CASPER — He’s pedaled thousands of miles over the past 16 years, first on his kids’ bikes and then on electric mountain bikes as he fights multiple sclerosis and dementia.
His miles of cycling have included stops to take 18,000 photographs of his bicycle with buildings, gravestones and people in the Casper region — often just to remember where he’s been.
But with every sunrise Dennis Arner, aka “Coach,” remains fixed on his present mission in life.
“I try to make a new friend every day,” he said.
The 65-year-old with the white beard and smile can’t remember a lot of specifics about the past since dementia officially took hold in April 2009. Before that, he was diagnosed with MS in 1995.
He showed Cowboy State Daily the cover of a scrapbook titled “My Life With MS” that features two brain scans that show 50 lesions in his brain and a “black hole” that challenges his memory and wants to rob him of strength and life.
The book details information on the disease status in his body as reported by his neurologist. Arner said MS and the brain lesions grew until they led to the second diagnosis with dementia.
The second blow meant the loss of his mortgage company, lawn business, and the ability to continue a 27-year legacy of coaching kids in baseball, volleyball and basketball. His last coaching gig was on a baseball field with legs too weak to stand.
“I’ve joked with a friend who is an umpire, ‘How can you throw out a coach who is sitting on a scooter?’” Arner said.
A man who began his faith walk after yelling at God for the loss of a daughter to sudden infant death syndrome many years ago, said he now lives where he has placed his life “at (God’s) feet for the rest of the time and that’s that.”
Karla and Dennis Arner have 36 years of marriage. Thirty of years they have battled through Dennis’ MS diagnosis and the past 16 and additional diagnosis of dementia. (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily) 
Despite not being a proponent of tattoos, Dennis Arner proudly wears one on his right arm that refers to the woman he calls his “Rock.” (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily) 
Dennis Arner has made encouraging and advocating for “at-risk” teens and children a focus of his life efforts. (Courtesy Dennis Arner) 
For much of his life, Dennis Arner has been a fundraiser for various causes. In 2021, he helped spearhead a walk against MS. (Courtesy Dennis Arner)
The Journey
Arner and wife, Karla, reside in a subsidized housing apartment. The houses and businesses they owned are nothing but the past and a fading memory in Arner’s mind. After his initial MS diagnosis, he slept for nearly a year and did not work between 1995 and 1997.
“He would get up to eat and go to the bathroom, that was about it,” Karla Arner said.
But by 1997, his energy level recovered enough that Arner could revive his mortgage business. And he had a lawn care business as well.
Arner said there may have been tears at the MS diagnosis, but the dementia prognosis did not rattle him. He remembers the words of his wife on that day.
“This rock of a woman, she is sitting in that room with that doctor and a big tear came down her eye and she said, ‘I want my old Dennis back,’” he said. “I just love my wife a lot. We know that divorces are 50 percent of every marriage, right? So, when you get an incurable, debilitating disease it goes up to 75%.”
Karla Arner said her husband responded to the second diagnosis by getting on a bike.
“He started riding the kids’ bicycles at first. And then he rode my bike,” she said. “No helmet just riding the bike.”
Arner said he started riding because it is hard to walk and bikes are “my best medicine.”
“It’s a super huge high. It gives me everything, it even makes me hurt,” he said. “I had back surgery in December. I can walk 100 feet at the most. But I can pedal all day.”
Arner said his doctor has told him to keep riding if it helps, but he now wears a helmet and won’t get on bike without one.
In the beginning, Arner would put the bike in his pickup truck, park the truck somewhere and then just start riding. But one day he couldn’t remember where he parked the truck. After riding in two-block circles he finally found it at the Nicolaysen Art Museum.
GPS Device
Then the couple agreed on a GPS device that he wears around his neck that allows Karla to see where he is.
Several years ago, Arner rode west to Alcova and took dirt roads and ended up getting lost. He pushed the button on the GPS device and asked the person on the other end where “civilization” was. The sheriff’s office sent deputies to help him find it.
That’s when Karla set boundaries. He can’t ride toward Alcova on Highway 220 anymore, Glenrock is his boundary on the north, Edness K. Wilkins State Park on the east and the road to Garden Creek Falls his boundary on the south as he travels up Casper Mountain Road.
Even though he has neuropathy in his feet and sometimes can’t feel the pedals and his feet slip off, he still gets people to take him and his bike up Casper Mountain so he can ride it down.
Arner shared how his “ride” changed about five years ago, rolling along with dementia. He said he received a text from a flower shop to go to Mountain Sports and “pick out any bike you want.”
“I walked in there and $900 was the cheapest one and I am like ‘Oh, my God.’ This was before I knew how to accept gifts,” he said. “If you don’t learn how to accept gifts you are robbing someone of giving that gift. It’s really hard to learn that.”
He chose the cheapest bike, but said it was “still a beauty.” Since then, if his bike gets wrecked or stolen, he’s been anonymously given another one.
