Beach Snowboarding

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We took a snowboard to the beach partly to promote a World Snowboard Day party I was organising there, partly just to mess around. First we tried stopping a three-wheel rickshaw and asked him to tow me. His car had no power and it was really slow. Second we asked a man on a rusty old motorbike. Wheels spinning again. Then we asked a little kid on a big motorbike, which was plenty powerful enough. I was getting towed so nicely that I decided to swing out to the side behind him like a waterskier just as he tried to turn around, and the strain on the rope tied to his bike actually pulled the bike over and he fell off onto the sand. We felt bad, he felt scared and didn't want to tow any more.
The day was getting late, the sun was nearly going down and we saw the land rover towing a boat behind it to go home. We had already started packing up and leaving, but we thought "what's the harm in going up to the driver and asking him, just in case?". As it happened, the drivers were two 25-year old chinese lads who had a sense of fun, and at once agreed to unhitch their boat, tie a huge rope to the back and tow me over our sand-kicker.
The first attempt wasn't quick enough, so we asked them to take it faster next time, but not being familiar with Kilometres per hour, we had to take a bit of a guess of what speed to tell the driver to go at. Riding on sand and holding a rope make everything completely different technique-wise, and I couldn't get myself lined up at all by the time I hit the jump at that speed.
After I landed, everyone assumed nothing had happened (you can hear Baku laughing, charming!), but I looked down at my collar bone to see a big lump there and I felt a strange numbness and couldn't move it. The adrenaline stopped me feeling any real frustration or pain, as Baku and my friend helped me hobble to the road side and pop a few Ibuprofen.
The traffic was horrendous and we had no choice but to walk all the way to hospital, which took 25 minutes. As we were walking, we saw the Chinese guys in their landrover pass us on the road, who didn't seem to notice what had happened. What happened when we got to hospital shocked me and showed me a side of China that I still can't believe. That's for the next blog...

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