Bike crusaders arrive at BSA HQ despite Oklahoma and Texas storms

As deadly storms continue to rage in Texas and Oklahoma, there are some eastern Idahoans right in the middle of it all.

You’ve met them already — Dave and Joe McGrath, father and son — both Idaho Falls Army intelligence officers.

Our station first told you about them last month when they began a 1,800 mile bike ride from Idaho Falls to Texas to protest the Boy Scouts of America ban on gay troops and troop leaders.

On Tuesday night, the pair made it safely to Irving, Texas despite the treacherous storms in their path.

On Sunday, the Oklahoma sun beamed so brightly, the McGraths were a mirage on a pan-handle road.

Just a day later, a massive tornado ripped through the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore.

The McGraths may have dodged Oklahoma’s storms, but they ran right into the systems ripping through Texas.

“The weather is very unsettled here, and it’s literally frightening when you’re out on a bike,” said Dave McGrath by phone from Alvord, Texas on Tuesday.

McGrath spoke to our station by phone on Tuesday evening — hunkered down in Alvord — a tiny town about 60 miles northwest of Dallas.

“This was ground zero for the storms today,” he said. “I got hit by hail and I have bruises from it. It was like ping pong balls.”

The McGraths faced an uphill climb trying to make it to Irving, and eventually Grapevine, Texas in time for the Boy Scouts of America convention on Wednesday where they will protest a ban on gay membership — a policy the BSA has long imposed.

On Friday, supporters of the ban rallied in north Dallas.

In the early evening on Tuesday, the pair made it to BSA headquarters.