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My ankle is busted, but my spirit is unbroken

Editor at The Gazette working remotely while recovering from ankle surgery
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Gazette editor Laurie Tritschler looks up from his desk at his parents’ home on the Sunshine Coast on Wednesday, Feb. 2. Photo: Marion McGarry

If you haven’t seen your faithful newspaper man around town lately, it’s because I’ve been nursing a broken ankle. Or rather, my parents have been nursing me while I heal up at their place on the Sunshine Coast.

This would hardly be fit to print, but readers are bound to notice my absence from The Gazette’s newsroom of one — even if our in-house production staff and a widespread diaspora of journalists have done an excellent job holding the paper together. No one can deny that my inimitable colleague, the Princeton Spotlight’s Andrea DeMeer, has filed more than her share of stories in my stead.

It all started on Christmas morning, when I went tobogganing with my best friend and her two boys. Things were decidedly looking up when we got to Reid’s Hill, a gentle slope leading to Observation Mountain. Other friends were sledding the hill with their kids, none of whom broke any bones that day.

Staring down the hill, I figured I could make it down on a laser scooter that had been modified into a ski. Picture one of those folding scooters that kids ride on the sidewalk, only with two halves of a ski where the front and back wheels would normally go.

Then picture a 37-year-old man using said contraption to train-wreck a lower limb in front of a small crowd of people he was due to have Christmas dinner with.

I was right about Reid’s Hill. I conquered the slope by tackling it from progressively higher increments, eventually making two full runs that were pretty rad.

However, things went sideways after I watched the scooter’s owner, a 9th-grader of impeccable scooting ability, take his rig down a shorter, steeper hill next to Reid’s.

Not to be outdone by a boy with the ankles of a gazelle, I was determined to repeat his feat. It was one of the dumbest things I’ve ever done in my life, and I’ve pulled some stupid hijinks in my day.

I must’ve bailed down that hill at least three times before my friend suggested I wasn’t “making good choices.”

“Yes, I am!” I shouted back, ignoring worried looks, and wiping snow off myself. I just had to adjust my descent so that the scooter wouldn’t fly out from under me.

There were other adults watching – some encouraging my antics, others not so much. I distinctly remember an older couple joking that things might go terribly wrong before I made my last attempt.

“I’ll dial 9-1 and if you don’t make it, I’ll dial the other 1,” a man laughed.

I launched myself down the hill. But I went down with my feet perpendicular to each other, dumping 200 pounds of torque onto my left ankle as I went over the scooter.

There was no pain, only embarrassment, as I lay there, face in the snow and unable to move a broken, dislocated ankle.

Two hospital trips and an emergency surgery later, and here I am, typing this out at my makeshift desk a nine-hour drive away from the events I’ve been reporting for the past couple of weeks.

Having read this, I hope you’ll take away two things:

1. I’ll be back as soon as I can walk again.

2. I’ll watch my footing next Christmas!