Anybody remember Tim Killmeyer?

[PeteSC]

Don't know if he sold his Bandit, or not....but, check this out!

For Robinson woman injured 25 years ago, the open road spells freedom
Thursday, May 19, 2005

By Dan Gigler, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The image is paradoxical. A motionless body engaged in a living physics lesson, hurtling across Pennsylvania highways on a motorcycle, feeling the thrust of the engine, feeling the centrifugal pull on sharp turns, jostling on the uneven terrain, with the wind in her face and hair, like a character in a Bruce Springsteen song.

This is what 46-year-old Chris Killmeyer, a quadriplegic for more than a quarter-century, feels when she enters her "playground," a Swiss-made red ARMEC Tremola II that she dubs "her Flash," a motorcycle sidecar hitched to a 2001 BMW K1200RS driven by her husband, Tim.

"I feel free. The air feels good. It makes me feel normal," she said.

Tim, 47, bought the pristine bike on e-Bay last year for half of its estimated $40,000 sticker price. It had belonged to a man in Taos, N.M., who received it as a gift from his employer. He flew to New Mexico last year to pick it up, then rode it the 2,100 miles to Pittsburgh.

The sidecar is emblazoned with a gold lightning bolt decal and the turn signals on the bike have a bolt carved into them. Its vanity plate reads: FLASH. The Robinson couple wear matching 'Flash Gordon' T-shirts when they take the bike to cruises.

"Every person wants to look at it," Tim said, be it people with kids to "biker gang members."

"Heads turn. The other day on the road we got a thumbs up," she said.

As if on cue, a neighbor drives by and asks, "How's it running?"

"Good," Tim says.

"How you like it, Chris?"

"You know I like it," she responds with a broad smile.

They wear helmets with a two-way intercom system similar to the ones used by helicopter pilots. The high-tech headgear was borne out of necessity: Chris's ventilator tube once fell out and she couldn't immediately get Tim's attention.

It takes Tim about a half hour to load and strap in Chris and her gear before they hit the road. Her ventilator sits comfortably by her feet. The spacious 30-inch seats could seat two small passengers and offer 49 inches of legroom, giving the sidecar the feel of a bumper car or even a large bobsled. The bike is outfitted with automobile tires for added stability.

"As long as I can lift her in, we'll keep doing it," said Tim, a deacon at Holy Trinity parish in Robinson.

The Killmeyers have been riding for almost six years, since buying a used, Soviet-made Ural bike with a sidecar.

"I said, yeah, I could do that! I was always wild," Chris says.

"It's hard to find things for the two of us to do. We can't exactly go to many dances and we end up doing a lot of things where we're watching other people do things, like movies or plays," Tim said. "This is something we can do together."

Which brings us to the reality of the situation. Her accident was a complete fluke. The Killmeyers recounted Chris's injury in a 1999 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article.

Chris suffered a C-2 spinal cord injury, similar to the one suffered by actor Christopher Reeve in 1995. The injury affected a the second cervical vertebra in the neck, where her spinal cord nerves were destroyed. She lost all sensation from her neck to her toes.

On a sunny Monday in January 1980, Tim and Chris were driving to get some fast food in Green Tree before going bowling in Carrick. As Tim tried to merge onto Route 51, the car merging in front of him stopped suddenly. Tim, barely drifting forward, bumped it.

Neither Tim nor Chris wore a seat belt, and Chris' petite 5-foot-4 frame lurched forward. Her forehead hit the windshield, instantaneously ending her life as she knew it.

Unbeknownst to her at the time, then 21-years-old Chris had a congenital defect that weakened the support around her second cervical vertebra. She lacked the ligaments and cartilage crucial to protecting her spinal cord from trauma. When she bumped her head, the neck bones moved and compressed, pinching and severing nerves.

Tim gave Chris, who was gasping for air, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation until an ambulance arrived. At Mercy Hospital, she was hooked up to a breathing machine, and the doctors gave her an emergency tracheotomy. She speaks through that aperture and must time her speech to the breaths given by the ventilator.

Chris was transported to Craig Hospital in Denver, a renowned center for treating spinal cord injuries. In the midst of ski country, doctors there had witnessed many injuries similar to hers and projected that she would live, at most, another 10 years.

According to the National Spinal Cord Injury Association, even with vast advances in treatment, a 20-year-old sustaining a similar injury today would live on average for 16.6 years afterwards. Patients are extremely susceptible to pneumonia and pulmonary embolisms.

Reeve succumbed to complications from his injury in 2004 at the age of 52, nine years after the horseback riding accident which left him paralyzed.

