It's Hanmer Time

Dec 23: Our plan was to travel to Hanmer Springs, mountain bike for a couple of hours, then soak in the hot springs for a few more, eat some dinner and then drive back to Christchurch.

I traveled to Hanmer Springs with Erin, Sam and Gord. Hanmer Springs is famous for its thermal pools and drug addiction center. After falling asleep in the car on the way to Hanmer, I woke up just in time to watch us roll into town. It was a gorgeous, hot and sunny day. We changed into our biking gear and went off to rent some mountain bikes. Each of us saddled up on a mountain bike with decent suspension, snapped our helmets into place and took one last look at the trail map. Then we all took off down the road towards what we hoped was the start of the Dog Stream Trail. Apparently none of us can read a map and we weren't sure if we were heading the right way for the first 10 minutes. The gears on my bike were a bit cranky at the start, but eventually I showed them who was boss. When we got to the head of the trail we were surprised that it was at a 45 degree incline. None of us could ride up it so we had to push our bikes up a serious hill. There were actually a lot of really steep points where I'd be riding and come to a halt because the incline became so intense. We were also trucking it because Gordon and Sam were leading. Erin and I were somewhat less enthusiastic about the ascent. Once we reached the end, I was unsurprised to note that the 1 hour ride had taken us 34 minutes.

The ride down was a lot more fun because we got to go fast! Flying down the rocky hills popping up over roots and protruding rocks was exhilarating. Stopping wasn't an option because your back tire would spin out and then you'd skid down a steep rocky decline. Every now than then we'd lose sight of each other and then the leaders would wait for everyone else. After awhile they stopped waiting which was bad for me because I have a terrible sense of direction and I didn't have a map. I went down several wrong trails and biked for a a good 20 minutes up and down different trails trying to find my way back to the Dog Stream Trail. I stopped and took a picture of myself in case I got lost and died. Later they would find my camera and see that at least I died seemingly happy. After awhile I thought I had lost my sunglasses at the end of the trail so I was going to backtrack and see if I could get back to the end of the trail and then bike correctly back down it. However on my way back I found where I had diverged from the trail because there was a big honking sign with an arrow saying dog stream trail that way. At the same place, I took off my helmet only to discover my sunglasses were on top of my head and under my helmet the whole time.

Once I was back on the Dog Stream Trail I quickly ran into the group. They had started to backtrack wondering where I was. My first thought was to justify that I had gotten lost and was not that slow. After that Erin and I kept changing positions behind Sam and Gordon. One of us would do something silly and have to slow down and the other would just pop by. I was flying through the woods on a track that had become dirt instead of rocks. When I charged through a left curve in the trail and my left foot and pedal were in a down position. It was here I clipped a rather large rock in the ground and flew off my bike in a huge crash. Erin was behind me at the time and heard me yell "AGGGHHHH." I knew she was coming up fast behind me and I couldn't move myself or my bike fast enough so I yelled "DANGER!" This was really effective because Erin came up really slowly until she found me lying on the ground. It turns out that she hadn't known if it was a good yell or a bad yell. Once Erin got there, I pulled myself together and freaked out because I thought I broke my camera. We tested it out and took a picture of my leg to make sure everything was copacetic. I ripped up a bunch of my knee and packed in a bunch of rocks during my skid. My hand and thigh were a bit scrapped up, but were doing a lot better than my knee. Erin was worried about the leg and wanted to go back to the village, but I wouldn't have any of it. We still had a good half and hour of mountain biking time so by golly we were going to have a good time. So after I pulled a few rocks out of my knee we took off again to fly down the mountain. Except right after we got on our bikes, I ran into a tree. Not so much with my bike but literally my left upper body, chest and shoulder ran into a tree. I ignored Erin's suggestion that maybe I shouldn't be biking and I went flying down the trail a little more reserved and less cavalier than before. So we rocked the Dog Stream Trail for awhile longer and then went back to the village. After finishing the ride, we realized that we had approached the Dog Stream Trail the wrong way and had ridden it up the back way. So not only did we ride it the wrong way, but we did it in 34 minutes. Erin was fairly certain that I would need stitches and I was holding in the negative position. The lady at the bike shop was helpful and dialed the local medical centre for us and I was given their professional medical opinion "I should come in so they could clean it and take a look." So we went to the library to print out my insurance information which turned out to be useless. We met up with Gordon and Sam on our way to the library and they didn't realize anything was amiss and continued riding around town. Then we walked to the medical centre.

I filled out my forms and eventually got called back. Erin came with me to film and document the medical process. My doctor, Gina and nurse, Sharon gave me a local anesthetic directly into the wound. I also had to get a tetanus shot which in NZ comes with the Diphtheria vaccine. Erin had to interject and say "ahh, the tetanus shot is my least favorite shot." However, I was happy to have her in there for comic relief and for documentation purposes. At one point Sharon started singing Christmas Carols. She removed a lot of the debris, scrubbed the bejeebus out of the wound with a special sponge. If I hadn't been anesthetized, I would have been screaming, passing out or throwing up. Then she used a bunch of syringes and irrigated the wound. After that it was a cake walk and she sewed it up with three mattress sutures. The whole time we were all chatting and I was trying to cajole them into giving me a medical okay to go swimming with the dolphins the next day. I was given antibiotics, a little tool to cut the stitches after 12 days and a green light on the dolphin swimming. At one point the front desk lady came in because Gordon and Sam were enquiring about me and I told her to say that I had passed out. I'm not sure why I thought that was a good idea. Erin and I were in good spirits during the whole ordeal. Afterwards I got to spend $2.00 for the spectator fee at Hanmer Springs. Erin said "that's farther than I've come" when she meant to say that's "nearer than I'm come." I don't know why, but at the time I could not stop laughing. I might have been suffering from loss of blood or something. Everyone else got to have a lovely time soaking in the waters while I sat in a lawn chair and fended off black flies/sand flies. Sand flies are the bane of New Zealand. They look like a cross between a gnat and a fly and bite the heck out of you. They are worse than mosquitos. The bites are itchy and if you itch them, they get infected and will fill with pus. So this is why I were I got my first stitches and a Diphtheria shot.