isn’t raining — yet — but the clouds hang low and heavy.
At that moment, less than a mile away, at Neville Arena, ride director Rebecca Falls is frowning at her phone. Her radar app shows a line of red-and-yellow splotches marching west across Alabama. A squall line. Headed straight for Auburn.
The ride is scheduled to roll in two hours. Precisely when the nasty band of thunderstorms is due to crash the party, bringing lightning, rain, hail and 30 to 40 mph winds.
Rebecca, born and raised in Tuscaloosa, has seen what the sky can do. Not only when T-town was hit in 2011, but again just seven months ago, when a hurricane ravaged her neighborhood in Asheville, North Carolina.
On September 27, 2024, Category 2 Hurricane Helene barreled into North Carolina, obliterating thousands of trees, flooding homes, triggering mudslides and killing more than 100 people. A month after the storm, some roads were still undrivable. The hardwood forests looked like they’d been thrashed by a giant weed-whacker. Friends showed up at Rebecca’s house with chainsaws and helped her clean up. Much was lost. But loss and love have a way of revealing what cannot be destroyed.
Now, as another storm approaches Auburn, she agonizes over the decision she has to make: Cancel the ride, and end an era on a sad note? Or send 1,300 riders out into the unpredictable weather?
Around 5:15 a.m., her phone rings. She holds her breath as a meteorologist from the National Weather Service delivers an updated forecast. Auburn will shortly be hammered by wind, rain and hail. But the storm should blow through by 7:30 a.m., and in its wake will be innocuous rain. If she delays the start by 45 minutes, the ride can go on.
At the original start time, a dark, wedge-shaped cloud knifes through the sky over Jordan-Hare Stadium. To some, it feels like an omen. To others, a poignant echo of why we are here. On this, the 14th anniversary of the storm, the sky forces us to remember.
Fifteen minutes before the new start, the winds die down and the rain begins. “Sweet Home Alabama” echoes through the parking lot, where hundreds of cyclists in Gore-Tex roll to the starting chute through puddles.
From the warm and cozy VIP suite, Ken Griffey Jr. walks outside, squints into the rain, and shakes his head.
“No chance. Too cold. Past my bedtime.”
BO JACKSON WAS 4 or 5 when he learned to ride a bike around his neighborhood streets in Bessemer, Alabama. The eighth of 10 siblings — nine living under one roof at once — he grew up in a three-bedroom house with no plumbing, sharing a bed or sleeping on the floor. Some mornings, he’d wake up with burns on his butt from bumping against the gas heater.
He and his buddies discovered a passion for stealing bikes. “We called ourselves the Bike Bandits,” he wrote in his memoir, “Bo Knows Bo.” “I could steal a bike, take it home and, within an hour and a half, strip the bike, throw it in a fire, burn the paint off, spray-paint it a different color, and then ride it down the street, doing wheelies past the house I stole it from.”
It wasn’t until retirement that he started riding a road bike. After the 1991 hip injury that eventually ended his career, running was painful. To stay fit, he started cycling.
“It’s another way to keep my back and legs strong,” he told me in 2013. “It’s a very social exercise.”
He mostly rides in Illinois, on bike paths around Chicago. “You can get on a bike path, get into the forest reserve, and probably cross a street three times,” he says. “You don’t have to deal with traffic. We have dirt paths, too.”
His first “big” ride was Bo Bikes Bama. That first day hurt the worst. A hill in Guntersville caught him by surprise. He knew that hill from a car, but it was bigger on a bike.
“That first day, I got a cramp,” he recalls. “I made it to my room, showered, and when I got up it hit me, right above my knee. I was screaming like a little kid! Pickle juice was my savior. I drank that every morning and evening.”
One of my favorite things about that first year was seeing some of the world’s best athletes willing to ride out of their comfort zone. Here was Olympic gold medalist skier Picabo Street, red-faced and cussing her way up a hill some dudes had to walk. And Ken Griffey Jr., not too proud for a shuttle ride up a climb. And 1984 Olympic triple-jump gold medalist Al Joyner, smiling through the pain. On a bicycle, they were human.
And then there was Lance. At one rest stop, he quipped, “Bo don’t know hills.”
Bo’s reply: “I could get him on a baseball and football field and say, ‘Lance don’t know Jack about anything!'”
Like most people my age, I remember the “Bo Knows” commercials of the 1990s, like the one where he rolls up on a road bike and says, “Now, where’s that Tour de France thing?” Of all the sports Bo knows, I was curious why he chose cycling for his signature fund-raiser. He loves golf, and a charity golf tournament might have brought in more money with less work. Why not a celebrity baseball game — Bo Bats Bama! Why, of all things, a bike ride?
“Only a certain amount of people know how to golf,” he told me. “But everybody knows how to ride a bike.”
