bikes, brakes, bruises, and a beautiful evening

I’m glad to be alive at the end of today. I may be fearless about flying a single-seat jet across the largest ocean on the planet, but I’m terrified to ride my bike around the neighborhood.

It started with a short bike ride on a Korean evening lit by another amazing sunset painted in the western sky over Kunsan Airbase. I was tucked in behind “Shooter McGavin”, who was cruising about 22mph while I drafted. Between glances at the beauty in the sky, I saw the car approaching from the right on a side street. I saw him look directly at Shooter, whose arm was up in the universal “stop” signal. I saw Shooter make eye contact with the driver, who slowed and glanced the other way. Then he looked back our way and sped up into the intersection.

Shooter beat me to the brakes by a fraction of a second and together we swerved left in effort to go in front of the car, whose driver was now standing on his own brakes. Next I knew, I’d abandoned the bike and was diving toward the pavement. A number of thoughts went through my mind: “Break your fall with the gloves; stretch out and keep your body off the pavement; road-rash sucks.” I felt my left elbow sliding on the concrete and I cringed, analyzing with a twinge of hope that it felt like the skin was holding up. My left thigh felt the thud of the brunt of my weight (and ended up with the bruise to prove it). A swollen and bruised palm told me later that my right hand had caught the rest of my weight. My 11-year-old-gloves rose to the challenge unscathed.

Shooter couldn’t quite say the same. According to “Slick”, who watched the whole thing from behind us, my back tire slid into him as we swerved. His flight was interrupted by his shoulder and head meeting the front quarter panel and hood of the car, respectively. When the motion stopped, I was lying in front of the car, which had stopped. Shooter was lying in the opposite direction beside the car. Slick had done a flying dismount, assessed that I was mostly okay, and was kneeling beside Shooter waiting for him to move.

My elbow was white where the skin had been transferred to the pavement, but otherwise I was bruised but fine. Shooter (and his bike) fared a bit worse. He lay still on the pavement and inventoried his body parts for some time before slowly rising and trying out their functionability. Eventually we all rode home under the fading brilliance and through crowds of gnats that distracted us from the pain, as did Slick’s attempts at jokes.

I would have liked to be able to ask the driver what on earth he was thinking. He did stick around until we rode away, but little communication beyond rudimentary signs language passed between us, and he looked sufficiently repentant. In stark contrast was the driver who passed me on Highway 70 just at I rolled out of the mountains into the town of Alamogordo back home in New Mexico. He passed me then pulled over onto the shoulder.

After the incident in Korea, I was fighting my fear of riding with cars around anyway, and this is the situation I dread the most. I was going over 30mph with highly ineffective road bike brakes, and now I had to pass between cars going 50mph on the road and the slowly moving, completely unpredictable one on the shoulder. I moved into the road to go around him, should he swerve back onto the road or open his door, or something else I couldn’t guess. I was mumbling something about, “What are you doing, dude?” as I flew by and made the road-rage mistake of glancing at the driver. To my surprise, he gave me the finger while his mouth moved angrily behind the closed window.

He let me pass then pulled back onto the road and passed me again. Once my shock and fear wore off, I wished I’d gotten his license plate but instead just found myself praying for him while I thanked God that I was still alive. The rest of the ride to the transmission shop to pick my car up was lost to shock. That’s too bad, because the ride from my house at 6500 feet is generally far more enjoyable than the ride from town at 4400 feet up to my house!

So today I escaped the highway altogether and pedaled the dirt roads beneath white-trunked aspens glowing in early fall yellow-green. The evening sun made them glow beneath the deep blue sky. It was a beautiful (and wonderfully benign!) autumn evening in the Sacramento Mountains.

Rummicube at Dak-bucks

Four hours after leaving Kunsan, after driving over several dividers to correct wrong turns and countless stops for “OSI” (milk) coffee, we arrived at a parking lot we could call home for the night.  Rick pitched his tent on a grass median.  I pitched mine on the mattress in the back of Slick’s truck.  Now that’s what I call camping!

