MOOMINS M.C.

Another year gone.
Hrumph............
Don't have much to show for it really.
I'm down a bike and riding gear.
I'm up a laptop and some digital camera gear
I'm down on mobility, but up on internal body jewellery and external scarring.
The blog's nearly one year old and has turned out completely different than I anticipated.
Come to think of it, not much at all has turned out the way I anticipated it this year.
If all this sounds a bit on the melancholic side then it's probably about right.
I don't know what to make of a year when something you really like and enjoy is taken away from you and something you take for granted is also denied you.
The only motorcycling I've done in the past 9 months has been in the safety of unconscious dreaming and the only walking has been has been like some pathetic imitation, impossible without the use of various mechanical devices.
You do not suffer these events alone for there are always well wishing friends and family to help pull you along, but in the end it's down to just you and your impairments.
How you deal with them, or not, is something only you have any real power or control over.
The pain can sometimes be the only thing you have to amuse / occupy yourself with and in turn, the only challenge left, which you can try to overcome.
It's a mind game.
You versus your body versus your brain.
Like in life, you don't always win, but better to have played the game and learnt something about yourself than never attempted to because it's too scary, or too hard.
That came out a bit preachy didn't it.
Oh well.
Like I tell myself, there's always someone worse off than you.
So deal with it.


To all who have read the blog, offered help and support, visited me, sent good vibes my way, sent books, music, chocolates, beer and other delectables, got me out of the hospital and out of the city on various occasions, I hope you all have a fantastic 2007 and that your kindness comes back to you tenfold.
To all those I met in rehab, I hope your 2007 is a shitload better than 2006, may your bodies repair as fast as possible and your life return to 'relative' normality.

Happy New Year.........




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This Christmas would have to be one of the strangest on record I think.
After the months of hot and dry weather, which have seen over 800,000 hectares ( or about 2 million acres ) of Victoria burnt to a crisp, we finally got a cold and wet spell just a few days before Christmas.
And boy did it come down on Friday!
After a day of hot wind stirring up the Dust Bowl that is our backyard, clouds dark as dogs' guts rolled in and before you could say "I think it's going to rain" the heavens opened up and put on a drenching the likes of which I hadn't seen in a long time.
So much so that in the five metres it took to get from the car to the front door of the pub, I made a grand entrance looking like a drowned rat.
The good side of all this is that the much needed water has put a delay on the death of various flora that make up our garden and vegie patch.
It also meant that the firefighters received some well earned and needed relief and many were able to celebrate Christmas, some even with their families.

My Christmas was a fairly sedate affair.
Spent lunch at my old housemates Keli and Jade's place and the evening with my good mates Steve and Amy.
Managed to have a phone conversation with the relatives who were Christmassing in Poland and found out that they still hadn't had any snow.
A bit disappointing for my sister's man Glenn who was looking forward to his first white Christmas.
Apparently it was cold, but no joy on the snow front.
Down under though there were reports of snow in the mountains, highly unusual considering it's the middle of summer and lunch was the closest I ever had to a white Christmas in Australia.
There were cold southerlies coming in from Antarctica and at one point it was hailing and that's good enough for me.
I'm sure there were thousands of people planning on having Christmas barbecues only to be forced indoors by the inclement weather.







On a sadder note, the current road toll for the holiday season stands at 30.
It may not be much by say Russian standards where about 35,000 people are killed each year, but still it is a significant number.
Probably not as significant as the amount of people requiring hospitalisation.
According to statistics, there are about 48 major road trauma crashes each day in Victoria.
That's not deaths or minor smashes, but the ones where ambulances, fire crews, police and trauma departments are employed in extracting, transporting and bolting back together the injured occupants of the vehicles involved or the pedestrians / bicyclists.
Now if the other states and territories were to be included, I would imagine that number would surely rise by a fair amount.
In short, having been and still recovering from getting smacked around by a semitrailer I am very grateful for not spending Christmas in intensive care or a trauma ward and do feel for those whose Christmas has been marred by either being involved in a smash or having to tirelessly work during that period 'extracting, transporting and bolting back together' the former.

