What last week has been like........

[Sagebrush]

Over the years some of you have met a couple of dear friends of ours Charlie and Debbie West. Most recently at the Deadwood Rally last August. They are a couple that three years ago retired, shut down his civil aircraft repair business, sold their home and all the contents, auctioned off all his tools bought a 42' motor home and took up the full time RV life style.

Starting in April they returned to Spearfish, SD to begin another stint as volunteers at the D. C. Booth historic fish hatchery in Spearfish. While there Charlie began to fill ill and after several trips to the Doctors his condition deteriorated to the point that he was admitted to a hospital in Rapid City through the Emergency Room. After a series of diagnostic tests it was discovered that Charlie has late stage liver cancer. Charlie's condition is such that he cant drive and Debbie's support network, family and friends are located north of Henderson, NC just over the state line in Virginia. They determined it was best to get back Virginia.

Because of Charlie's contacts while operating his business he had another friend fly his Beachcraft Baron out to Spearfish to pick Charlie up and bring him and Debbie home. My wife, Terrie, and I volunteered to drive their motor home back from Spearfish.

The stars aligned so that the pilots schedule, our schedule and Charlies discharge from the hospital came together to allow us to leave last Sunday to fly out to Spearfish which we did.

Fueling up at the local county airport before our initial take off:

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We arrived in Spearfish nine hours later having made the trip in three separate legs. Upon arrival we checked into the local hotel then off to the campground to get an orientation with the RV from Charlie. The friends that Charlie and Debbie made in the campground had already hooked up the trailer to the RV and had the rig ready for the road. While Charlie and I went over the RV they loaded the Jeep on the trailer. We then pulled the rig out to a local strip mall parking lot near the hotel for an early Monday morning departure.

Monday morning, more friends from the campground picked us up at the motel and took us to the RV where we said our goodbyes and hit the open road for a 1900 mile trip in a strange vehicle that is someone's home that contains all their worldly possessions. No pressure there. We planned our trip to break it up into approximately 350 mile segments planning to get the RV back to Debbie Friday evening. We were not planning to use the RV to live in but stay in motels every night. We hastily had planned our trip just before we left and located hotels and desired intervals with the most important consideration being that they had to have truck, bus or RV parking.

Second night on the road at a motel in Iowa:

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The trip went well mostly without incident with the exception of our arrival at a hotel near Indianapolis where we arrived in a downpour and I had to back into an adjacent gravel parking lot. Since I can't see well even in the mirrors while backing I needed Terrie to spot me while backing. It was a tight turn and required several back and forth maneuvers to get the rig situated all the time Terrie is getting soaked to the skin. By the time we were finished she was mad as hell but being the trooper that she is she was over it by the following morning.

We made it to Charleston, WV and left the hotel Friday morning on what was supposed to be our last day on the road but while leaving the hotel the RV developed a significant thump that coincided with tire rotation. That led to a mad scramble to find a truck tire service center that could investigate our tires. My worst fear was one of the tires had broken a belt or had tread separating beginning that could lead to a blow out. A blowout on an RV can cause thousands of dollars of damage which was a scenario that I was willing to spend as much time as it took to avoid. Since we really couldn't determine which tire it might be or even front or rear we pulled all the tires starting with the rears and spin balancing them to see if any were out of round.

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We finally determined that the right front was heavily cupped and was the cause of the issue but was assured that the tire was not dangerous and would make it back to VA just fine. So at 1pm we finally left Charleston but had to stop that night in Bluefield, WV due to our delay and the heavy traffic and road construction delays we found all along the I-77 southbound lanes.

Yesterday morning we left Bluefield and finally made it to our destination in the middle of the afternoon. It took a couple of hours to get everything unloaded, unhooked and the RV positioned in Debbie's sister's back yard and set up for occupation. Mutual friends drove us home. This morning we still have to go get my vehicle from the airport parking lot and retrieve some items we left in our friends vehicle after too much celebrating a successful trip last night. The wife and I are bone weary right now but really glad we could help out friends in need.

[CYBORG]

A REAL friend indeed. (not so easy to find these days)

[Track T 2411]

So sad to hear about your friend Charlie's condition...

A REAL friend indeed. (not so easy to find these days)

Indeed!

[Rat]

Nice work.

Gord

[Whiskerfish]

So terribly sorry about your Friend

[heraldhamster]

wow, you and Terrie are both AMAZING!

all the best to Charlie & Debbie!