Trauma Bay NZ IPA / Brewer’s Select
Damn, It Was a Beautiful Morning
Shawn's story
Damn it was a beautiful morning up on the mountain.
September 24, 2024, exactly 2 years before the Trauma Bay IPA release.
He was new to speedflying with all his flights on beginner terrain. The plan started simple: another flight off a familiar launch, something low-pressure and manageable, but that shifted. Other people were in town and the conditions were good. He’d progressed quickly and they figured he was ready for a mountain he’d never flown or even hiked. “I remember the landing zone being pointed out as “just behind that hill.” At the time, it didn’t feel like a serious gap, but looking back, it was one of the first cracks in the chain. He had radios but didn’t use them. Looking back, he knows a voice in his ear may have saved his body.
He laid out the wing, checked lines, harnessed up, and set to launch. The canopy came up clean as he ran into smooth lift-off. Settled into the harness, the air was smooth and the view opened into an epic flight. It was absolutely beautiful, but that was only the beginning.
As he neared the bottom, he was too high. He saw where the others had landed. He moved left and tried to solve the situation the way a skydiver might: pattern, turn, correction, approach. But this was terrain he didn’t know, under a wing he was still learning, with outs he hadn’t considered. He began to sashay to burn altitude. Big mistake, he recalls.
Then he saw a hiker on the path. He turned right to avoid being directly over him, overcorrected, then tried to bring it back left. That correction swung him out and he lost altitude fast.
That’s when he hit the rebar-reinforced fence. The impact came fast. He recalls the loud sound, the immediate numbness, and everything stopping at once. A man asked if he was okay and Shawn responded with, “I’m good.” What you say when you’re absolutely not good.
He remembers his left arm hanging wrong. When he tried to move his leg, he felt bone move against bone. The pain was everywhere. The flight was over.
Training kicks in when reality bends. His medical mind assessed damage as he listed injuries to medics: open tib-fib, open elbow fracture, broken ribs, etc. Damn, he said later, “I missed the ankle fracture.” He remembers lying there broken, bleeding, and apologizing because other people had to deal with him.
In the ambulance, pain and fear kept trading places. His head was restricted and he couldn’t place the source of blood running down his side. A lot of blood. He worried it was draining from his chest; it was the first time he considered that he might not survive. Blood pressure? Heart rate? Oxygen saturation? Questions he shot every few minutes along with a plea to take him to the hospital he knows; his people, his trauma bay.
When the ambulance doors opened, the world changed again. One nurse recognized the tattoos on his arm. “Oh shit,” slipped as she wheeled him into the trauma bay where noise became comfort. On the dirt landing zone, everything felt exposed and uncertain, but now people called out vitals, hung medications, and reduced fractures.
At some point, they took him to the scanner and the pain was overwhelming. They gave him more medications, strong medications. Visually, the room collapsed down. His hearing narrowed. Everything pulled inward until it felt like he was a tiny dot. A dot that then disappeared. “I thought, holy shit, I died.” He kept repeating his family’s names terrified he’d forget them.
Life changed that day. Pre-crash, he was in great shape, the best he’d felt since his competitive fighting days. After the accident, physical therapy started with sitting on the side of the bed. That was it, that was the workout and it took every bit of strength he had.
About a week later he was discharged from the hospital. Home would become a mental and physical battleground. He had to exist in a body that no longer responded the way it always had. “I hated it; needing help, needing that fucking wheelchair.” Two years later, he still hurts. A slight limp and some pain as a reminder about the risks haven’t stopped him from zipping up a wingsuit and getting on a plane. It hasn’t stopped him from BASE jumping. He’s not speedflying yet, but he will. Why?
The air gives something he can’t find other places. It forces focus. Gear checks, handles, lines, three-rings, flight plans, winds, altitude, patterns, landing; everything narrows to the present. Work disappears, worry evaporates, and for a few minutes, there’s only the jump.
September 24, 2024, exactly 2 years before the Trauma Bay IPA release.
He was new to speedflying with all his flights on beginner terrain. The plan started simple: another flight off a familiar launch, something low-pressure and manageable, but that shifted. Other people were in town and the conditions were good. He’d progressed quickly and they figured he was ready for a mountain he’d never flown or even hiked. “I remember the landing zone being pointed out as “just behind that hill.” At the time, it didn’t feel like a serious gap, but looking back, it was one of the first cracks in the chain. He had radios but didn’t use them. Looking back, he knows a voice in his ear may have saved his body.
He laid out the wing, checked lines, harnessed up, and set to launch. The canopy came up clean as he ran into smooth lift-off. Settled into the harness, the air was smooth and the view opened into an epic flight. It was absolutely beautiful, but that was only the beginning.
As he neared the bottom, he was too high. He saw where the others had landed. He moved left and tried to solve the situation the way a skydiver might: pattern, turn, correction, approach. But this was terrain he didn’t know, under a wing he was still learning, with outs he hadn’t considered. He began to sashay to burn altitude. Big mistake, he recalls.
Then he saw a hiker on the path. He turned right to avoid being directly over him, overcorrected, then tried to bring it back left. That correction swung him out and he lost altitude fast.
That’s when he hit the rebar-reinforced fence. The impact came fast. He recalls the loud sound, the immediate numbness, and everything stopping at once. A man asked if he was okay and Shawn responded with, “I’m good.” What you say when you’re absolutely not good.
He remembers his left arm hanging wrong. When he tried to move his leg, he felt bone move against bone. The pain was everywhere. The flight was over.
Training kicks in when reality bends. His medical mind assessed damage as he listed injuries to medics: open tib-fib, open elbow fracture, broken ribs, etc. Damn, he said later, “I missed the ankle fracture.” He remembers lying there broken, bleeding, and apologizing because other people had to deal with him.
In the ambulance, pain and fear kept trading places. His head was restricted and he couldn’t place the source of blood running down his side. A lot of blood. He worried it was draining from his chest; it was the first time he considered that he might not survive. Blood pressure? Heart rate? Oxygen saturation? Questions he shot every few minutes along with a plea to take him to the hospital he knows; his people, his trauma bay.
When the ambulance doors opened, the world changed again. One nurse recognized the tattoos on his arm. “Oh shit,” slipped as she wheeled him into the trauma bay where noise became comfort. On the dirt landing zone, everything felt exposed and uncertain, but now people called out vitals, hung medications, and reduced fractures.
At some point, they took him to the scanner and the pain was overwhelming. They gave him more medications, strong medications. Visually, the room collapsed down. His hearing narrowed. Everything pulled inward until it felt like he was a tiny dot. A dot that then disappeared. “I thought, holy shit, I died.” He kept repeating his family’s names terrified he’d forget them.
Life changed that day. Pre-crash, he was in great shape, the best he’d felt since his competitive fighting days. After the accident, physical therapy started with sitting on the side of the bed. That was it, that was the workout and it took every bit of strength he had.
About a week later he was discharged from the hospital. Home would become a mental and physical battleground. He had to exist in a body that no longer responded the way it always had. “I hated it; needing help, needing that fucking wheelchair.” Two years later, he still hurts. A slight limp and some pain as a reminder about the risks haven’t stopped him from zipping up a wingsuit and getting on a plane. It hasn’t stopped him from BASE jumping. He’s not speedflying yet, but he will. Why?
The air gives something he can’t find other places. It forces focus. Gear checks, handles, lines, three-rings, flight plans, winds, altitude, patterns, landing; everything narrows to the present. Work disappears, worry evaporates, and for a few minutes, there’s only the jump.