Apparently I do look like a biker, according to the taxi driver that picked me up the other day.

"So, what happened to you. Motorbike accident?" ( read in an Indian accent for full effect )

"Now why would you say that?"

"Because you look like a biker."

"And what does a biker look like?"

"Well, you look like a bit of a dude."

So there you have it.
I'm so obviously a biker because I look like a bit of a dude.
According to a fellow deviant on deviant Art I look more like an artist than a biker, but then again her idea of a biker is the long haired, drug dealing, whore pimping harley davidson rider.
Sometimes I really do wonder if the whole universe is trying to tell me to get back on a bike.
The complete lack of any nightmares about the smash, the many dreams where I'm happily gallivanting about on various motorised two wheeled vehicles of conveyance, the tractor beam pull of the road, the neglected touring gear like the tent, stove, sleeping bag taunts me whenever I catch a glimpse of it.
Oh well, I made a pact with myself that I won't join the ranks of the psychologically challenged by debating with the voices in my head about whether to ride again or not until I am fully recovered and am in a physically fit state to make that decision. ( as for how mentally fit I will be, that is another question as I may never have been to start with )


On a similar note, I bought myself a mountain bike yesterday with the help of my mate Geoff L.
Now, you may ask what the walking wounded would possibly want with a push bike?
Well, even though I may not be able to ride it until I am fully weight bearing on my right leg, it will serve to motivate me to get my shit in a pile and reach the point when I can jump on and ooh chi chi ooh ahh my way down the Merri Creek bike path.
Oh, and it was a bargain too.
In the mean time I'll have to make do with putting the thing together and staring at it wistfully.


Yesterday was the road trauma rehab outpatients Christmas party.
And it was another of those smoky days caused by the weeks of bushfires again, when people with asthma take sick days and everyone else spends the whole day pointlessly pointing out how smoky it is to every person they speak to.
Spit roast pig with various side dishes was on the menu, followed by some lovely desserts, and at one point we feared the smoke might have been coming from the overcooked pig.
Entertainment was provided by various patients performing everything from Rudolph the bloody nosed reindeer to original compositions about their stay in hospital.
One particular teenaged girl stood out form the rest.
Whilst she was singing a carol of some kind, I watched in amazement as the paint actually started to peel off the walls of the rehab building.
How relieved we were when she'd finished the song!
How we cringed as she promptly got stuck into another one!
How we tried to perforate our own ear drums with the plastic cutlery handed out to us, as she started on her third and final number!
I swear if she'd tried to do a fourth one, there would have been people trying to get themselves run over just so they could be sent to emergency and away from the screeching banshee.
Geez I can be cruel sometimes, but honestly she was terrible!
We now have a two week break form rehab and return in January for more of the same monotony.
Come to think of it, first thing I'll be returning to is the hospital to get that blood clot filter removed from my artery on the 8th of January.

Those damned pigeons!!!
It's not enough to torment me with that ceaseless cooing, now they've got me all confused as well.
I can't tell if they're fighting or mating.
Is bitch slapping part of the columbiform arsenal of moves to get a bit of cloaca action?
I don't mind them fighting in our Dust Bowl backyard, in fact it's quite comical, but if they're bumping uglies out there then that's another matter.
I may have to loose the hens of hell upon their worthless arses in order to keep their shagging rituals confined to the privacy of some roof top or another backyard.
The Dust Bowl collection of birds are of high moral fibre ( even if some are prone to committing the occasional act of murder, hey everyone makes mistakes ) and exemplary character and such base avian acts of public fornication will not be tolerated!

Neow paris mey th ole buhckshaht ovair Lahrlene woohdja.


