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Whats up from Alexandra! Working here for a few days as part of the franchise being set up in the general Queenstown area. Its horrible turf for trying to sign peolple up to the service as the town is like one big retirement home and old people are the hardest to sign up for the new milkman service. But forget about that I'm writing this particular blog to tell you about the two crashes among other things that have happened since my last update.
At the end of the last blog I metioned that my Birthday was coming up. I turned 23 Sunday of last week and it was nothing short of a very memorable Birthday and weekend. I had a big weekend planned out. I was meant to go skiing on the saturday night, Skydiving on the sunday morning and finally go to gig that night. As we all know plans don't always turn out the way we would like them too. My weekend happened as follows. I went for my first skiing session on that saturday evening. Night skiing had just started in Coronet Peak and myself and the lads were keen to get up the mountain especially since ski passes were half the price for the night skiing. I went up the chairlift for my first run down the mountain with Phelix one of the lads I work with. It was both of our first time skiing in two years but by the time we made it down the mountain on our first run we as good as we had ever been. We went straight back up the chairlift and on reaching the top decided to venture down the black run. I was around a third of the way down the mountain when I saw a slight hill coming up. Subsequently I bent down low to pick up pace so that I could cruise over the hill without slowing down. As I started to pick up a lot of pace, pushing around 40mph I suddenly saw a dip speeding towards me. As it was starting to get dark there were shadows starting to fall on the mountains. Unfortunately there was a shadow covering this dip that I was speeding towards. As a result I completely underestimated the depth of this dip and ended up completely clearing it, nosediving my skis into the dips rise on the other side. I came flying out of my skis at an incredible pace and planted myself face first into the snow and ice. I was going so fast that I didn't even have time to put out my hands to protect myself. Once my face collided with the snow and ice my neck and back immediately followed through before I bounced through the air eventually tangling myself up in rope and fencing along the side of the piste. First thing I remember thinking was could I feel my legs. The relief I felt on feeling my toes wriggling inside my boots was massive. I knew I had just experienced the worst wipeout that I had both ever seen and had myself! While sprawled out on the ground I vaguely remember Phelix skiing over to me along with a few others. On asking me if I was alright I simply replied to them, "I'm happy to be alive!"
As it turned out the ski patrollers had seen my wipeout too and had skied over to me with Phelix to check up on me. Although my back and neck had made it through safely I cannot say the same about my face. My whole face was throbbing in pain and my thumb was after swelling up a lot. The ski patrol told me it was wipeout they had seen in years and that I was very lucky not to have broken my neck. In their own words, "you ate s*** hard bru!" On giving me a checkup they realized that I was in no way capable of skiing down the rest of the mountain. Subsequently they called over the snow mobile and I was taken on this down to the medical centre at the bottom of the mountain. Here I was checked out by a doctor and she felt I had broken my jaw and potentially broken my thumb. On top of these injuries my goggles had cut my eye and nose as can be seen in the attached photo with this blog. To cut this short I was taken in an ambulance to hospital where I had x-rays on my injuries. I had fractured my jaw and sprained my thumb. I eventually also had to go down to Invercargill to see a dental specialist on the following Tuesday to see if I needed surgery but thankfully I didn't. Ten days on I am still struggling to eat anything solid so my meals haven mainly consisted of soups, scrambled eggs and other soft foods of late. Hopefully in another week or so I should be all good.
After fracturing my jaw my birthday was never gonna go as planned. I was unable to go skydiving on the Sunday morning due to my broken jaw but I'm hoping to do that this coming weekend. It was a good birthday though that involved the lads bringing me out for dinner to an Indian place followed by going to a gig. I had to take it easy at the gig though due to my jaw and eating the Indian was a serious struggle.
I only worked Wednesday till Friday of last week due to my jaw but in those three days I made $600 so I was pretty happy. Last Saturday we all pooled together and bought a four wheel drive Subaru estate for $1800. A good car that handled very well when we drove up to the slopes on Saturday night for another session of night skiing. This trip was successful both in the fact that I skied for four hours without incident and the car survived on the snow hills.
On Saturday night there was a huge fall of snow making the roads lethal. I was driving up to my friends house on Sunday avo. There was myself and Jack my ozzy surfer friend in the car. All was going well until we came to a very steep hill that I really should not have tried go up. Nonetheless I attempted it and I was about 50 metres up the hill when I started losing momentum and moved from second to first gear. This caused the car to come to a sudden stop causing me to react by pulling up the handbreak. Big mistake! As soon as I pulled up the handbreak the car started sliding backwards. There were cars on both sides of the hill and I knew at this stage that there was no hope of stopping the car and that the best I could do was to avoid those cars. I managed to avoid the first three cars I slid by but as I prevented the back of the car from colliding with the fourth car the front of the car slid outwards catching the back corner of a jeep missing the owner by inches! I forgot to beep to give her notice and she only saw me on the last second. After dinging her car we continued to slide down the hill reaching 20mph at this stage. As we came to the bottom of the hill we managed to miss a light pole by around a foot that if we had crashed into we would of ridden off the car. When we safely came to a stop at the bottom of the hill I was shaking. I eventually got out of the car and walked up the hill to see the damage I had done to the jeep I had hit. It turned out that I had put a small crack in her back left bumper, a few hundred dollars worth of damage, dose! My own car had a nice bit of body damage above the left wheel. I gave the lady my details expecting to hear from here on Monday.
On Monday morning I rented a snowboard and hit the baby slope by myself and in two hours managed to teach myself to snowboard. Found it very similar to the wakeboarding and surfing. Then later that day on my way to work I got a text off the lady I crashed into saying that I need not worry as two other cars had crashed into the same spot I hit causing far more damage than me. I was delighted, very lucky to get away with that!
Were staying here in Alexandra till Friday when were going back to Queenstown. There is nothing at all to do here so I can't wait to get back to Queenstown on Friday. I went for a jog this morning along a motocross track and the only good thing I have to say about this place is that the scenery and views like most of New Zealand I've seen so far are stunning. Till next time, peace and love all!
- comments
Marge Great article but it didn't have everythingI didn't find the kticehn sink!