You’ve been warned, I do swear and the content of my blog may be graphic in nature, it is about an accident and the recovery from the same…….it is intended to be a record of the events and the follow up from that. Enjoy.
Saturday the 5th of March started out as a relatively normal day. I was heading to the motorcycle racing in Fielding. The racing is held by the “Mothers” motorcycle club, a 1%r club that runs a great “race what you rode” day. Harleys mainly, all going hell for leather, short sleeve shirts, German helmets, the whole 9 yards. Motorsport at its purist really. I was riding my “toy”, a 2009 HD V Rod Muscle. A big fat arse girl that had TAB pipes, tuner, 250mm rear tyre, radar detector….you get the idea, a nice play thing. I woke at about 5.30am, a bit tired from the work week but looking forward to the ride. I made breakfast and coffee and knocked them back as I had arranged to meet with others along the way. I was heading out the door by about 6.30 after kissing Cal (my poor suffering wife) good bye. I got the usual “be careful” and I gave the usual “I will”. I headed out the door. The trip to the racing was pretty uneventful, I met up with Johannes in Elthem along with a couple of others, we then met up with about 15 from the “Axe Throwers”, a social motorcycle club from South Taranaki. A quick detour to their club house to pick up a few more and we were off. The pace was not too quick, but quick enough. I was comfortable mid pack as the ones up the front clear the road and the tail end Charlie’s don’t hold you up too much. We did a number of back roads that were very nice along the way, and after about an hour and 20 we were in Fielding.
The racing was as expected, there were a few 1%r clubs there Hells Angels, Head Hunters, Mothers, as well as some social clubs like Axe Throwers, Inbetweeners, Club X etc. The nice thing about the clubs there is that it makes for pretty hard out racing, great for the spectators. I should add, this wasn’t just about clubs, there were some old guys racing an old Indian, plenty of businessmen racing American or British bikes. The racing was as expected, the food was also as expected – chips or Hot Dogs. As I am on a real health kick, I avoided the food and the only cold drinks they had for me was water at $5 a small bottle. As the day progressed I was getting hungry, I didn’t eat but brought some water but by lunch time I was thinking about food and decided I would head off about 3-3.30pm. Johannes said he would ride back with me, I wanted to be back by 6pm. The rest of the racing was pretty uneventful other than a guy having a heart attack. I watched from a distance as the ambos pumped on his chest and for a fleeting moment thought – bet his wife and family didn’t expect that. Poor bugger.
Johannes and I headed off about 3.30pm and this would see us back by 6 with a short stop for gas. We stopped in Sansen for gas and the ride back to Eltham was a cruise. We stopped on the side of the road in Eltham, shook hands shared a couple of smart arse remarks and I headed towards New Plymouth, he headed home.
So….I was on the way home from the racing, the ride from Eltham through to Inglewood was uneventful but pleasant. As I got to Inglewood, I had a think about stopping to finish my water, I was quite thirsty but the lure of getting home, another 10-15 min overrode the thirst. I can drink when I get home.
I turned into Manutahi Road and as I accelerated away from the corner, I noted a lot of cars parked on the side of the road. I slowed as I wasn’t sure if there were kids, dogs, a car that hadn’t seen me and I also wanted to see what was going on. It looked like some kind of function, I thought that it was a nice evening for it as I continued to accelerate away. The thought of a few Bluff oysters in the fridge at home and a family Sunday was starting to really look appealing.
About 3-4 kms up the road I was came around a very gentle bend and saw a white car coming towards me. The car appeared to be slowing, it didn’t have an indicator on but in my mind it looked like it was going to stop in the middle of the road to wait for me to pass. As I got closer the actions of the car further indicated that it was going to stop.
When I was about 30-50 metres from the car, it very suddenly turned across my path. My world seemed to get very slow at that point……..I grabbed the brakes – ABS might help me stop – I realized the futility of braking as soon as I did it, I was doing 100km/hr, 28 metres/second, I had a brief thought that I could try to go around him but the inevitability of the impact was now certain.