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This walking caper isn't exactly what it's cracked up to be I reckon, but I knew that it wasn't going to be smooth sailing.
I've got a screw in my right femur, which is poking out enough to stick into the muscle around the inner thigh area.
That one's been doing that for some time but hasn't really been too much of a problem.
Now it has an accomplice as the screw through my right knee is doing the same thing the screw in my left knee was doing, catching on a tendon when I use my leg for walking.
My nine month odyssey to become perched on two legs again has come to a bittersweet point.
I can finally 'walk', but not without problems or pain.
Due to the timing I doubt I will be able to get anything done about it until well into the new year.
That's when I hope to have the two offending screws removed and get on with practicing this whole walking business.
I know it's not meant to be easy and I can deal with that, but geez, does it have to drag on for so long?

It has been said that all good things come to those who wait.
Well I reckon I've waited just about long enough and today I got my walkies licence back.
Admittedly it's only a learner's licence, but none the less it's a step in the right direction.
The surgeon reckons the healing process is nicely ticking along, but still has some way to go, so as of today I am allowed to put 25% of my body weight onto my right leg and in 3 -4 weeks time I can up that to 50%.
First thing is to find out what 25% of my body weight is and what it feels like when I put that through my leg.
For that I may have to wait to see the physiotherapist tomorrow, but for now I can relax a bit and let the relief seep in.
Finally all this hopalong bullshit can be put in historical and temporal rubbish bin.


One thing occurred to me today is that a lot of people, for one reason or another, ask me if the visually obvious ailment is the result of a motorcycle accident.
After which I confirm their suspicions and then am compelled to correct them.
As far as I'm concerned, if I was to have a sudden fit or heart attack and run off the road or collide with something then that would constitute and accident.
However, in my case and a lot of other 'accidents' there are avoidable reasons for the collision.
In my case it was the negligence of the semi trailer driver who deliberately and consciously drove the truck faster than was safely possible on that particular road even though it was under the posted speed limit.
This is a clear example of relative speeding, where the driver of the vehicle was going too fast for the conditions even though by law he was not breaking the speed limit, a concept foreign to many people.
Anyway, back to the topic of people assuming I am a motorcyclist.
I don't know why this is, but it's almost like there's a neon sign on my forehead that says "biker".
Having spent a short amount of time deliberating over this I could not come up with any logical reasons.
I don't know what a biker is supposed to look like when he's off the bike ( no smart arse comments about being broken & bandaged up! ), but unbeknownst to me apparently I exhibit some of these qualities.
Oh well, could be worse I suppose.
Could be presumed to be a vacuous cretin.


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Back to the drudgery of weekly routines I'm afraid.
Eating healthy, not drinking copious amounts of alcohol, attending rehab 3 days a week, watching the killer hens go about their business of keeping the pigeons on their toes like a couple of apartheid border patrol cops, attempting to find something remotely entertaining in the tv ratings off season, reading Chasing Che and of course dicking around on the internet.
One other constant is my sleeping pattern.
More importantly sleepless pattern, due to only being able to sleep relatively short periods of time on my left side and back.
The whole nights consists of me rolling back and forth like some demented human shish kebab.
I have tried sleeping on my stomach and that doesn't agree with my collarbone and I've even tried to roll onto my right side at one point, which just brought great discomfort / pain.
I can't actually remember the last time I had an uninterrupted night's sleep to tell the truth.
About the only place where I can fall asleep and stay asleep in the same position is on the couch in a sort of semi prone / reclined position, so every now and again I steal a cat nap in the living room.
So if anyone has any suggestions, I'd love to hear them.
( And no smart arse ones about spooning the chickens or what not!! )


Yet another day of smoke and haze through out Melbourne, but I'm not complaining.
Can't see the skyscrapers in the city from my place and we're only in Brunswick East.
At least we have no fires here.
We could use some rain though, we really have had bugger all of it in the last few months.
Our backyard is starting to look like the Oklahoma Dust Bowl of the 1930's.
Any more of this and I'll be walking around bare foot in half done up bib and brace overalls singing Woodie Guthrie songs with a piece of straw permanently glued to my lips.


There is one thing out of the ordinary this week.
Tomorrow morning I'm off to the see the surgeon to see if I can start putting some weight through my right leg.
I am quietly confident that he'll give some sort of weight bearing status, even if it's partial at least, but it would be welcome movement in the forward direction as well a rather choice Chrissy present.


