Riders in black honor victims of recent bike deaths

Dressed in black and wearing orange armbands, 50 or more bicyclists crowded a traffic median on Snelling Ave. in St. Paul Saturday morning just a few blocks into a 14-mile memorial ride to honor four cyclists killed in collisions with motor vehicles last month. The group set off from Snelling and Summit avenues — near the site where the latest fatality took place a week ago — headed for Gold Medal Park in downtown Minneapolis. There, riders were set to meet another group riding 14 miles from Blaine, the site of a fatal Sept. 22 bike-motor vehicle crash. The memorial ride was announced after a Sept. 28 “ghost bike” ceremony was cancelled because a ghost bike — painted white and decorated in memory of fallen bicyclist Virginia Heuer — had already been set up near the site where Virginia Heuer died after an SUV hit her bike the day before.