Are we there yet?
I spend my time somewhere between technology, sport, travel and whatever happens to catch my attention that week. I work in compliance and technology, which mostly means asking awkward questions and trying to understand how things actually work.
This site is a collection of observations, stories and ideas: from cycling and camping to sport, work and the occasional completely unnecessary deep dive. Life rarely follows a sensible sequence, so neither does this website.
Chapter one: It's Going Tibia Okay
In 2017, I suffered a significant accident; a complete and utter destruction of my knee, tibial plateau, and fibula. To describe it simply, my tibial plateau was crushed into many pieces, much like a Violet Crumble. Several hours of surgery were required to reconstruct it, ultimately leaving me with two L-brackets and 28 screws holding everything together. In addition, I snapped the top of my fibula and split my tibia down the middle for approximately 8cm.
It was an injury so severe that it shocked even experienced medical professionals and resulted in a nine-week stay in the hospital. The most visceral reminder of this period was the external fixation frame that held my leg together for eight weeks. This device was literally screwed into my femur and lower leg, acting as an external scaffold while the damage healed.
That nine-week hospital stay was far from the end of the recovery. More than ten weeks passed without any meaningful weight-bearing. Then came the next challenge: learning to walk again while adapting to the reality of a permanently damaged knee, one that does not fully extend and offers little flexion beyond 90 degrees.
Eventually, I started walking, cycling, and swimming again. I returned to being active, albeit with limitations. My walking gait changed, and my once-powerful swimming kick became little more than a whimper. Yet I could still swim laps, return to the beach, and go body surfing. Kayaking remained completely unaffected. Most importantly, I rebuilt my endurance to levels I hadn't seen in twenty years, even if I was moving a little slower than before.
The Final Chapter: The Challenge
Am I back to full health? Hell no. Not even close.
The shoulders and foot forced me into a level of inactivity and a house-bound existence that was entirely foreign to me. Over time, I lost fitness, lost conditioning, gained weight, and watched my physical capacity drift further away. For someone who has spent most of his life outdoors, travelling, camping, swimming, cycling, kayaking, or simply moving, that was perhaps the hardest adjustment of all.
I am now slowly waking from that slumber. My shoulders are still not fully recovered. I can row again. I can kayak again. But I still cannot properly rotate my right arm to swim.
That is where this challenge comes in. This challenge is not about proving anything to anyone else. It is about forcing myself back into the world. It is about rebuilding habits, rebuilding fitness, and rebuilding confidence. Most of all, it is about creating the motivation needed for the next stage of recovery. The goal is not to return to the person I was before all of this happened. The goal is simply to keep moving forward.
Chapter two: Multi, Multi, Back-to-Back
If 2017 was the initial structural failure, the last couple of years have been a compounding series of setbacks. Easter 2024 began with a camping trip to Melbourne. A routine lift of some equipment resulted in a torn erector spinae. Annoying, but manageable.
A few months later, while unpacking the car after another weekend away, a slip resulted in a broken left femur. Although doctors anticipated a recovery of around eight weeks, early scans showed the fracture was healing well and allowed me to begin cautious rehabilitation. Unfortunately, heavily favouring my right leg triggered an old calf injury and reignited issues with blood clotting, creating another frustrating limitation on my mobility.
By Easter 2025, I was back in Thredbo and moving reasonably well thanks to many hours spent riding virtual kilometres on Zwift. Then, a mountain bike crash broke a rib. Anyone who has experienced a broken rib knows how completely it restricts movement. For weeks, the circular bruise left by the end of my handlebars served as a reminder of the crash.
As the rib injury began to fade, I realised something else was wrong. My left shoulder felt off. The diagnosis was a frozen shoulder. After weeks of treatment, it slowly improved, only for my right shoulder to follow the same path. For several months, I was dealing with the reality of a double frozen shoulder. Around the same period, years of minor crashes, impacts, and wear finally began catching up with me. Various aches and limitations that had once been background noise became harder to ignore. Then came a bone spur in my right foot. Surgery was recommended, but I decided to push back. My goal was to manage the problem through diet, rehabilitation, and targeted exercise. For the most part, that approach worked.