A few shots from the Snowman gig on Sunday night. :)








Here are a couple of beaut shots of me when they'd knocked me out and bombarded my body with radiation.







And another one showing the acetabular fracture and the snapped off bit of tail bone.




Here you can see the rubbery patch, which was stapled to the side of my leg and hooked up to a little pump that sounded like a motorbike, all day and all night!
It's needed due to the swelling associated with compartment syndrome.




This was taken whilst I was having my IVC filter implanted ( it's inserted into an artery in the groin area to stop blood clots travelling from my leg to my heart ).
If you look right in the middle you should just be able to see the little blighter.
This is what I'm having removed on the 8th of January under a local anaesthetic.




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After the engagement party on Saturday which saw me returning home from some karaoke bar in Chinatown at sparrow's fart ( literally or maybe it was that one the chickens took out, haunting the place) and then a visit to The Tote to watch Snowman and Temper Trap play last night, it was no wonder that I look a bit on the ragged side at physio this morning.
In fact ragged is probably too kind a word for it.
I've seen things that have gone through a complete spin cycle inside a rottweiler's mouth come out looking far more presentable.

I guess one of the main causes would be the distinct lack of suitable seating furniture at the various places.
With the pain still hanging around from the last surgery like a bad smell, it makes it really hard to actually sit down, so in the end I end up spending most of the time standing and explaining to people who kindly offer me their seats that its actually less painful to remain in the upright position than to get all masochistic on my arse.
None the less I thoroughly enjoyed myself and given half a chance, I would do it all over again.

As for this week, more of the same physio and hydro therapy routines.
Thursday however, is when I pay a visit to the man who spends most of his time elbow deep in people's pelvic regions.
I'm hoping the good surgeon will finally hand me back my weight bearing licence, even if it is only a learner's or a provisional one.
It will be very nearly 9 months to the day since my internal demolition and renovation and I don't care what anyone says, but that's long enough for anyone to be unable to walk in the two legged fashion.
Sure it will take months more again before I can finally hurl the crutches into the pit of redundancy, but at least I will be moving forward again instead of just pacing around my cage aimlessly and attempting to be enthusiastic about maintaining my holding pattern.



These lovely pics were taken during the very first surgery, as the date will testify.
As you can see there are all sorts of instruments used in the process, which thankfully weren't left inside me when the surgeons stapled me shut.









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Generally when one is involved in a 13 hour booze up, one should feel pretty terrible.
The tongue should feel and taste like the floor of a South American rainforest onto which countless creatures of the mammalian, avian and reptilian kind have for generations deposited their bodily expulsions.
The head should have a new tenant, who plays drums at full volume or practices his jackhammering skills, simultaneously.
The stomach should contain mostly beer, with some food mixed at ratio of approximately 16 to 1, with the beer doing its utmost to defy gravity and travel back up the oesophagus to run free with the buffalo, taking the food with it for company.
The slightest movement of the body should immediately increase the above symptoms by tenfold.
That is how I should have felt, but instead I woke up to nothing more than my body requesting that its water content be increased.
This says one of two things to me.
Either I have returned back to my former level of alcoholic fitness, or that I didn't drink enough.

After spending Friday morning jumping through physio and hydro therapy hoops I met up with a couple blokes at midday, one of which was my old roommate in rehab, and took off to that pub which taunted for weeks when I was bed bound.
Once there, we enjoyed a lovely pub lunch washed down with plenty of beer.
Around fourish we all went our separate ways and I proceeded onto the Empress of India Hotel to continue my soaking.
As on any other Friday, slowly and surely the regulars started arriving.
And so the night wore on with all the expected bar stool conversations and of course, copious amounts of beer rapidly filling the numerous bottomless stomachs.
Before I knew it, it was one o'clock in the morning and I was still going strong.
I figured I probably didn't actually need any more booze, which left me quite surprised that I could come to such a radical and rational conclusion in my beery state.
And so I hollered for a taxi and was even more surprised that with all the Christmas parties and what not, one turned up relatively quickly.
Moral of the story: if you're going to really drink, then drink till you can't drink no more!