Yet tiny Chris perseveres. She is rarely sick and has never had a bedsore in 25 years of immobility.

"She's strong as an ox," said her nurse, Patti Turino.

"Some days are good days, some days are bad. I try not to think about it," Chris said.


On good days, they've ridden to Conneaut Lake and Ohiopyle, and taken a tour of Washington County covered bridges on the bike. They can ride for up to two hours at a time, but try to do so in weather above 75 degrees, as Chris chills easily as a result of her condition. They plot the trip well in advance so they can time the stops and distance.

Tim, who once rode to the piers of Santa Monica on a solo trip, said that, this summer, they'd make their longest trip yet, to a sidecar rally in Middleburg, Pa., near State College.

"When I go out riding by myself, I'll come home and wish that she was with me," he said. "It's not as fun when you can't share the scenery or experience."

An appropriate observation, not only for riding, but for life.

[PitterB4]

Wow.  That's quite a story.  Tim was a BA member at some point?

[PeteSC]

Yeah, he rode to the first rally with 2 twelve packs of Iron city duct taped to the tank of his Naked B12!

  He used to have a URAL sidecar to take his wife for rides, now has a BMW.

  Here's an older article....

Counting blessings: On the road, their cares vanish

Tuesday, December 21, 1999

By Rachel K. Sobel, Post-Gazette Staff Writer







Zooming along the winding, rustic roads of Collier under blue skies and puffy clouds, Chris and Tim Killmeyer share nature's exhilarating thrust. Leafless trees flash by, bright sunlight follows their path. Warm autumn air rushes by their smiling faces, as their sleek new black motorcycle with sidecar cruises the hilly terrain.

   
         

The Robinson couple cherishes the jaunt. For Tim, 42, the ride cleanses his mind. For Chris, 41, the fresh air and sunshine are part of a transformation.

"I feel like everybody else, like nothing is wrong with me," she says.

Like 100,000 other Americans, Chris is quadriplegic, which means she cannot use her four limbs. Riding next to Tim in the motorcycle cab, with her ventilator tucked in the trunk, she can forget about being paralyzed and sense the freedom she knew so well growing up.

In a car accident 20 years ago, Chris suffered a "C-2" spinal cord injury, similar to the one sustained by the actor Christopher Reeve in 1995. This term describes a spot in the neck, the second cervical vertebra, where her spinal cord nerves were destroyed. She lost all sensation from there to her toes.

The Killmeyers splurged for the motorcycle a month ago, as a holiday treat and as a celebration of their inseparable lives since the accident in January 1980.

The two met at Louis Tambellini restaurant on Mount Washington in the late 1970s. He was a cook, she prepared food in the kitchen. Chris' wild spirit immediately caught Tim's eye.

"When I met her, nothing scared her -- she was willing to try anything at least once," says Tim. "She was always gutsy, she's never lost that gutsiness."

Growing up, she swung from a rope 20 feet in the air by the Monongahela Incline, jumped off roofs around Duquesne Heights, and partied.

"She did adventurous things, more than I would ever do, and she partied, I mean, she really partied," recalls Colleen, her fraternal twin sister.

Chris and Tim dated for two years before getting engaged in December 1979. They enjoyed whitewater rafting along the Youghiogheny, throwing Frisbees, playing volleyball and bike riding.

On a sunny Monday in January 1980, Tim and Chris were driving to get some fast food in Green Tree before going bowling in Carrick. As Tim tried to merge onto Route 51 from Mount Washington, the car merging in front of him stopped suddenly. Tim, barely drifting forward, bumped it.

Neither Tim nor Chris wore a seat belt, and Chris' petite 5-foot-4 frame lurched forward. Her forehead hit the windshield, causing chaos in her neck.

Unbeknownst to her at the time, Chris had a congenital defect that weakened the support around her second cervical vertebra. She lacked the ligaments and cartilage crucial to protecting her spinal cord from trauma. When she bumped her head, the neck bones moved and compressed, pinching and severing nerves.

Tim gave Chris, who was gasping for air, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation until an ambulance arrived. At Mercy Hospital, she was hooked up to a breathing machine. All her clothes lay on the floor, snipped off in a hurry, and the doctors gave her an emergency tracheotomy -- the surgical creation of a nickel-sized opening for an airway.

Now she speaks through that aperture and must time her speech to the breaths given by the ventilator. When she talks, she exhales just like anyone else. But she can't inhale on her own, so when she runs out of air in the middle of a sentence, she must wait for a breath from the machine to finish.

