The ghost bike on Roxboro has a way of creeping up on a viewer. This bike is provocative for its ability to hide so easily within its environment while still representing a body. The ghost bike ought to stand out – as a white fixture on a green and brown landscape, and as a meaningful symbol of a body now gone. However, by merit of its location – slightly removed from the road – as well as its weathering process, this ghost is nearly invisible at times. Although the bike stands as a monument to a fallen cyclist and as such carries the responsibility of remembrance, this ghost bike is not immune to the elements. Its white paint is chipping with time, and the pieces of it like sections of the fabric flowers are slowly falling off to add to its surroundings.
The ghost bike is a fixture in its environment. And yet, the bike is no longer the foreign object it once was in relation to its environment, but now it is one with its setting, as we can see from the vines wrapping around its frame and the and the weather taking its toll on the bike’s condition.
Not only is the bike a fixture in its environment – it is also a very physical embodiment of an entanglement between a body and its surroundings. The bike, a monument, is representative of its history – a cyclist, his environment, and fatal circumstances. This death did not happen in a vacuum, after all. But, this is a dynamic entanglement. Should someone approach the bike, move it, repaint it, take it down altogether, what does this do for the environment? Should we be excluded from the bike’s narrative if we have nothing to do with the death that occurred on the corner of Roxboro and Chateau? Because that spot on the corner where a cyclist was killed won’t revert to what it was before the collision.
Both the bike’s environment and the bike itself are evidence of time passing by. The paint is chipping to reveal the formerly red exterior, and the black of tires peeks through the white. But the bike is not losing its meaning with each passing day; it cannot just revert to a bike, a non-memorial. Rather, time passes, and the bike increasingly blends, entangles, with its surroundings. What does it mean that this memorial to an injured body is wearing away? What does this mean for Tony Turner and for the space that the bike has created? This bike has a created a unique bond between a past event, a body, and the extant environment, and it has transformed the way we as viewers will consider this space. As time passes, the bike also changes with its environment, and it is still unknown how this bike’s meaning may alter with its surroundings.