Winter in July

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I went back to the States for a week in June. While I was there, Coronet Peak closed. We had been open for 10 days with barely a cover of snow on two runs, and then a bad spout of warm weather and rain wiped us out and shut us down. The Remarkables across the way had opened for the season, so they got all the school holiday traffic while we struggled for hours. No one's fault except for everyone who has contributed to global warming ever. When I came back to Queenstown, I spent most of my time working at the office in town doing my Guest Services job and spent some hours up on Coronet where we had opened up for sightseeing and tubing. Days were long and slow, but I managed to get a few days in at The Remarks.

I had spent most of May and June worrying and stressing out about jobs, housing, and money. So I decided that July would be my worry-free month. What are you doing after the winter? What's next for you? Are you gonna stay in Queenstown? DUNNO. NOT WORRYING. I worked, I ate the free breakfast the company provided because we were poor and mostly out of work, and I spent time snowboarding. I was starting to get into park stuff by going off progressively bigger boxes because that was my main goal for the season. It went really well for about a week.

Bad things always happen in 3s. Two of the things really sucked, and one wasn't so bad. But it was 3 things nonetheless. 1) I was up Remarks by myself and going off boxes. I had started on the baby ones and eventually made it to the big one. I went off it and landed it. So proud. Then I hit the baby ones on my way down. Landed the first, didn't land the second. I somehow came down and managed to bruise a rib. So that takes forever to heal. 2) Later that same night I went to my friend's house and got out of the car, dropped my phone, and cracked the screen (not badly--I've just never cracked a screen before). 3) The NEXT NIGHT Coronet opened for night skiing, which is exactly what it sounds like. I got off work and decided I'd go for two runs and a beer. No dramas. On my second run, I was trying to keep up with my friends and going way too fast. A jump came out of nowhere and I tried to avoid it. Didn't. Went over the side of it. Did not land it. My wrist was killing me, but I could move it, so I rode the rest of the way down. I could feel it swelling in my glove and could no longer move it, so my friend recommended I go to the medical center. Good idea. I headed over and got some ice. The problem was, the medical center is private, so I'd have to pay $165 for them to check it out. I'm poor. They gave me some painkillers, iced my wrist for 20 minutes and then gave me a sleeve to constrict everything and keep it relatively immobile. They said I should go to Frankton the next morning to get it checked out. So I called my boss and told her I had to miss work.

I barely slept that night. My wrist was elevated and in the sleeve but was in so much pain that every time I moved, I woke up. In the morning, I headed to Frankton hospital at 9, driving with one hand (it's really far away and I was in no mood to hitch). I got triaged (free!), got more painkillers (free!), and got told to come back at noon for an X-ray. I headed home, had some lunch, and went back to the hospital. They took an X-ray (free!) which showed that my wrist was, in fact, broken. Wear wrist guards, kids. While they were putting a Plaster of Paris cast on my wrist, I called my boss who chewed me out for not wearing wrist guards and then proceeded to be insanely nice about me having to miss a couple days of work. I assured her I'd be back on Wednesday (it was Sunday).

I spent the next two days at home hopped up on Codeine and binge-watching Netflix, but I was constantly in pain, so it's not as fun as it sounds. On Tuesday my friend Rob drove me to Clyde, which is 2 hours away, so that I could get a CT Scan (free) at a hospital there. Things in New Zealand are really spread out, and Clyde has nothing in it except for a hospital with a CT machine. There are two towns between Queenstown and Clyde: Frankton (right next to QT) and Cromwell. The drive was beautiful as always, the CT took about a minute, and then we drove back to Queenstown. Massively exciting day. I was meant to go back to work on Wednesday, but the mountain was closed due to wind and rain, so we all met in the Snowcentre in town to work for 2 hours. Basically, we had a Health and Safety seminar and then chatted for a while.

Going back to work was about the same with way more sympathy. I was no longer able to be the mascot (sorry, Mom) or do flying squad (working in different departments), so I spent every day behind the desk selling tickets and lessons to people. People were very patient with me, and they liked to bee-line to me when they had injuries ("Oh! You'll understand!") After a few days I took my arm out of the sling and proceeded to have the sorest shoulder ever due to the 2 lbs of plaster attached to my wrist. My thumb hurt to move, and my fingers were kind of smashed together. It was not the most comfortable thing I've ever worn, but I did fulfill my childhood dream of having people sign my cast!