After the accident, Tim remained with Chris, even though she would need constant care and would be unable to have children.

"I said to God, if there's a way I can take care of my fiancee, I want to do it, and he let me," Tim says.

Two months later, Chris was transported to Craig Hospital in Denver, a renowned center for treating spinal cord injuries. In the midst of ski country, doctors there had witnessed many injuries similar to hers. They projected that she would live, at most, another 10 years.

"I fooled them, didn't I?" quips Chris.

At the hospital, she learned to accept her condition. After losing voluntary control of all of her muscles, she would not be able to walk to work, fix dinner, brush her teeth, paint portraits or even use the bathroom on her own. Chris could swallow, a process that works with smooth muscles that move involuntarily. And her heart would beat unassisted -- it also contracts and expands on its own.

She acquired a new and rigorous daily hygiene regimen. Without meticulous care, the chance of infection was great. The usual 10 or 20 minutes of showering, brushing her teeth and face washing in the morning now became two to three hours of cleaning, moisturizing and range-of-motion joint exercises.

She would need to be frequently shifted in her wheelchair or in bed to avoid bedsores. This needed to be done carefully because she could break a bone by being dropped or pushed in an awkward position. The potential for bladder infection was high, too, with catheter use. And because she could not cough, the risk of pneumonia would increase unless her trachea tube was suctioned often.

After nearly two decades of special care, assisted by Tim and round-the-clock nurses, Chris boasts an unusually strong record: no broken bones, no bedsores, no bladder infections, no pneumonia. In fact, Tim says she has been as healthy as he, discounting her paralysis.

By comparison, Reeve has dealt with a urinary infection and a broken bone since his horseback riding accident four years ago.

"The reason I think she got through this thing is that she takes good care of herself," says Tim. "But she doesn't worry about herself. She spends more time worrying about me, her sister or her nephews."

Tim and Chris happily share much of their time together. And they love it. When they wake up in the morning, Chris' nurse washes her face and body. Tim pitches in but also gets ready to help prepare the Montour Trail or go to class at Duquesne University, where he is pursuing a master's degree in religious studies.

Fortunately, all of Chris' medical care -- including $12,000 a month for nursing costs -- is paid for by insurance.

During the day, Chris often watches soap operas and gazes from their newly built sunroom into the back yard, where wild turkey, rabbits, deer and squirrels frolic. Every day, Tim goes to the grocery store for fresh ingredients to cook lunch and dinner; Chris sets the menu. At night, the couple might play backgammon or dominoes or rent a favorite movie, like "The Birds" by Alfred Hitchcock.

Most days, they are spontaneous. Partly because of the accident and to avoid disappointment, they tend not to plan far ahead. On a spur of the moment, they'll go out to lunch for Buffalo wings, shop at Robinson Town Centre, visit their nephews, or attend a matinee. They've also frequented theater: "Damn Yankees" with Jerry Lewis, "Phantom of the Opera" in Toronto, and "Cats" at the Benedum Center.

Spontaneity put them in the motorcycle. Tim was flipping through a magazine in September and liked the looks of it. Just for fun, he showed Chris, who was immediately sold. They picked up the bike in November and haven't stopped talking about it.

"When you just breeze down the road, when it's dark, it's like the bike's not even there," says Tim. "You feel like you can just touch the sky."

The motorcycle symbolizes their livelihood together, the interconnectedness of everything they do and how much they need each other. Without Tim, Chris couldn't ride around town and enjoy the intimacy of nature. And without Chris, Tim would be a lonely rider.

They have the motorcycle and each other.

[Red01]

I remember reading of Tim's purchase and a few follow-ups on ST.N where he still hangs out and posts occasionally. I didn't know he was a sidecar owner due to the special needs of his wife though.

[terrebandit]

Yep, I remember a thread at max-zuke when he bought that bike with a side car.  He told the story of riding it back from NM.  

What a neat story Pete.  Tim is one HECK of a cool guy and she, well she is one hell of a strong person!!!

Thanks for sharing that!

Dave

[Silverstreak]

It brings a tear for me. My 10 year old son is developmentally delayed. My wife and I have often talked about getting a sidecar to take him out in. I still have my first ride, an 84 Nighthawk 750S. I dropped the timing chain and messed the engine up a little. I've been thinking about fixing that one up and slapping a car on it. It's all money that I don't have. Anyways, I love the part about how normal it made her feel. My son loves motion. He has no language and only limited use of his legs but when you strap him in his car seat and take him for a drive, he looks normal.