Here's some more pre surgery pics.
Note the bone at the top of the picture, that is the one that tried to escape.
It made it past the muscles and even the skin and poked it's battered head out of the side of my arm.









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After arriving at physiotherapy this morning, the taxi actually turned up on time for a change, I plonked myself down one of the massage tables and prepared myself for another session of pain appreciation.
If you can have music appreciation and film appreciation session, then why not pain appreciation.
Not to be confused with sado masochism, that's just twisted.
Anyway, I digress.
A patient turned up, who I remember from my time as an inpatient at Epworth Hospital.
I recall that I never really warmed to him for some reason.
Maybe it was his bogan attitude or his inability to see a glass as half full or even half empty, it was just empty.
He pulled out a large envelope and presented its contents to me.
It was an x-ray film of his pelvis and it looked remarkably like mine, with the exception of having a couple of extra plates.
The thing that stood out was that the large plate had fractured.
I started thinking of how one would inflict such forces and pressures required to break one of these metal plates and came to the conclusion that he must have been putting too much weight through it, or more than he was allowed to.
I offered some sort of obligatory sympathy but it really was lacking in enthusiasm, probably because of my previous experience with him.


Afterwards I went down to the swimming pool for my dose of pain appreciation in aquatic suspension.
Upon my entry into the water I was promptly accosted by a fellow patient, the one who had broken the plate on his femur.
He enquired if I had left my bag in the change room and I told him that indeed I had.
He then warned me not to leave it there, but rather place it in the staff office.
And for good reason, as he had been robbed only a short while ago.
Credit card and nearly $300, stolen.
Having his suspicions as to who the perpetrator might be, he gave a name to the police.
The police had produced some security images of the crutched culprit as he was happily loading up the stolen credit card at a variety of stores around the Collingwood area.
What do you know, it was that unsavoury type with the broken pelvic plate.
Turned out that particular day when the crime was committed, was also his first day back at outpatient rehab.
And just to make things worse, he kept trying to buddy up to the feller he robbed, until he was confronted by him.
The feller requested that the robber not talk to him again.
The robber asked why, complete with fake puzzled look.
The feller challenged him that he knew why.
The robber still refused to confess.
The feller finally had to spell it out to him, that he'd seen the security footage and the pathetic excuse for a man with a stolen credit card in hand, was in fact him.
Even then he claimed to know nothing of the incident.
The police have laid charges and a court appearance awaits the filthy scumbag.
I just hope the magistrate doesn't buy any of that "poor me, been in a smash, poor me" crap.
I know for a fact that it was his own reckless driving that put him in that situation in the first place.



Sorry, no photos today as Blogger has decided not provide that function for some undisclosed reason.


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Remember those pesky carnivorous hens, which live in our backyard?
Well, for some time now I have undertaken to put them through a clandestine training course in security and defence.
I felt that with their naturally aggressive and belligerent personalities, I would prefer they be controlled to some extent and I didn't want to resort to putting them on a leash.
As part of my physical rehab and attempt to relieve boredom, the three of us have been going through all sorts mental and physical training in the wee hours of the morning, under cover of darkness.
It's been going well so far and both hens have been as eager to learn and put into practise their new skills, as an Iraqi insurgent with a handful of explosive and an eyeful of convoy with the words 'U.S. Army' written on the side.
However, I had overestimated their potential for realising my goal of creating a couple of highly trained and disciplined UberAngriffshühner ( supreme attack chickens ).

The resulting unfortunate event has lead to the untimely and regrettable death of a sparrow.
It is unclear at this time whether the two homocidal hens acted in partnership or whether this despicable act of savage avian murder was the doing of just one crazed chicken.
They claim the ill-fated sparrow had simply passed away of its own accord.
Last time I checked, there were no known cases of sparrows committing suicide by drowning themselves.
For quite some time we have been finding feathers belonging to the damned sky rats in the chicken run and laughed at the hens' attempts to give them what for when the pigeons break in to steal food.
We never thought they would actually get a hold of one of the varied avian invaders, which frequently and insolently help themselves to the chickens' tucker, and go all Charlie Manson on it.





