A Slight Hiccup

Picture the scene. It’s the evening of Sunday February 5th, and we’re sat in the local microbrewery drinking delicious beer, playing cards with mates and watching it dump down with snow outside, with loads more on the forecast. After a virtually snow-free December & January, powder skiing is finally back on the cards. We also booked our flights to DC for the bike tour 3 days ago. Life sounds pretty sweet, right?

The next day, after a ridiculously fun morning in the best snow of the season, Tash had a wee crash and crushed the L1 vertebra in her spine. Not so sweet! The incredibly talented Les Gets ski patrol managed to extract her from a fairly awkward position on the mountain in a bloodwagon, before transferring her to an ambulance where the paramedics immediately began hassling her for a credit card and insurance details (God bless the NHS). A stressful few days of medical centres and hospitals followed, muddling through scary medical conversations in embarrasingly poor French whilst Tash was stuck flat on her back on a hospital bed for fear of paralysis.

Bling

The infamous bloodwagon

See that squished looking one towards the top? Nicht gut.

Upon first hearing that it was a broken back, we pretty much assumed that the bike tour, not to mention the rest of the ski season, was a write-off. All the stories we’d heard, from friends and friends-of-friends who’d done the same thing, told of 3-6 months of very minimal physical activity whilst wearing a corset-style back brace. Not particularly conducive to cycling across a continent, I suspect.

After a couple of days in hospital we had a visit from a surgeon, saying that the break was bad enough (the vertebra had lost 40% of its height) that the usual brace-and-rest technique may not be effective, and they wanted to book Tash in for surgery at a nearby private hospital as soon as possible. The idea of spinal surgery was pretty terrifying for both of us, but there was a major upside: if successful, she should be back walking the same day, pretty much back to normal activity within a month, and doctors thought the bike tour would be doable.

All dressed up for surgery!

Thankfully the surgery went perfectly and somehow, ridiculously, we were still in business. Although actual skiing was out of the question for a while on doctor’s orders, we were back to ski touring fairly soon afterwards. So, contrary to our original plans of spending the winter lazily sliding down hills, we’ve actually spent most of our time hiking up them. This was of course limited to hikes that finished at the top of gondolas, as this was the only way Tash could get down, but it’s better than nothing – with the added bonus of getting us fit for America. It’s been over 4 months since either of us so much as sat on a bike, so we’re viewing this as a blessing in disguise!

Bionic Tash

Morphine and ketamine on tap – no wonder she looks happy!

This has pretty much been us for the last few months

Anyway that’s all for now folks – we’ll give you an update once we’re home and manage to go for some actual training rides (probably an idea to do a few of those eh?). Au revoir for now.