Following on from a great session yesterday, Martyn and I planned a visit for this morning. All was going well until my fourth ride of the day when I managed to catch an edge, flipping me over. As I went over my paddles caught the fast flowing water and made a beeline for my face. Next thing I knew there was an almighty ‘crack’ and my face hurt like hell. Somewhat dazed, I rolled up to find blood pouring from both ends of my nose – I had split the top – and paddling across to Martyn and Geoff it became immediately apparent that something was wrong.
Geoff got out onto the weir with me and cleaned up my nose, and the picture below shows what he was greeted with…
What it looked like as we cleaned it up
Assessing the damage
It was pretty obvious that continuing paddling was a bad idea, so I got off and took photos for a while instead. This afternoon I popped along to A&E. As soon as I saw a nurse her first line was “Well, your nose is pretty obviously broken…”. An x-ray showed that I had also fractured my cheek bone, near to where it joins my nose. I now have to see a consultant on Tuesday who will take a better look once the swelling has started to subside and decide on whether my nose needs to be reset. Not exactly what I was looking for from my last Hurley session of the year!
Many thanks to Geoff for helping clean it up, and everyone else for their concern.
Anyway, here are some photos from today.
Ken
And I thought my kit was bright…
Making full use of the wave
Martyn
Great air blunt
Pulling some fancy move
More photos are available here
As this is likely to be my last blog post before Christmas, I would like to wish everyone who reads this a very Merry Christmas.
Happy holidays.