I struck the car almost head on but at such an angle that the right side of the bike ran right across the right front side of the car. I recall being launched over the bars, hitting something then the visual rotating picture of asphalt, grass, sky, asphalt, grass, sky several times then a very heavy impact landing on my back.
My first word – FUCK…ooohhhhh……FUCK(first of many fucks actually). I was winded and all of a sudden very claustrophobic in my helmet. I suddenly had to get my helmet off. I ripped my gloves off, tore at the fastening on my helmet and started pulling it off. As I did that I lifted myself up onto my elbows and threw my helmet to one side. I knew my arms and neck/back were ok, at least down to my waist as I had managed to get my helmet off.
I looked down to assess what the rest was like and to my surprise I saw the sole of my right boot on my chest, quite close to my chin and thought fuck, that’s not meant to be there. I looked beyond the boot and saw straight away that there was a lot of blood, I could see shattered bone and a lot of flesh through my pants. It was then that I felt the weight of my leg on my chest, It was hard for me to hold myself up on my elbows with that weight. I lowered myself back onto my back and used both hands grabbing my leg and lifted it off my chest. I could feel that it was attached but I could also tell that it was wrecked. It was loose and had no feeling of solid connection to my body. I could tell though that it was more than a bad break due to the shattered bone. I was at that stage pretty sure that my leg was not something that was repairable. It was also at this stage that I felt my blood draining from my leg, I could feel the heat of it running out, it felt hot thick and it felt like I was coming out quickly. I needed to talk to Cal, I needed to talk to her now and I knew it was urgent. I reached into my jeans pocket and pulled out my phone. I started to look for her number, I was starting to feel a sense of immense discomfort, not pain, just terrible discomfort. I hoped that Cal would answer her phone, she doesn’t like to be tied to it and would often have it on silent, leave it inside and work in the garden or just not hear it. Thankfully she answered. I told her that I had been in a very serious accident and that she should get there as soon as she could. I didn’t want to bleed to death on the side of the road while she was 4kms away, I wanted to see my soul mate, even if it was for the last time. I told her where I was and how to get there. In the background I could hear people now shouting – call an ambulance – there is already two people calling one – it doesn’t matter, they need to get here NOW – we need towels to stop the bleeding – where do we push, its such a mess – etc. I knew I had to keep my shit together, the ambulance was at least 15 min away and shock could kill me. Breath and swear, breath and swear…. I also had a man crouched over me saying “don’t look down’ – over and over he kept repeating it and I was thinking dopey prick, I’ve already seen it, but at the same time glad of the comforting voice. I was also aware at that stage that a woman was holding my left hand and she was saying you’re alright mate, you’ll be ok and I was thinking “how do you know…..I’m not stupid, I can feel the blood.” but again, glad of the comforting.
The next thing I recall is Cals voice – Pete, Pete, its ok I’m here, what happened? Its ok, I’m here. Who caused this??? Zach is on his way. I propped myself up, I had something digging into my back, it was bloody branch trimmings I was lying on and gawd they hurt lol.At this stage I think the ambulance arrived and started working on me. All the standard things, cutting off clothes, checking my leg out, there was some time spent on my leg, discussion about cutting off my boot and a hurried “no, best not to move it around too much, its loose”. They were checking the rest of me out, I was pretty sure the rest would be ok in the short term, I was more worried about the next 24hrs. I became aware of Zach arriving, he was comforting Cal and saying “we are all here Poppy, Ayla and Shaunni, hang in there Poppy”. I remember holding his hand tight with both of mine and I remember his face looking down onto me. I was on entonox and breathing it up hard by this point. It felt like a lifetime before I was ready to be loaded into the Ambulance. Eventually I was loaded into the ambulance and was off……..I was getting closer to better help every metre we got closer to the hospital.
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