PINELLAS PARK, Fla. – More than 100 veterans and first responders biked through the streets of Clearwater and Pinellas Park Thursday morning as part of the Wounded Warriors Abilities Ranch’s annual “Alive Ride.”
The 11-mile bike ride begins and ends at Quaker Steak and Lube at 10400 49th St. N. in Clearwater.
While riding with a police escort, the group will cycle to local schools and businesses so students and community members can cheer them on and truly understand what local veterans have been through.
This year marks the ninth year of the bike ride, and each year it falls close to the anniversary of what U.S. Marine veteran Mike Delancey calls his “Alive Day.”
“It’s not the day I almost died, it’s the day I was reborn… my day I’m alive,” Delancey explained. “It’s the day I gave the Grim Reaper the middle finger.”
Delancey joined the U.S. Marine Corps shortly after graduating from Pinellas Park High School. During his second deployment, he was shot by a sniper while on dismounted foot patrol in Iraq.
“I remember hearing gunshots and jumping behind an earthen wall and shooting back. Then I couldn’t stand anymore,” Delancey recalled.
He remembers being shot and the moments when he waited for his comrades to come to his aid.
“Everything was going smoothly until I was loaded into the helicopter. Then I remember the pilot giving me the thumbs up and that’s the last thing I remember,” he said.
Delancey was flown to Al-Asad Air Base, where he says he suffered multiple cardiac arrests. He was then taken to a hospital in Germany and then to a medical center in Maryland, where he remained in intensive care for 41 days. In Maryland, his memory began to return, he says. Six weeks had passed.
“I was out of my element,” he said. “I thought I had to do this to get healthy.”
Delancey, who has since suffered a fifth thoracic spinal cord injury, has had to adapt to life in a wheelchair. He says he can no longer move or feel anything below his chest.
“You only realize how much you use your core when you no longer have it,” he said.
What helped him recover, Delancey says, was connecting with other veterans in similar situations. That’s one reason he founded Wounded Warriors Abilities Ranch, a nonprofit organization dedicated to getting veterans of all abilities back on track and active.
The annual Alive Day bike ride was the organization’s first event, and Delancey says he looks forward to it every year.
“Just showing the community what it means to be a veteran is a really good feeling for me,” he said.
The trip lasts on Thursday from 9:00 a.m. to approximately 10:45 a.m.
