A day at the beach - Piha 1 January 2010

There were some modifications required to my lower body equipment to allow beach walking and it was going to be for swimming but the Orthopaedic Surgeon said “no swimming” in a very stern voice several times when Catriona mentioned it to him. I burst into tears and had a wee tantrum and then thought of another great beach activity – the BBQ. I have put in a few photos of the gear and our BBQ, which make it easier to discuss with you. The original sand feet I made had worked so well that I did not take them off as intended but have used them ever since, they are plumbing fittings with rubber toilet buffers on the bottom and swivel universally to allow movement. There came the day (last Wednesday) when I was allowed to be weight bearing – it took 7 weeks to get to that point. I found that the foot still pointed downwards and pushed my knee back making walking painful so I measured by standing on magazines and made a wooden wedge for inside the cast shoe. I screwed this in and fitted two bungy-holding screws on the back to keep my foot from sliding forward. This of course left the other leg too short and the easiest approach to that was to screw an old sandal onto the bottom. The final challenge for the beach was to keep sand out of the fibreglass cast – two places, the toes were open and I had broken through the heel with my weight and it was disintegrating. A plastic bag held in place with a stretch tube from the early days of keeping swelling down would obviously work but the piece de resistance was the short length of garden hose down inside the plastic bag to supply air to my toes and prevent sweating. This worked very well despite nobody taking up my invitation to sit beside me blowing gently into the top of the hose – or even sucking if they felt so inclined! There was a bonus use for the tube when we were sitting beside the BBQ on the beach, I found that my drink holder spike slid nicely into the tube and held my glass handy. In the picture are Catriona with our friends Earl and Pam, and Sue and Dave (who went swimming) and Fiona. The BBQ managed food for all 7 of us, by virtue of some 2-storey cooking!