Missing your flight can really ruin your day. But for one New Zealand teen, even the devastation caused by massive earthquakes wasn’t going to stop him getting to the airport on time.
18-year-old Jackson Lidgard’s family became trapped on their remote farm, and nearby roads and rail were rendered useless by earthquakes with magnitudes of up to 7.8 on the South Island a fortnight ago.
So Lidgard became the human embodiment of determination — cycling for two hours and 25 kilometres (15 miles) to Kaikōura airport while filming the broken New Zealand landscape along the way.
The environmental management student told Newshub NZ that nothing was going to stop him from catching his flight to Christchurch. The teen was scheduled to judge an electric vehicle competition there and cancelling just wasn’t an option.
After the solitary and eerily beautiful journey featuring lots of fresh boulders, Lidgard reportedly made his flight in time, while a helicopter arrived to lift his family to safety.