Many riders show up on Walmart bikes, mountain bikes, cruisers. Folks who might pedal a bike once a year will ride in jorts and sneakers. People from all walks of life — who likely would never cross paths — rally together and form real friendships.
“You can have kids from their early teens to senior citizens, and everyone is having fun,” Bo says. “It is not a race. It is what I call a celebration ride. Everybody that rides is a winner, in that they’re riding for a good cause. And that is to make the rest of the world aware that there are towns in Alabama that still need help.”
THIS YEAR, THE first 5 miles hurt the worst. The rain is sheeting down, slickening the roads, making it hard to see. At the start of the 60-mile route, the fastest riders jockey for position next to Bo. Austin and I pull ahead, not trusting the wheels of strangers.
The plan: Ride together for the first 12 miles, until the first rest stop. That’s where Bo visits with fans, then gets shuttled back to lead out the more casual 20-mile ride. I’ll join Bo, and Austin will continue solo on the 60-mile loop. We’ll reconnect at the final aid station — where both routes merge — and finish together.
I had packed an extra rain jacket, but Austin had waved it away. He is now soaked to the bone and shivering. He needs a more combustible pace.
“Mind if I go on ahead?” he asks.
“Of course,” I say. “Get warm and be safe. Don’t wait for me.”
Bo is somewhere behind me, surrounded by a group of MAMILS (Middle-Aged Men In Lycra). I don’t want to lose him. I pull over to wait. He passes at a mellow pace, and I start pedaling again.
But as I try to catch up, he pulls away. I haven’t been in race-shape for years, but by golly I’m a cyclist, and my strength-to-weight ratio should help me catch a running back twice my size. I set my legs on fire, only to watch his NFL silhouette vanish in a curtain of rain.
Humbled, I console my limping ego: Not everyone has the honor of being dropped by Bo Jackson.
We catch up at the rest station, where Bo and Desmond are immediately swarmed by fans. Watching the clock, Bo’s handlers nod: time get in the shuttle. Bo climbs into the towel-covered front seat, but Desmond Howard is still chatting with fans. Bo shakes his head. “He can gossip like a Golden Girl!”
“Hey Des!” Bo yells. “Desmond! Are you walking back or you riding on? We gonna leave your ass, man!”
“That was an adventure,” Desmond says, climbing in the backseat beside me. “That was a first for me. That was pretty cool.”
“What, riding in the rain?” Bo says. “It cools you off, man!”
“It was a nice experience — it really was. Even when the bike in front of you is kicking up water in your face.”
“As long as it’s not thunder and lightning,” Bo says, “I prefer to ride in the rain.”
“My wife goes, ‘You must really love Bo. You ain’t never rode in the rain!'”
This is my favorite part of Bo Bikes Bama: hearing extraordinary people talk about ordinary things. Weather. Fishing. Cooking. Kids — bragging and pretending to complain about them, just like the rest of us.
Bo has three grown children: two sons and a daughter named Morgan, who ran track and competed in gymnastics. She is engaged to the first suitor who (according to Morgan) her dad has ever liked. Bo calls him “a nice young man” and they golf together. But like every father in the history of brides, he is taking customary pleasure in griping about the wedding. Which will take place in (knowing look) November.
“He’s obviously not a football guy,” Desmond says, sighing.
“No,” Bo says. “He played basketball”
“So is the wedding going to be in Chicago?”
“I tried to get it at the house. They said, Nah, that’s not going to work. So I’m going around the country, doing sports shows to pay for this damn wedding,” Bo says. He spins around in the front seat. “Hey, do y’all got work? I’ll mow grass. I’ll come and wash your car!”
The shuttle erupts with laughter.
“For this damn wedding and the honeymoon,” Bo says. “Bro, oh man, they’ll use up all my Marriott points for the room in Maui. I’m like, all them points. Just like that — gone.”
So what does Bo do for fun?
“Sit and sleep,” he says. “Rest of the time, I’m traveling all over the country. I fantasize about stuff I want to do to have fun. Like get my boat out and go fishing. I bought a motorized kayak during the middle of COVID. Do you know it’s never been out on the water?”
“What would you fish for?” I ask.
“Everything. Anything! I just want to get it out, crank up the motor, and get out on the river or the lake and fish,” he says. “But I don’t have the time.”
“If you could go fishing for anything, anywhere,” I ask, “where would you go?”
“I would go to the North Pole, fish with a reindeer horn and a jig with the Inuits.”
AT THE FINAL rest stop, Austin finds me chatting with friends eating hot wings. I am thrilled that we’ll get to finish the ride together, as we’d planned.
We rarely ride together anymore. He’s always training, and I can’t keep up. So the last few miles are a gift to me — a memory with my son. We chat and keep our eyes peeled for The Hill — the one he had crushed as a little kid in the moment that made him, in the words of one volunteer, “like a legend around here.”
