‘Bikers Coming Through’ ride to the aid of health workers
IT SOUNDS like a code or something pilots could relay to a control tower, but “Bravo Charlie Tango” is a message of urgency.
In the NATO phonetic alphabet it stands for BCT, shorthand for ‘Biker Coming Through’. On more than 3,000 occasions over the past few weeks, that biker coming through has been carrying vital emergency supplies to hospitals, nursing homes and care settings across the country.
Bravo Charlie Tango [BCT] is made up of 1,000 like-minded bikers.
“There is this wild romantic idea of bikers as this typical Hells Angels type,” explains the group’s founder, Merv Colton. “We are far from it. In many cases we are just grey-haired middle-aged auld fellas.
“A lot of our calls would be from places where their normal supplier has had issues and they are caught short for a couple of days and need a few boxes of gloves to get them through.”
Once a request is made, one of BCT’s four dispatchers uses WhatsApp messaging groups to alert riders. Usually the requests are quite small, and will fit in a pannier or box on the side of a motorbike.
Last week orders were brought from Dublin to Cork, Roscrea to Moycullen and about 80 other destinations. Last Friday, 3,000 gowns were taken to Tullamore.
A week earlier, riders were dispatched to a tulip farm in Wicklow to pick flowers that would otherwise have wilted. They were then delivered to local nursing homes. “Small things like that make a difference to people stuck inside during all of this,” says Merv.
Tracking down those supplies is tricky and the group have had to be creative to find PPE.
Gloves have been sourced from beauticians, aprons found with farmers who use them to clean out milking machines and other PPE has been found with businesses forced to shut when the lockdown was imposed.
One of the dispatchers orchestrating the deliveries is Merv’s sister Lynda, who is based south of Milan in Italy, where she has lived for 26 years.
“I have WhatsApp open for dispatching riders and a spreadsheet for keeping track of the supplies and deliveries. I might as well be in Tullamore or Cork or anywhere,” she said.
“I enjoy the banter, the texts and I have made new friends through this. I want it to be over because the virus [is terrible] but I will miss the people afterwards.”
People are at the heart of what BCT does. It is made up of an eclectic mix. Derek Sheils builds gearboxes for a living but has a passion for racing bikes. He has competed in the Isle of Man and races internationally.
Another who has been making deliveries is child care provider and grandmother Mide Emans.
She has been riding around the world one leg at a time. She previously biked the infamous Road of Bones in Siberia and was due to travel to Kyrgyzstan, in central Asia, this summer. Now she gets her fix by helping BCT but knows it’s not really about the bikes.
“I did a clear-out at work and found some boxes of gloves. Merv told me a nursing home needed them.
“I went to this nursing home. A nurse came out, all gloved and masked. I don’t know what her name was but you would think I had given her a winning Lotto ticket and it really got me.
“This is a couple of boxes of wipes or gloves and this is how important it is to them. That sucked me in more, so then you try and get the word out and make it easier for people to donate by picking up stuff so it can be distributed to who needs it most.”
‘Orders were brought from Dublin to Cork to Moycullen’