 

The next morning we wandered around the national park a bit more before discovering that Ganhyon climbing area was nowhere near the park.  A couple hours later, stuffed with surprisingly normal pizza, we convinced the gate guard at Ganhyon Resort that we deserved a discount, and drove through the parking lot onto the tiny streets of the resort.  Koreans stared at Slick’s huge white Dodge 4x4 with its loud diesel grumble.  We turned left over a shallow river dancing in its rocky bed.  Verdant valley walls rose around us.  The one-lane ribbon on road hugged the base on the winding valley walls.  Finally a row of shops appeared across the street from a bridge.  On the far end of the bridge, rock cliffs towered above the sparkling river.  Lean bodies dotted the rock.  One of them was my friend Heidi, whom we were meeting here.

 

We joined the crowd at the foot of the wall for a peaceful day of scaling walls and meeting new friends.  A Korean friend hosted us for dinner at a local restaurant.  We walked there, up over a steep ridge along a trail that tended to vanish in the darkness.  I was still hitching piggy-back rides on any downhills; my legs were still sore from the ironman.  I was thrilled to settle onto the floor in front of the dining table in standard Korean fashion.  I marveled as I looked around the table:  four Americans, two Canadians, a Korean, and a Frenchman; three teachers, a student, a military contractor, and two fighter pilots; but really just eight climbers. 

 

Sunday we clawed up more routes on beautiful bare rock, then bathed in the crystal stream winding through the valley.  Before returning to civilization we sat on the shore, playing guitar and singing for a long while.  I slept much of the way home, content to let Rick play navigator.  Slick drove, spurred on by many cups of OSI.

 

Monday we drove to Naejangsan National Park with a huge group of folks.  Of course we cheated and took the gondola up as far as we could before hiking along the ridges overlooking ridges and rice-paddy-filled valleys as far as the eye could see.  We took pictures of Carrie and me atop a natural swing made of a thick vine.  The boys raced up a steep steel set of more than 100 steps – Rooster won in 42 seconds.  Carrie got closely acquainted with a snake.  I coerced everyone to slip and slide into a slope of waterfall for a picture.  Lisa learned the value of a walking stick on such steep terrain.  We all rested on the steps of a temple – until the monk reprimanded us about lying down there.  We stopped for ice cream on the way back to the cars to make up for all the hiking.

 

Seeking an escape from base on a Friday evening, three of us drove to Kunsan City.  “Let’s go play Rummicube at Dak-bucks,” Sandi suggested.  I shook my head and looked at him inqusitively.  “Was that English?” I asked.  Sandi laughed.  Chandra agreed to go.  We’d just finished dinner at a Chinese restaurant inside a converted whorehouse.  We’d had our own room, complete with light fixtures conspicuously mounted on the wall above where the bed used to be.  Chandra was suspect of the need for the white seat covers.  The waitress shut the door every time she left, which made us a little uncomfortable. 

 

Now we were walking through Kunsan City toward Dak-bucks.  Some people used to call Koreans “DAKs” which stood for “Dumb A-- Koreans”, until the Air Force understandable prohibited the term.  So when I saw the green-on-white sign for the coffee house “Dak-bucks”, a spitting image of a Starbucks sign, complete with green circle logo, I couldn’t help but wonder if they knew the connotations the name brought.  We ascended the stairs to the lounge full of plush couches, restaurant tables, and racks of board games.  Chandra and I settled into a corner table and Sandi brought over the Rummicube game.  We all ordered completely non-healthy mocha coffees and set up the game.  It was a combination between Scrabble and Gin Rummy.  Scrabble with numbers you have to match by number or sequence and color, with the goal of using all your numbers on the playing field and emptying your number rack.  Of course I enjoyed it because, in true beginner’s luck fashion, I won.  A quick game of Jenga followed to the tune of much laughter before we called it a night and drove back to Kunsan Airbase.

 

Hope you’re enjoying early fall.  The weather’s finally getting really nice here in Korea…must be time to go soon!

Donna