Dave

I need to write this down to hopefully help me get through this.
I have this awesome friend for the last 10 years. I bought a Sea Doo jet ski in 1996 and as a result I met Dave. Dave and I decided to try a small camping trip and so we loaded the skis, we call them bikes, and headed went to Pueblo Reservoir. We launched our bikes and headed out onto the lake. Now here is the secret to our friendship with bikes, and water. We do on occasion spin and jump our bikes in the lake but as a whole we like to cruise ride and look at the shore. We left the ramp at 7am and didn’t return till 3pm that day when we were out of fuel. Some people on the shore were like WOW you have been gone all day.
The next year we decided to go on the camping biking trip again. We were set to go to Pueblo again but the night before Dave heard of a huge lake in Wyoming to go to, Glendo. Thus everything we ever knew changed forever. We went and rode the huge lake of Glendo and the second day since we had already paid for the parks pass decided to go to another lake in the area called Guernsey. We had limited fuel that day but we dropped in the lake and soon found a boat floating. We talked to the people and they said ohh with a jet ski you can get all the way to Glendo. We headed up the channel and discovered river riding.
The next year we went back to figure out this river riding. We started by modifying our bikes to hold more fuel. They have a standard 9 gallon fuel tank. We made and changed the front part of our bikes and added the capacity to now carry 16 gallons of fuel. We headed to the river. We learned to ride rapids, Kayak courses, and navigate through areas of only a foot of water.
We returned on this annual pilgrimage every almost every year for a weekend. We ended up riding Seminole Reservoir, and then from Casper, to Wallen damn of the North Platte River. We were sitting in a small park in Douglas Wyoming one afternoon when the local cop stopped by. He talked to us for a bit about our riding the bikes in the river. Then he said he had been patrolling there for 15 years and we were the first people he had ever seen ride into town on jet skis. There are tons of stories we lived through over the years that maybe someday I will have to write them all down.
Now to why I am sad and the reason for this post. Last November Dave had serious back pain. He went to the doctor and they found he had cancer in his spine. It is colon cancer that has erupted into his body that had he been checked a year earlier they might have found and he would not be in this fight today. Last night he and I got together and went out on a local lake on my sister’s boat. He and I rode around, then sat and talked then rode some more. Once it got dark we put the boat away and then got in the truck to drive home. But, instead of driving home we ended up cruising all the camp sites remembering our times and making plans to camp again with the bikes.
His cancer right now is holding. The tumors are not growing but not shrinking. They hope to maintain now and then learn how to gain on them while some new drugs are soon to be released. I pray he continues to fight as I already miss our trip and last Sunday when I went out jet skiing on the lake all I could think of was swishing he was there.
So I think I am being a bit selfish, sad, grumpy and a bit pissed at the world today. I want my river riding buddy again.