Heaven’s Angels in a dash for life

I’VE always been slightly nervous around bikers. The beards, the boots, the leathers and the attitude – all a little too threatening for a bloke more comfortable with peaceful pedal power than the menacing growl of a throbbing exhaust.

It’s probably the result of too many movies like ‘Hell’s Angels’ and ‘Mad Max’, where hairy louts with swaggering strut have perpetuated the myth of danger on two wheels – a vision inclining many of us to chart a wide berth around anything resembling a rumble of Harleys.

Such was my abiding instinct until I learned about Blood Bike, the nationwide organisation staffed entirely by unpaid volunteers who provide a free emergency service to the HSE for the transport of urgently needed blood products, X-rays and vital drugs between hospitals and medical centres.

The same agency of assistance, in fact, to which Brian O’Callaghan-Westropp (inset) gave freely of his time before tragically perishing last week in the Greece wildfires. Chosen for their dedication to a job that operates 24/7 in all weathers, Blood Bike riders undergo advanced RoSPA motorcycle training and Garda vetting before touching their throttles.

“All of us who ride motorbikes just want an excuse to get out on the open road, and it just seemed like a sound idea to combine our passion with the opportunity to do some good,” explained Mike Carty, who founded Blood Bike West in 2012 – the first group in the country.

With hospitals in the West of Ireland frequently forced to send emergency blood samples to Dublin for instant processing at exorbitant cost by taxi or courier, Blood Bikers combine efficiency and purpose to the ultimate cause where minutes can mean the difference between life and death.

“If someone presents in Galway in the afternoon with urgent blood samples, they often won’t get picked up until the next day – that’s a 24-hour delay in diagnosis.

“We can make a round trip to Derry, Cork or Dublin, and have them back by the early morning – job done long before the normal service would have even collected them and a massive saving in courier fees, taxi fares and tying up ambulances,” he says.

Saving lives, not to mention the millions of euro for the HSE, these modern day Pony Express riders have done much to shatter the often misplaced perceptions of bikers.

“Unfortunately, many people do have a negative image of bikers and assume we all go around in gangs, a stereotype that taints all of us with the same image,” Carty said.

Relying entirely on voluntary donations, all Blood Bike members donate freely of their time, crisscrossing the nation in a steadily increasing workload.

Clad in high-vis jackets and riding Honda Deauville and Kawasaki Ninja dream machines painted a distinctive yellow and red, these emergency road runners are becoming a frequent sight on the nation’s highway network. ‘Blood’ stencilled in red across the windscreen is eloquent testimony to their vital task.

Ironically, one of the biggest early obstacles faced by Blood Bike was convincing the hospitals it was genuine.

“Nobody was able to grasp that we wanted to provide the service for free,” Carty recalled. “Everybody was asking where the cost was – the notion of people wanting to give of their time for a worthy and vital cause without financial reward took some time to get across.”

So the next night you’re woken from a deep sleep by a wicked gust of rain or hail on the window, pause for a moment to ponder upon these Heaven’s Angels – the kind of people you pray you’ll never need, but thank your lucky stars they’re there when it’s nothing less than a matter of life and death.