After Hours: MWAI’s Mike Stramaglio’s Cross-Country Motorcycle Trip to Ground Zero

During his cross-country motorcycle trip fromArizonato the site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on theWorldTradeCenterinNew York City, Mike Stramaglio met thousands of people. But there was one who stood out above all others, said the MWA Intelligence president and chief executive officer.

Mike Stramaglio and his buddy Matt before starting their cross-country trek.

Stramaglio, who has been riding Harley-Davidson motorcycles for more than 10 years, accepted a friend’s invitation to join a group of Chicago firefighters on a bike trip from the Windy City to Ground Zero to mark the 10 year anniversary of the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Along the way, the group visited sites of the other attacks that took place that day: the Pentagon in Washington,D.C.and Shanksville,Pa., where United Airlines Flight 93 crashed after being attacked.

But it was at Ground Zero where Stramaglio had the encounter that made his journey seem predestined. Stramaglio’s group actually visited the site on Sept. 10, as they weren’t allowed in on the actual anniversary. That day he still met a number of first responders and family members of those lost during the attacks. The latter group included a woman who spotted Stramaglio in the crowd and went over to him. She had a lost her husband and one of her sons – both of whom were firefighters – to 9/11. After exchanging some basic pleasantries, the woman blindsided Stramaglio with a confession: “You look just like my husband,” she said.

Stramaglio was dumbstruck. The woman, it turned out, had taken Stramaglio’s appearance as a sign – a sign that her husband, though gone, was still with her in some way. “That killed me,” he says. “That was unbelievable.”

Mike and Matt before leaving New Jersey for Ground Zero.

“Unbelievable” is a word Stramaglio uses a lot to describe his voyage. Though he’s been riding bikes for a while, this was the first time he had embarked on a cross-country trip. He’d decided to make the 9/11 memorial ride because he’d lived many years on the East coast, and had known people who had been at the site of the terror attacks. “This was something I was just compelled to do,” Stramaglio explains. “It was to honor the fallen and demonstrate respect.”

Stramaglio began his ride on Aug. 30. Just to meet the firefighters inChicago, Stramaglio had to ride more than a thousand miles by himself fromArizona. Once he arrived in Chicago, he met up with a group of 300 bikers, most of them firefighters, and they began the first leg of their journey. Throughout the whole trip, Stramaglio said, the group wasn’t gifted with good weather. “It poured rain,” he recalls. “It was absolutely the worst ride you could have, which added to the seriousness of what we were doing.”

The riders exponentially added to their group throughout the trip. By the time they reached Shanksville, they were roughly 2,000 in number. Once the group arrived at the memorial in Pennsylvania, the gravity of their trip seemed even more apparent. “We were beat up and we were tired and we were weather-worn,” says Stramaglio. “It was emotionally draining and inspiring at the same time.”

When the group rode to visit the Pentagon, they began to notice something about the behavior of the other motorists. People were lining up on the side of the road to let the group of bikers roll by. “It was moving,” adds Stramaglio, “and it made the rainy, wearying journeys a bit more bearable.”

Also inspiring was the sheer number of bikers who joined the group. By the time they reached New York, the band of travelers had grown from 300 to 6,000. “It was just this fantastic human experience,” he says.

That experience continued once the group got to Ground Zero. The bikers were only given 20 minutes at the scene, but that time was unforgettable. Word of their journey traveled throughout the group of other visitors to the site.

“Hundreds of people came over to offer thanks and respect,” adds Stramaglio. “They knew we had traveled across the country and the came over and showed us this unbelievable love and respect.”

Mike's face shows the wear and tear of his cross-country trip on the road home.

Though he might make another long bike trip in the future, Stramaglio says nothing he ever does will equal the feeling of visiting those memorials to an American tragedy and feeling the warmth and love of people like the woman who saw her husband in him. “It was a once in a lifetime experience.”