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Man sets out on motorized wheelchair for charity

Jasmina Meyer, Highlands Today

Dusty Franz rides on the sidewalk down U.S. 27 North near Lake Jackson during the first day of his two-week journey through central Florida on Friday in Sebring.

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By BRAD DICKERSON

Highlands Today

Published: November 7, 2009

SEBRING - Dusty Franz will spend the next two weeks speeding down the shoulders and sidewalks of central Florida's roadways at five miles an hour.

The Ruskin resident is not traveling by car, but rather a motorized wheelchair. His journey started Friday morning from the Sebring Moose Lodge and will take him 200 miles through Highlands County, Lake Wales, Winter Haven, Lakeland, Brandon and finally back home.

Covering between 12 and 15 miles every day at 5 mph, Franz estimated he'd be back in Ruskin on Nov. 21. He set out on this journey as a fundraiser for the Moose Legion's charities, which benefits children who are without parents or come from broken homes and senior citizens who are in need of assistance.

The title is simple enough: Dusty's Ride.

"My wife thought I was crazy for doing this, because of my physical shape that I'm in," Franz said. "It was just something that I thought I had to do at this point."

Four years ago, Franz's life was forever changed when he was seriously hurt in a car accident. The U.S. Air Force veteran underwent 12 surgeries, with the most recent on Aug. 20, and has two more to go.

Franz suffered a spinal cord injury and lost all movement from the waist down.

"Certain things inside are shut down," he said. "My stomach's shut down, and there's one surgeon in the state that's working with this pacemaker, like they do for your heart, and they put it on my stomach and they're trying this out to make sure that I can get food down."

Franz was on a feeding tube until a month ago and underwent a dramatic weight loss, dropping from 206 to 123 pounds.

Since starting to eat solid foods again, things have improved.

"Right now, I'm doing good," Franz said. "I'm up to 136. Gaining weight slowly."

A portion of the money raised will go toward helping other veterans.

Slow ride ... take it easy

Dave Schaaf will be with Franz every mile of the way. He and another man will be driving a pace van as their friend burns tires on sidewalks and shoulders.

"Not that it's hard driving five miles an hour in a van, but the whole point being the two of us will be with him the whole time," Schaaf said.

Franz, a member of the Ruskin Moose Lodge, estimates it will take him about four or five hours to complete his daily mileage. After that, he and his team will stop at other Moose lodges along the way back home.

Nurses will be checking on him throughout the trip and his chair will be recharged every night once the day's ride is finished.

With all that time spent in the chair by himself, Franz will have to come up with creative ways to fight boredom. When he started the ride on Friday, there was not an iPod in sight.

"I am going to sing an awful lot of songs in my head," he said.

"We'll beep the horn every once in a while to make sure he's still awake," Schaaf added.

An idea is born

Dusty's Ride started taking shape five months ago. Franz wanted to help raise money for the Moose Charities, but his physical limitations were a problem.

"This is what I can do," he said. "I can do this, and I thought, well, I'll just make this little ride. Well, my little ride originally was going to be maybe 70 miles and that was going to be huge. And then, it just ... it blew up."

Franz has no set goal for the fundraiser and will continue accepting donations throughout the ride.

It was on the drive into Sebring Thursday that the "enormity of what we're doing" hit him.

"I mean, (it got) to the point I couldn't stop talking about it," Franz said. "I got on I-75, I think it finally just hit me; holy smokes, what have you got yourself into?"

Highlands Today reporter Brad Dickerson can be reached at 863-386-5838 or bdickerson@highlandstoday.com

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