Bicycling to New York’s ground zero

The idea began with a motorcycle ride to an annual firefighters memorial in Colorado three years ago and thoughts of making a longer trip to New York’s ground zero for the 10th anniversary of 9/11 to commemorate the 343 firefighters killed in the terrorist attack.

Santa Clara firefighter Darrell Sales mentioned it to his son, Darrell Dean Sales, who had followed him into the fire service. He suggested that he’d ride his bicycle.

Much as the elder Sales loves riding his Harley-Davidson Roadking Classic, his son’s suggestion intrigued him.

“I began thinking,” Sales said, “that I wouldn’t be a very good father to let my son do it by himself.”

And thus was conceived the Bay to Brooklyn ride, in which the Saleses, along with Santa Clara firefighter David Lombardo, will bicycle across America for 39 days, staying with fellow firefighters along the way until they roll across the Brooklyn Bridge to lower Manhattan in time for the anniversary.

“This is our way of memorializing 9/11,” the 48-year-old Sales said.

Before their Aug. 2 departure, the riders are planning a series of fundraisers, starting Thursday, to raise money for the Santa Clara Firefighters Foundation and National Fallen Firefighters Foundation. Thursday’s event is a wine tasting at Lexus of Stevens Creek.

Other fundraisers include a “cut-a-thon” at Divers hair salon in San Jose on May 22 and events June 9 at Rock Bottom brewery in Campbell and June 29 at Chevys restaurant on Winchester Boulevard in San Jose.

Brendan Harrington, Lexus of Stevens Creek’s president and general manager, said he was happy to help promote the effort.

“I think it’s a great endeavor that perfectly illustrates the kind of guys they are,” Harrington said. “It’s not about showing off or getting accolades for themselves. It’s about making a difference, and I think that’s really special.”

Like so many firefighters, Sales, who got hooked on firefighting after volunteering with a high school friend, was powerfully affected by the deaths of the 343 firefighters, most of them crushed when the burning World Trade Center towers collapsed as the firefighters rushed in to rescue trapped office workers. He wears a cap with the number 343 on it, a figure treated reverently in firehouses across the country.

Sales’ station keeps a pink granite chunk of a fallen tower and a photo of local firefighters who went east to aid the search-and-rescue effort.

“Because of the magnitude of it, everyone was affected by it,” said Sales, who was teaching a fire academy that morning. “With the fire service, it doesn’t matter where you are. It’s a family, a brotherhood.”

Darrell Dean Sales, 25, was in high school on Sept. 11, 2001, which he says made him see firefighting as “a way of life, putting others before yourself.”

He later joined San Jose’s Fire Department. But in a sign of the hard times hitting government budgets everywhere, he was laid off along with 48 other San Jose firefighters last year.

The riders’ 3,995-mile journey will begin with a pancake breakfast Aug. 2 at the Santa Clara fire station where the elder Sales works. Retired Sunnyvale fire mechanic Fred Belligan will follow in a support car.

The group will pedal north through San Francisco, across the Golden Gate Bridge and up to the Marin County Fire Department station in Tomales. From there, they head north up the coast to Florence, Ore., then east through Eugene and the Willamette National Forest in the Cascades. The riders will continue east through Idaho and to Jackson Hole, Wyo., and on through Nebraska and Iowa, through Illinois to Cleveland, and on into Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The final stretch will take them from Jersey City to New York, where they expect to arrive Sept. 10.

Said the elder Sales: “It’ll be the best adventure that we’ve ever had.”

Contact John Woolfolk at 408-975-9346.