One bike got stolen that was chained to their first-floor deck fence at his apartment and was found in an alley downtown. Because of his Facebook posts, someone recognized it and it was returned.
Along the way, Arner started wearing a bike helmet. He said he crashes frequently, pulling up a pant leg to show the scars.
Dennis Arner said he never plans his photos but if sees something that “pops in this brain” he takes a photo. Many he posts on a Facebook page dedicated to people who grew up in Casper. (Photos by Dennis Arner) 
Much of Dennis Arner’s past 16 years have been cycling Casper and the region and meeting people along the way. (Courtesy Dennis Arne) 
Dennis Arner’s niece has presented him with books of photos he has taken on his bike journey fighting MS and dementia. (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily) 
Dennis Arner says his life goal now is to make a new friend every day. (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily)
The Posts
Arner said he never had a plan regarding his Facebook page posts that chronicle his journeys.
His page lists 3,700 friends. He also frequently posts on another Facebook page: “If you grew up in Casper, you’d remember.” His typical photos show his bike parked outside a Casper landmark of the present or past.
Memory was the reason he took the photos, he said. Because he frequently forgot where he was on his bike rides, he started taking photos of buildings that he passed so he could find his way back home.
“It was just by happenstance and circumstance that I took a photo of the Wonder Bar the last day it was opened,” he said. “If my brain pops to something I take a picture of it and I figure out what happened when I got home. I will take pictures of something and look at them when I get home and say, ‘I was there?’”
Arner said a photo of the old A&W root beer stand in town that he posted is one that got a lot of response. A few years ago, he also was passing through Highland Cemetery and took a photo of a gravestone or two and posted them.
That led to photos of every grave in the cemetery and then of every grave at the veteran’s cemetery in town.
People would message him on Facebook asking for a particular gravestone.
Four Streets
He continues to navigate the region, not knowing where he is going or where he has been. There are four streets in Casper that so far continue to trigger his memory and if he finds one of them, he can go home.
As he pursues making a new friend every day, he typically nabs a photo with that person as well. He said he tells them who he is and tries to encourage those he meets. His niece has presented him with several little bound books of some of his Facebook photos taken from his rides.
One book cover depicts him on his kids’ bikes and reads: “Dennis and the ‘tour de Casper.’”
Before and after his diagnoses, Arner shared that giving has been a focus of his own life. He has a soft spot for children — especially “at-risk” kids . Even though he cannot remember his own childhood to share it, he believes “at-risk” would fit its description.
For the past several years he has used some of his energy to seek donations for children and teens who are homeless and those who are kicked out of school — he wants to help change their direction. Donations often come in the form of gift cards to restaurants or stores.
“He’s always been raising money, first for MS and then it became this,” Karla Arner said. “Before that it was for traveling baseball. He has always been raising funds for different things.”
Up until recent years, he also would speak to groups of at-risk children.
While he can’t remember his youth, a Casper Star-Tribune article from Aug. 5, 1977, lists Arner as a member of the Wyoming state championship Senior Babe Ruth baseball team.
Arner said he started Casper’s first traveling baseball program back in 1984, five years before the couple married. He said he spent 27 years coaching baseball, 20 years coaching basketball and volleyball in the school system and eight years coaching basketball, volleyball, and flag football at the Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Wyoming.
The Giver
The guy called “Coach” has also spent a lot of effort since his diagnoses giving away bread. Sometimes it was from a popular bakery in Casper where he would get loaves and go give them to police or car wash attendants or other people along the way.
He and Karla also tell the story of how he would get up early and make loaves of banana bread, put them in his backpack, and head out to deliver them in random acts across the city.
But one day, she woke up to the smell of banana bread and the oven on. He had long been gone on his daily ride.
The baking stopped.
Arner said he knows that his bike rides will end someday the same way. She will gently tell him that it is time to dismount.
Karla Arner smiled and said there are already times that she hides his helmet and puts a chain on his bikes named “My Therapy 1” and “My Therapy 2” to keep him home.
But she knows the cycling makes him a happier person.
Karla Arner shared that sees her husband as the “new Dennis.” He was a man with a giving heart before his diagnoses, but the pair of diseases have wrought a transformation.
“It changed his outlook on a lot of things. He is more sensitive, it’s a deeper kind of faith and a deeper love and wanting to help people,” she said. “Years back we talked about having a foundation to help people.”
That foundation never was created, but another one has long been in place.
Arner showed Cowboy State Daily a tattoo on his right arm. He said he doesn’t really like tattoos, but this one is something he treasures enough to display proudly on his Facebook page. It has a heart with an arrow through it and reads: “D.A. + K.A. 4 ever.”
“I wake up to her every morning and put my arm around her. I do wake up in a good mood and go to bed in a good mood,” he said. “Maybe I am stuck on happy, I don’t know.
“I am at that (place) where Paul was in the Bible. If I die, I know where I am going and if I live, I have this life, so I am in a no-lose situation.”
Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.
