When the kids don’t oblige by giving you something to write
about sometimes you just have to go out and do it yourself. That’s why this
update is a little delayed, but I’ll get to that later.
We woke up yesterday to another bluebird day as they say, with the sun shining and blue skies over
the ski fields. It was our last day in Madarao and we were only going to be able
to ski for half of it before we had to negotiate our way to our next destination,
Matsumoto. We packed, made sure everything was right for our departure, then
made our way out to the slopes where the weather was truly gorgeous.
I decided that if I was going to do a speed run, I’d be best
of doing it early in the day so I went for it on the first run. Now I think I
wrote two years ago about the dangers of knowing how fast you’re going and the desire
to push the boundaries. I’d told myself before this trip that I wasn’t going to
worry about topping that last trip. But speed is a drug. On that first run of
the day I got to the bottom and my watch told me my max speed was 98km/hr and I
didn’t feel like I’d taken the fastest route down. It was teasing me, 2km/hr
short of three figures. I had to give it another go. Just one more. How good
would 100km/hr look? I decided to find out.
I went straight down the mountain, a drop of 1km in a minute
on the run I was skiing on. I’d waited until it was virtually clear of everyone,
but it only takes one person in the wrong place at the wrong time for things to
go wrong. I was flying down, well clear of the few people that were in front of
me when I noticed a snowboarder moving across the mountain in front of me, not
really going down, just traversing. I started angling to get around in front of
him, thinking that as we were getting close to the edge of the run that he was
likely to turn or simply head back the other way. But he kept coming. I angled
further away. Still he came on. At the speed I was going, there really was only
a second or so in which to make a decision and I decided to keep going around
the front of him rather than try and turn to go behind him which I would have
done had I not been going so fast.
I clipped the front of his snowboard.
Now there’s no video of what transpired next and clearly I
wasn’t in a position to process what was going on at the time. At about 95km/hr I’ve clipped the snowboard and come
unstuck. Things went very wrong. If I try and put the scene in my head in
words, picture an ageing, not very flexible rag doll spinning and pinwheeling
about three axes, smashing into the snow, skis immediately unclipping and coming
to a halt in slow motion as the rag doll tumbles another twenty metres or so
down the mountain.
I came to a stop, conscious and in pain. The
immediate and most noticeable pain was my right arm. I looked at it and my
elbow was at ninety degrees in the direction it normally is, but my fingers felt like they were reaching out in a
straight line from the elbow! It took me half a second to process that. My
arm hurt like all hells and my fingers felt like there were in a position that
when I looked, there were none. My immediate thought was that I’d broken my
arm and it was hanging at ninety degrees to where it should be.
As a manly Aussie bloke I did what anyone else would do. I
took a breath, calmly continued to inspect my arm and waited to see if it was
truly done. I yelled like all the
demons of hell were chasing me!
At this point I should say that I actually feel sorry for
the snow-boarder whom I clipped. It must have scared the proverbial out of him
to have me come through at that speed. And he and his companion were kind
enough to make their way down to me with my skis and wait with me. They didn’t
speak English but they waited calmly.
I lay in the snow and pictured the rest of my holiday … a
ride down the mountain with the ski-patrol, a trip to hospital, dealing with
insurance … it wasn’t looking great. I had no idea what to do other than lay in
the snow and wait for the ski-patrol so didn’t do much more, but did manage to rein in the howling as the pain ebbed somewhat.
Fortunately as I lay there something started to happen. Where
my fingers felt they were started to align with where they actually were. Then
I wiggled them! Funny how such a simple thing could be so relieving. I made a
fist gently and after a couple of minutes could even move my elbow. I managed
to get my, helmet off (glad that I always ski with one too!) and even managed
to stand up as the ski patrol and an English speaking local arrived.
Apparently the local guy had heard me screaming from the
nearby chair lift and had guided the ski-patrol to me. I’m very thankful for
that if embarrassed at the fact that he said you were very loud. Such a subtle understatement. Happy that I wasn’t
broken too badly and would live, I waved them away and managed to ski down to
where the family waited (though noted just as I skied off that Michael had just
run up the last 100m of the run to where I had crashed!).
I was shaken, in pain, but okay. My elbow was weak, but I soldiered
on, got on the lift and went to the top of the mountain again. I managed to ski
down cautiously and it was good enough that I kept skiing most of the morning.
I
wasn’t a lot of use with the packing, but we sorted ourselves out and managed
to get on the bus where I was reminded of how lucky I actually was by the
English bloke that had been working as a snowboarding instructor but was on his
way home with a broken collar bone.
We headed out after settling in (and down after the room
discovery) to have a bit of a look around town and find some dinner. We walked
down an alley where we found out where all the birds in Mastumoto go at dusk, then
along a couple of beautifully lit streets and found a truly quaint little bookshop apparently propped up between its modern cousins.
We kept going until we found ourselves at the
castle and had an exterior preview ahead of touring the interior in the next
couple of days.
We then had the task of finding dinner which was starting to
turn into a Tokyo 2015 affair. With time ticking away and no great success things
were getting a bit tense and to be honest, I wasn’t feeling all that great
which I put down to concussion. We were on our way back to the hotel so that I
could lie down when we stumbled across a reasonable looking place with a big
dumpling sign out the front. I agreed to sit through the joy of watching everyone
eat and within moments we were inside and perusing the menu. Let’s just say
that when there was an offering of 30 dumplings, Michael was sold on what he
was eating!
Though by the end of things, after giving all of four away,
he wasn’t looking quite as keen as he had been at the start of the affair.
With everyone fed we retired to the hotel early to try and get
some sleep.
Michael's dumpling count: 85
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