Nearly November

The newness of blogging has diminished as told by the near silence of this month. Bringing myself to actually sit and add entries, creating interesting recaps of daily moments has lost the flavor of novelty. Easily fixed, but I will have to do some retro blogging to account for nearly all of November. In my defense, I've been constantly on the go for nearly the whole month. One of these days I'm going to get a chance to sleep in, I hope!

As for the latest news. I spent the Thanks Giving weekend in a Southern suburb of Seoul named Suwon (수안). Took a train after work on Friday at 8:00 and arrived nearly 3 hours later. Met my good friend Kevin George at the station and promptly found a local watering hole. After 3 highly priced foreign beers we warmly walked back to his rather new, and quite comfortable apartment talking all the while of my upcoming trip to Germany. Having spent a bit of time in Europe this last year, he offered up many suggestions and a wealth of pamphlets and books to help my journey along. Looks like my school will be giving the week following my return to Korea as our vacation. I'm thinking I might extend my trip 5 or six days. The plan had been to drive the Romantic Road, starting just south of Frankfurt and finishing in Munich. But now I'm thinking of heading straight to Amsterdam for a night or two and then due East to Berlin and South through Dresden on to Munich. And doing the Romantic Road in reverse. All that aside, I'm more interested in waking Christmas morning next to my lady. Who could ask for more?...

Saturday, Kevin and I took the subway for an hour and a half up to Seoul. I was in need of bike parts since I somehow managed to yank the disc brake hose out of the fitting, pissing out all the oil and leaving me, again, with no front brake. Damn Hayes discs!!! This is the second time my front brake has gone down in two weeks. I still have no idea what happened the first time. Never again will I buy a bike with hydraulic brakes. The power is nice but the hassle when things go wrong is simply not worth it. From now on, it's Avid mechanicals for this diehard. Besides, I'm selling my bike in order to pay for my new ride and I needed to replace the parts I am handing off to the lucky recipient of my AC1.

After the bike shop we took a taxi down to the traditional district of Insadong (인사동) so I could finish my Christmas shopping. On this street I saw more x-pats than anywhere else so far. Other than at Route 66 on a Saturday night. Very diverse crowd buying up traditional Korean tinketry. And that was exactly my reason as well. After successfully completing my shopping, Kevin and I were in need of a quick bite before dinner. TGFS... Thank God For Subway.

Sometime right after sunset, we met up with Heather, Kevin's wife and made our way to their friends house. Nothing like a traditional meal to make one thankful for all the blessings in the world. Traditional in a very Easternly way. This will mark my first Halal Thanksgiving. We had curry chicken, cucumber sauce, Nan bread, Indian rice, potato cakes of some kind, and a veg. Dessert was three blends of tea, lightly sweetened but exceptionally potent. A lovely dinner no doubt. We're all getting back together the weekend before I leave for Germany for a tour of the DMZ. I hear it's most interesting. The day following, I'll be stretching the legs of my new ride. Fook ya. Fook me. And since the shuttle bitch (Bee's jeep) is back in transport condition, I won't have to pedal my new tank except to try and keep up with these madmen on the descents. "Nanhamsan, I shall tame you!"

Achasan

Litmus Test

View from the top of Litmus Test. Bee in the near fore ground. Seoul in the distant fog. As close to a sunny day as one gets in the smog of the 11th largest city in the world. Surounding areas included...


Seoul Sunset

Bitch of trail. Think I would have performed better had I not finished that last beer. Excuses aside, this is simply an amazing trail. Super technical sections of pant soiling steepness combined with drops, off camber boulders, and random Korean hikers. Utter madness... Going back for more this weekend.


Bee trying again while Drew checks his line


Second attempt success