We all love the freedom of riding our bikes and nothing beats the thrill off a fast descent. For one of our riders everything changed on the 27th Feb, when descending one of his favorite local mountains he lost control into the path of an oncoming truck.
This is Joe’s story, how the events unfolded on that day, the luck that saved him, the challenges he has faced and how it is about small gains and literally small steps.
Now it is about one day being able to ride a bike again and Joe will!
I went up the Remarkables and broke a rear spoke at the cattle stop and so changed it at home then went up Coronet Peak.
On the way up the second time it started drizzling.
Coming down near the bottom, round that sharp left hander I saw the truck and my rear wheel gave out. I started sliding towards the front of the truck so I put my elbow down to swing myself around and luckily the truck pulled to the left. I slid down the side of the truck and hit the 3rd or 4th wheel down.
A split second after I hit the wheel the truck came to a stop. I would’ve been doing 50+ k’s and the only thing that stopped me was my shin and foot. cracked the carbon in my shoe in 3 places and tore out the inside of the tongue. I Dislocated my knee which sliced the artery behind my knee in 2 so there was no blood supply.
They said I was lucky that I was so fit as my artery just clamped shut so there was not a lot of internal bleeding.
I completely tore my ACL and PCL. With a 10% chance of losing your leg from knee dislocations I was stage 2 meaning time critical (or danger to life) so I was flown to the hospital in Dunedin and went into surgery pretty much straight away to reconnect my artery.
A major problem was the muscle that lifts my foot. I was taken to theatre every second day or so to see if it was healing or getting worse. On my 5th surgery on day 8 they had to remove this muscle as it had died.
A week later I went in for the 6th time to stitch it up and put the skin graft on my foot.
An overdose on synthetic morphine on day 9 wasn’t fun to say the least.
Day 21 I lifted my leg off the bed for the first time. It took 30 seconds but got it off the bed an inch.
23 days after my accident I came home and I’m now on crutches and weight bearing.
I got my last lot of stitches out today. knee surgery is whenever I can get it done and after that I have another surgery where they said they will graft a muscle from my thigh to my lower leg to maybe lift my foot again. Or they will have to fix my foot in place.
You always hear people getting into accidents like these, I never believed one would happen to me.
My goal is to ride a bike again. Nothing else.
We know Joe is made off strong stuff. He is determined, he is passionate and he is a fighter. Joe has the support of a fantastic local family and we hope to do what we can to aid Joe in getting back on the bike again.
