Easter: Surreal recollections of a long weekend

The author, at left, with his Easter Weekend broken arm in a sling.

Easter brings back special memories for me.
Ironically, memories about briefly losing my memory.

With nowhere to go this weekend, I found myself meandering down Memory Lane, in a Rotorua forest.
It was Easter 2007.

I was deep in a Rotorua forest, on a mountain bike track.
Unusually, I had two people with me. I usually rode solo.

But on this day, I was joined by a father and son, visiting for the long weekend from out of town.

It was lucky they were with me, because one pushed my broken bike out of the forest and the other put my arm in a T-shirt sling after I fell off, broke my arm and knocked myself out.

It was my first experience of concussion, and the confusion that comes with it.

I thought someone had hit me, or somehow shoved me off the bike, because it was a fairly straight piece of track with a small jump on a slight downhill.

I had stopped at the top of the slope, waited for my colleagues, and then took off and tried to leap the jump.

I went over the handlebars, narrowly missed a tree and landed head/shoulder first on the ground.

I kept the helmet for years - it cracked on impact and saved me from serious injury.

I was out for a few seconds, and remember sitting upright in the middle of the track, wondering what the heck had happened.

It must have looked comical, because the dad with me was trying not to laugh, until he realised I'd broken my shoulder or arm.

Turned out it was the arm. My humerus had snapped just below the ball that goes into the shoulder socket.

My legs were fine, they got me out of the forest and back to the carpark. There were a couple of stops along the way because of concussion-related nausea.

Rotorua Hospital A&E was well used to seeing mountain bikers.

They asked me my name and for some reason (I blame the mild concussion) I said "Rodney Hide".

Hide is a politician, known equally as well for dropping his partner during Dancing with the Stars as he is for his political career.

The person checking me in wasn't impressed.

My wife at that point realised I was probably okay, and left me there several hours after I was diagnosed with concussion and given morphine. I wouldn't recommend the combination.

It was a sobering afternoon - I sat quietly like a naughty child.

I was grateful that I was okay. Next to me, a family were going through the trauma of dealing with a child who had fallen off a moto-x bike and broken numerous bones.

The child was okay.

It was a strange, surreal Easter. A little like this one is going to be, I suspect.