On a rough stretch of pavement in a tunnel of trees, I notice Bo riding in front of us. Alone.
“Now’s your chance!” I tell Austin. “Go ride with him!”
Looking pro in his Donovan Racing kit, but with the shyness of a teenage boy, my son catches up to Bo Jackson. From behind, they look like a bull and a gecko.
“Hey, Bo,” Austin says, feeling awkward. “I’ve been doing this ride since I was a little kid.”
“I remember you!” Bo says. “I remember you.”
“Thank you for putting on his ride,” Austin says.
“You’re welcome,” Bo says and smiles.
A few miles later, we spot The Hill. I mama-nag Austin to crush it.
“Take off,” I say. “Meet me at the top!”
In the final mile, a rider blasts by us. It’s Desmond Howard, coming in hot.
“Let’s catch him!” I tell Austin.
“Hop on, mom,” Austin says. I hop onto his wheel and tuck into his wind-shadow.
The rain has stopped, but the road is still wet, and I can taste the asphalt-flavored spray from his tires. My heart swells with a milestone moment: This is the first time I’ve ever drafted off my kid. Eleven years ago, I was towing him. Now he’s pulling me.
We catch Desmond at the last turn before the finish line.
“Hey Desmond!” I say, and he looks up and smiles. “This is the kid I was telling you about!”
We ride bar to bar and Austin snaps a selfie of the three of us in front of the stadium. We cross the finish line together.
IN THE VIP suite after the race, I chat with Melvin Gordon. He’s accustomed to grown men coming up to him and fangirling. But his friends are making fun of him, because he’s only now realizing what a big deal Bo Jackson is.
“I knew… I mean, it’s Bo Jackson. But like, I didn’t know. It took ’til today. I told him, ‘I didn’t didn’t know you were like Jesus.’ A lady literally told me that. She’s like, ‘Bo Jackson, he’s like Jesus here!'”
A waiter in Birmingham says more or less the same thing that night when I pick up takeout in our former hometown. “I’m an Alabama fan,” the waiter says. “But I love Bo Jackson!”
We’re going to visit with old friends before we fly out in the morning. I’ve ordered food and put an open invitation on Facebook to come visit in our hotel lobby.
One of the friends I’m looking forward to seeing is Michelle Downs Whatley, one of the central characters in “What Stands in a Storm.” We haven’t seen each other in a decade, though we’ve kept in touch, our lives forever bound by a storm and a story.
On April 27, 2011, Michelle was a senior at Mississippi State in Starkville. Her big sister, Danielle Downs, was preparing to graduate from the University of Alabama with a social work degree. They had recently tried on dresses for Michelle’s wedding, just 10 days away. Danielle was the Maid of Honor.
As the atmosphere boiled with supercells, both college towns were under tornado watches and warnings. On Alabama’s ABC 33/40, a massive black funnel was live on the skycam, targeting Tuscaloosa. The sisters texted feverishly:
5:02 Danielle There’s a f—ing huge tornado heading to downtown Tuscaloosa
5:04 Michelle I’m at my place and clay is on campus. so far we are ok. are you safe?
5:06 Danielle Good good im at the house … im just getting sick w/this tornado its on the skycam on the news and its heading to downtown and campus
5:08 Michelle oh my gosh! Be careful!
5:09 Danielle Its very big michelle u know how I don’t get scared w/these but this is huge…
In her house in Tuscaloosa, Danielle was huddling under the stairs with two college friends, Loryn Brown and Will Stevens. Loryn, a sports broadcasting student and the daughter of a UA football player, was sobbing into her phone: “Mama, I’m scared!” Will, a three-sport high school star on a baseball scholarship to Stillman College, was holding Loryn’s hand.
At that moment, across town, two twentysomething storm chasers were driving toward the tornado, trying to catch it on film.
“There it is! There it is!” Nate Hughett yelled, zooming in with a shaky hand. “You can see the debris in the air! That thing is massive!”
The driver, Ryne Chandler, sped down the interstate, trying to get behind it. Then realized they were in its path.
“We need to go faster!” Nate screamed. “It’s coming right at us!”
Ryne Chandler jammed the car in reverse and stomped on the gas. They sped backward down the interstate, filming the tornado — a mile and a half wide — as it tore through Tuscaloosa.
“It’s crossing the interstate right where we were!”
Minutes later, Michelle stopped hearing back from Danielle. Days later, she would identify Danielle’s body by her Joan of Arc necklace.
Now, 14 years later, here we are, brought together by a storm. Haunted by the memories, but not wanting the world to forget.
Nate Hughett strides up to me in the hotel lobby and introduces himself. We’ve never met in person. Michelle and I had spent hours together, crying the ugly cry as we worked to bring her sister to life on the page. We text every year on the anniversary of the storm and on Danielle’s birthday.
