I got this email a few days ago.  For those of you following the ‘Grandpa’ story (original post here) or know our friend Chris, he is having a tough go of things after his motorcycle accident.  I was going to write this email into a story, but it speaks for itself. This shot is Chris on a smallish day at Padang Padang.  I can’t remember if he hit bottom, but he definitely got tossed around a bit. It was ridiculously shallow (always is).  For something even more impressive, see Grandpa’s xray with wired jawbone and missing teeth on the bottom of the post! Wow.

Now here’s Chris…

so I got up, saddled up the black knight, and headed up to the Bukit, to go for a swim, as I had not touched the water at Uluwatu for 5 weeks…………..it was nice to see old friends, and see that Big Jim, Edward, Ryan, were at (Spot edited out), and ‘ol Diga was at the Racetrack, pullin in……….a tea and a banana milkshake, was all I could do, there was no banana pancake today……….3 days ago I went to the dentist to have an overall look at what options I have…………the dentist brought in the oral surgeon, who throw the plastic surgeon (who set my jaw) straight under the bus…………in other words, he said we must try to reposition your jaw, now to fix your “open bite” before they have to do a major surgery and re-break your jaw……………the breaking of the jaw was bad enough, just ask Todd & Diga, a re-break was not part of my plan………..2 days ago the oral surgeon put braces on my teeth, closed my jaw with rubber-bands, and said come back tomorrow………once I showed up and sat down, he was so pleased with the rubber-banded jaw, that he pulled them out, replaced with wire and cranked it down tight, “repositioning” the jaw……….UNCOMFORTABLE……………….to say the least, but not as bad or painful as my head thought it would be………so it’s another 3 weeks eating through a syringe……….again……..juice and soup, but I have a new tool, delivered from the good ‘ol USA, actually a present from Piper, that Huey delivered, it’s a hand crank, food grinder, to mush food for baby’s, when I first got it, was when the plastic surgeon, cut the wires so I could open my mouth, and I didn’t need to grind any food, Piper said you could grind a steak or a cheeseburger in it, although those 2 items do not sound appealing to me, Dan brought me a cannelloni last nite to test the grinder…..

……it worked, it made mush, it was a bit hard sucking it through my missing teeth and into my mouth, actually hurt to do it, I did it, then put the other 1/2 in and cranked it down to much and finished the cannelloni……….thanks Piper…………now the shoulder is on hold until after the braces come off, I see the dentist every 3 or 4 days to crank down the wires and “reposition” the jaw……..my visa expires on the 17th of July..

……..exactly 3 weeks from when the dentist wired me shut………and he said it will take 3 weeks no sooner……….I changed my ticket to Bangkok to the 18th………can’t wait to see what the doctors in Bangkok have to say about my shoulder…………hopefully it can be fixed and I can surf again………only time will tell…………….that is my story……..and I am sticking to it…………