Things that are really hard when you live alone (essentially) and have a cast on your dominant wrist:

Tying shoes. Buttoning and zipping pants. Taking a shirt off. Unscrewing things like deodorant lids, contacts case, any jar. Eating. Writing. Holding anything. Shifting gears while driving. Brushing hair. Brushing teeth. Showering. Putting a shirt on. Zipping up jackets and vests. Chopping food. Cooking food.

It was quite annoying being crippled. PLUS. I worked on a mountain and couldn't even snowboard! It was hard to make anything, so I survived on a lot of frozen pizza and cereal. It was a depressing few weeks. One of the fun things, though, was July 25 was Christmas in July on the mountain. We all dressed in Christmas colors and decorated our department to the confusion of all the customers. I wore a light-up Santa hat and wrapped my cast with wrapping paper. Why be depressed about the lack of wrist when I could have fun with it?

Two weeks later I had an appointment at the fracture clinic, and I got the plaster cast off. My wrist looked really dainty and weird. They X-rayed it and determined that I needed no surgery, and then they asked me to pick out the color of my new cast. One of the options was Rainbow, so I obviously picked that. They gave me a fiberglass cast, which I had way more movement in but was rough and hard to get sleeves over. At this point my wrist had stopped hurting, so I was able to do a lot more things. Everyone commented on how obnoxious the cast was, which I was thrilled about. I was the poster child for wrist guards.

The Wednesday after I got my new cast on, I had the day off and decided that this was the day to go back and snowboard. I was depressed, hadn't seen the sun, and couldn't do anything. So I got all geared up and went up Coronet Peak on one of the last buses. I borrowed one wrist guard from rentals and spent the whole afternoon on my snowboard. It was incredible. I was so happy to be out there again. I went up for the last run of the day and couldn't see anything, which was a scary run. But that night also happened to be staff night ski, so after a hot chocolate in the lodge, I went back out for one of the first lifts of the night. The groomers had been out and it had started dumping snow. I still couldn't see anything, but the snow was so perfect with 5cm of fresh powder that I didn't need to see anything. In line for dinner that night, I found out that the other Kate in Guest Services had broken her wrist. A week later my friend Lucy broke her ankle while skiing. It was not a pleasant sight for GS, but Kate and I became poster children for wrist guards (wear wrist guards, kids!)

I had on my new colorful rainbow cast for a month. It was really obnoxious, but I slowly learned to do things again. I spent days off and afternoons off snowboarding, and I felt much more like myself. There was one stretch of 10 days where I worked every day and started to go crazy, so on my day off I drove myself to Wanaka and sat in the sunshine all day. It was perfect.

The night before I got my cast off, AJ Hackett put on a bungi night for NZSki staff. We all bussed over to Kawarau bridge, and I wouldn't know until I got there whether or not they'd let me jump with my cast. They did, and the whole staff called me cast girl all night. I was the second to jump, and it was AMAZING. Everyone told me I looked like a rag doll. I can't wait to do more adventure things in summer.

When I got my cast off after bungi, I was ecstatic. My wrist was weak and hairy, but I've been slowly building it back up to its normal strength. I've gotten so much better at snowboarding because I've been out every day I can be, and Adam keeps giving me tips to improve my turns. I've got my speed back up too, and now I wear wrist guards. I also spent a day on skis for the first time since I was 11! It was...difficult. Too many things to keep track of. And when I fell I realized that I had just completely forgotten how to get up. Towards the end of the season GS had to lay a bunch of people off because of the lack of humans coming to the mountain. I got a new job as a waitress at a really nice resort, so I volunteered to be laid off. Last week was a week of end of season parties, and the mountains close in another week.

Now it's September and the flowers are blooming and the snow is melting because New Zealand is backwards. More blogs will come in the spring.

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Comments

[SHEILA]

SUMMER IN NEW ZEALAND
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR COMING BACK ALIVE FOR US, YOUR READERS. I SAW YOU FOR ONE SECOND IN JUNE (JEEJ!) AND THEN YOUR WRIST AND NOW IT IS SEPTEMBER. WE LOVE AND MISS YOU. YOU ARE SOARING IN LIFE AS WE ALL MIGHT DO!! JEEJ AND I ARE JUST LEAVING CAPE COD - FALL IS HERE. MUCH LOVE

[D MJ Binkley]

Remarkables
Looks like a fantastic day.