Yet another pic of my left femur in its post Kenworth entanglement and pre surgery state.



This one would be my right femur in the same state.
Ain't walking anywhere on those buddy!!!!





And just so the rest of my right leg didn't feel left out, I had to fracture these two bones as well.

Where do I start?

Friday morning, the taxi arrives one hour late.
Nothing new there, I should know better than to expect the cab to turn up on time.
Apparently my physio didn't bother to tell the girls, who organise the taxis, that I am starting a new schedule.
Why, even today it turned up late.


Friday evening I made my assault on the Empress Hotel.
It felt right and it went well.
Good mates, good food, good craic, shite beer, but then again, one does not go there for the beer.
Suffice to say that Saturday I was sporting a lovely hangover courtesy of The Empy's decrepit beer lines.
At least that is the shared theory as to why the Empy beer procures such foul demonic hangovers that can turn even the nicest of people into rabid, undead, incoherent spawn of satan ghosts of their former selves.

That afternoon I received a phone call from a dear mate of mine from Tassie.
Nev and his wife Lyn, were up in Melbourne for the weekend and not only did they intend to catch up with me in an ex hospital situation, but I learnt that they had managed to smuggle some contraband.
Plans were quickly drawn up for them to visit on Sunday.
Sunday came and so did they and their generous and well appreciated gift.
A dozen Cascade Reds!!!
So that arvo we sat in the sun and caught up on gossip and generally enjoyed each other's company, whilst being entertained by the free ranging, meat eating chickens' exploits in the backyard

Later that afternoon was spent down at another establishment, the Brandon Hotel, where for a cool $5 you can purchase a fine tasting pint of your preferred amber coloured refreshment, whilst watching the Ashes on the telly.
So Cam, Brenton, Princess Strawberry and I ordered our various beverages and proceeded to spew forth great chunks of bullshit over the period of a few hours.
I'd discovered a new pilsner called Bohemian and embarked on a quest to test it's drinkable qualities in the traditional manner, by consuming vast quantities and seeing if the taste gets better, worse or stays the same.
I can report that it did indeed maintain its drinkability. :)
Afterwards we retired to our to our sister house, Watkins Street, and engaged in yet more potation, myself enjoying the fine interaction between the Cascade Red and my taste buds.
After such a long period of time abusing my poor old taste buds with the local brews, it was like a shiatsu massage for my tongue, leaving it spent, but aching for more.
The oysters with bacon and red wine and the garlic butter and cream sauced prawns were kind of nice too.
As was the gnocchi that Cam had made, fluffy little packages of soft potato goodness.
Come Monday morning and the expected hangover didn't rear its ugly head.
I'd forgotten how that clean Tassie water makes the beer so much fresher and less likely to instill harm upon the devourer of afore mentioned liquid righteousness.
Hence the morning's physio and hydro were so much less of a struggle than they should have been.


Mail for Monday the 4th of December ( is it December already? )
1x letter from rehab hospital - wanting money from ex patients towards some cancer fund.
I may be an outpatient, but I'm still a damned patient!!!
1x letter from Traffic Accident Commission - telling me that they've finally sent money for outstanding payments. Again.
1x letter from Lawyer - expecting to find another request for more money, but happily informed of the lawyer's wishes to impart good tidings and joy upon me for the upcoming Christmas / holiday season.
Is this the normal kind of correspondence one should be receiving?
It all feels a bit Twilight Zone.


On a lighter note, went and saw Borat, the movie.
What a riot!
That bloke knows how to push boundaries.
Not to mention break them and then hug and kiss them in a way they should never be interfered with.


I found some cool x-rays too, so I'll be starting a short series of those that y'all can peruse.
This one shows my left femur, pre surgery.
Those two bones at the top, they're supposed to be one.




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