Storm chaser on my left, survivor on my right, we sit down to share a meal.
I ask Nate how he felt, thinking back on that day.
“Obviously, it was a tragic day,” he says. “But for me personally, it was one of the best days of my life.”
I feel Michelle wince and turn away.
The last scene of their storm-chasing video — which has 4.7 million views — shows the chasers pulling up to a ravaged neighborhood minutes after impact. A woman stumbles out of the wreckage, screaming for help. That’s when the chasers turned the camera off and started digging people out.
The driver, Ryne Chandler, spent the following weeks clearing roads with a chainsaw and thinking, If this ever happens again, I’d love to know how to help. Today, he’s a professional firefighter and first responder in Tennessee.
Michelle and her husband went through with their wedding as planned, days after losing Danielle. They are doing well and raising two young girls. The oldest, 4-year-old Sydney Marie — who shares a middle name with Danielle — has started asking about her aunt. “She’s in heaven,” is no longer enough to satisfy her curiosity.
“She started asking the why and the how,” Michelle says. “I don’t want her to be fearful. Cautious is one thing. But fearful of death…”
The last time a storm came through, Sydney helped her mother pile blankets and pillows under the stairs. They put on bike helmets and waited there until it passed. Auntie Danielle did all of those things, but she and her friends still died. How do you explain that to a 4-year-old who thinks that life should be fair?
Not everything happens for a reason. But beautiful things come from our brokenness. The things that tear our world apart can reveal what holds us together.
AFTER THE RIDE, I ask Bo, “How does it feel? Are you sad?”
“A little,” he says. “It hasn’t hit me yet. It’ll hit me next week.”
My heart is already heavy. I can’t shake the feeling that something essential is coming to an end.
In a state that’s fiercely divided, in a time when the entire country seems at odds, Bo Bikes Bama brought people together across great divides.
In cycling, riding alone is the best way to fall behind. Power comes from the peloton, where riders — competing on different teams — work together toward a common goal. Individuals take turns “doing the work” up front, then peel off and rotate to the back, where they can rest in the pack’s wind-shadow. Like migrating birds in an echelon, drafting conserves energy and maximizes efficiency. Working together, we go farther, faster.
This takes trust. An implicit promise: to move steadily and predictably, and warn the riders behind you about a coming pothole or rough patch of road. Breaking this promise can cause a crash, a massive pile-up. You have to look out for others.
I am my brother’s keeper.
It’s something Bo says a lot. The phrase is an allusion to the Biblical story of Cain and Abel, a nod to the moral duty we have to care for and protect each other. Appearing on posters and T-shirts since the beginning of Bo Bikes Bama, the phrase was later revised to include sisters.
This is the Bo not everyone knows.
In college, he would stop by the Auburn Child Development center to visit troubled kids. “If I can get a child who’s in pain — physically or mentally — to smile, if I can brighten his day, that’s better than hitting a home run, better than scoring a touchdown,” he wrote in 1990. “That makes me feel like I’ve done something worthwhile.”
A few days before the announcement of the Heisman Trophy, an 11-year-old boy with leukemia was asked to make a wish before a bone-marrow transplant. Between practice and media interviews, Bo made time to meet him, granting his wish.
Every Thanksgiving and Christmas, Bo drives to the local grocery store and loads a shopping cart with turkeys and hams. They’re for his tailor, the security guards in his gated community, and other service workers who play some small role in his very big life.
“He does that for everyone that we know,” his daughter, Morgan, tells me. She and her mother, Linda, often come down from Chicago for Bo Bikes Bama. They work alongside all the other volunteers, carrying boxes, folding merch or cheering at an aid station.
“It made me see my dad in a different way,” Morgan says. She is usually spicy and funny as hell, but I hear her voice soften through the phone.
She knows the dad who was never too proud to play Barbies or have a tea party with his little girl. She sees the entrepreneur who runs so many businesses he doesn’t have time to hunt and fish or golf as much as he wants. She feels the love of a family man who wraps his nephews in bear hugs and kisses his grown kids, no matter how old they get.
But it took Bo Bikes Bama to see him not as her dad, or an uber-athlete, or a celebrity.
“He’s just a beautiful soul,” she tells me. “He could be doing anything he wants right now, anything in the world, and he wants to rebuild his home state. He’s a genuine human being who cares about where he comes from.”
Morgan, now 34, will soon walk down the aisle on the arm of Bo Jackson, and her daddy will probably cry when he gives his baby girl away.
I ask her, “What’s the most important thing you learned from your father?”
“Take care of the people who take care of you.”
Kim Cross is the New York Times best-selling author of “What Stands in a Storm” and a lifelong athlete who has competed in 10 sports. Find more of her work at kimhcross.com or @kimhcross on Instagram
