Morgan in New Zealand
by: Morgan Wade | Wednesday, February 28, 2007
I'm gonna start this off by saying, "I FEEL LIKE SHIT!" Getting sick freaking sucks man. Every day near the end of the day I feel like I'm getting better, but when I wake up in the morning I feel worse than I did the day before. BLAAAAAHHHHH! Anyway, here's some more day-late news.
Injury report.... At the X-Air Event in Wellington New Zealand three weeks ago, I was going to ride in as many events as I could just for fun. So I entered Park, Dirt, and the Water Jump. I was able to ride in none of these.... After one practice on the park course I was feeling pretty good about the comp and had some big plans.
I got to the dirt jumps for practice and there were a few people riding them, so I went up and got in line. I asked Guettler what the speed for the first jump was and he told me to jump the first set like I was jumping a box backwards, and also that it was really easy to over clear because of the mellow lip. Then I watched a kid take a crank and a half down the roll-in and over shoot the first jump by three or so feet. I put two and two together and rolled in, gave it one full crank and pulled off the lip. About .0042 seconds after I left the lip I knew that I was going to case the landing pretty bad. The closer I got to it the more I realized I was going to tag my front wheel as well. I thought I could maybe bounce my front off the top to sprocket the landing... nope. In a fraction of a second I had head-tube cased the landing, bent my frame/fork, and done a face grind all the way down the landing.
I didn't get knocked out, but I did get knocked a bit silly and I managed to burn most of the skin off of my upper lip, nose, and cheek. I smashed six of my front teeth out, and almost bit through my lower lip with my bottom teeth. I don't know how they didn't go all the way through because the hole that was in there was really deep. Luckily for me I'm having a lot of work done on my teeth right now and all the ones I smashed out were temporary and I still had the nubs of my real teeth in there.
Now, I have a few very liberal friends that continually talk crap on America and rave about how amazing Canada is because of the socialized medicine. I'll agree that America's system is flawed and the medical bills can be absolutely ridiculous. I'll even say that the idea of socialized medicine is a good idea in a perfect world, but it's not a perfect world and human nature is what makes it not work. For instance, New Zealand has socialized medicine and I was sent to the hospital in Wellington to get some stitches in my lip. I get there, my face still covered in dirt and blood, only to sit for about two hours (which is normal in the states) and then be told that I would heal fine. The Doc. gave me some pain pills (not even as strong as ibuprofen), turned me around, and showed me the door. They didn't even clean the dirt out of my cut's. If you ask me, the doctors don't give a crap because they've already got their paycheck from the government and have no threat of being sued for anything. I could not believe how poorly they treated me at the hospital; I could have gotten a really bad infection. Luckily I'm no stranger to road rash and open wounds. I was able to go to a drug store and purchase the proper things to clean and take care of my face. I'll also add that anything you buy having to do with medicine is about four times the price it is in the states. People always take for granted how good they have it in America, but I guess the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, isn't it?
Never the less, my face is healing well and I was able to get new teeth the day after I got home! Big thanks to my Dr. Rick Coker for getting me in so quick! Dr. Coker actually cares, he didn't even charge me, he just fixed me. Amazing!
Other than the medical treatment I got, New Zealand was freakin awesome! It was my first time to be over there, so everything was new to me. The mountains, the crystal clear water, and the security. It was so beautiful over there; everywhere you looked there was something neat to see. The riding wasn't too bad ether. After the contest I was to go on a road trip from Wellington to Auckland with Corey Martinez and Aaron (lip gloss) Ross. Will Stroud was filming and Walter Pieringer was shooting photos. We didn't ride much street until we got to Auckland, and in the four days we spent there that was pretty much all we did.
It seemed like we got kicked out of a lot of places, but the thing that was weird was almost all of the security guards were cool. When I say cool I mean they were psyched on what we were doing but had to ask us to leave so they could keep there jobs. It was weird.
Overall we had a great time and got a lot of good footage. It's a good thing one doesn't need teeth to ride a bike!
So now I'm at home getting ready for another Levi Strauss trip from San Francisco to San Diego starting on March 3d. I'll then be in Arizona for spring break.
Just got done doing the interviews for that new MTV show called “Scared.” They're featuring the crash I had at the Allen, TX Park where I smashed my face open...yeah it was awesome. I did the interview at the park last Friday, so I got to ride the park a bit too!
Check out the photo gallery for a lot more photos!
Good times!