The Long Bike Ride

This was cut out of "Sleepless in Seoul" because it did not involve insomnia or being homeless in the city.  It is simply a memory that fell out while writing about my time there.

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Probably the craziest thing I did during this time of transition between tours in Korea was to decide I wanted to ride my bicycle from the small town of Dongducheon to Seoul.  It was a nutty idea.  I didn't even know how to get there other than to take the main road south and hope that I eventually ran into Seoul.  I had no idea how long it would take so I started early on a Saturday morning to give me as much time as possible.  These were pre-Google days where you either had a paper map or you had nothing.  I had nothing but a bike and my (dim) wits.

I alternated between riding on the road and riding on a sidewalk, if one was available.  I got more than a few angry honks and almost clipped someone stepping off of a bus at some point.  Probably the scariest moment was when I was getting closer to the city, after having peddled hard for at least two hours, and a bus had stopped in front of me to let people off.  Because of the near-clipping incident I decided to go around it on the traffic side.  As I started to pass it, it began moving again and accelerating.  At the same time another bus rolled up along side it so that I was sandwiched between the two.  It was like navigating a narrow gap between two sheer rock faces, but with the rock walls moving!  My heart was pounding and I felt the adrenalin begin to flow, supercharging my legs.  I stood up on the pedals and began pumping for all I was worth, gaining enough speed to pop out from between them and continuing to accelerate until I was clear to get back to the side of the road and then up onto the sidewalk.

I eventually made it deep into what I recognized as a very large city and my suspicions that I'd found Seoul were confirmed when I spotted the Seoul Tower perched on top of Namsan (South Mountain).  This mountain sits at the heart of Seoul and the main American Army base in Korea (Yongsan) is just south of it.  Now I had to figure out how to get around it so I could secure my bike at the Army base and navigate on to a friend's house using the subway.  I saw a Korean man standing on the corner with a shopping bag in his hand and so I stopped to ask directions.  He looked at me with a somewhat bewildered expression before saying anything.  I assumed my Korean was very poor and that he had no idea what I'd just asked.  Then, with absolutely no accent, he said, "I don't know.  I'm from California."  Twelve million Koreans to ask and I picked the one from California.

Now I had to decide which side of the mountain I would try and go around to get to Yongsan.  I followed a major road straight towards the mountain and ended up going through a very long tunnel that actually went under the mountain.  At one point there was a long straight stretch that must have been tilted downward, but with no visual reference point it simply looked flat.  There were no cars and I let go of my handlebars, sat up straight on my seat, and stretched my arms out to my side with eyes closed.  I was flying along without peddling, seemingly propelled by mysterious forces in the belly of the mountain.

***

I eventually met my friend at his apartment.  He was an engineer that had visited Shalom House on occasion to practice his English, though he lived with his wife and two kids in Seoul.  When I arrived I was soaked through with sweat and smelled strongly of body odor.  I explained to him that I'd biked from Dongducheon which he couldn't quite get his head around.  He wanted to take me and the kids to Lotte World for the afternoon which is a gargantuan amusement park housed inside a massive building in the southern part of Seoul.  We decided I should take a shower first and he loaned me a t-shirt and shorts.

Lotte World is hard to describe in its immensity.  It bills itself as the world's largest indoor theme park which has the stamp of approval of the Guinness Book of World Records.  On the bottom floor is an oval ice skating rink that is open to the glass roof that spans nearly the entire length and width of the roof about one hundred feet above it.  The third floor includes the theme park which surrounds the rink and looks down into it.  Off and on throughout the day a full on parade makes its away around a wide oval track.  There are floats, people dressed as Korean cartoon characters, and a marching band made up of prancing young ladies in brightly colored band uniforms.

At some point we were standing in line for a particular ride and a small group of non-Korean men were talking boisterously amongst themselves twenty feet or so further up the line.  They stood out because it is rare to see foreigners in this part of the city.  There is also the reality that Koreans never talk that loud in public or draw attention to themselves in that way.  I don't doubt this group of men had been drinking and one of them caught sight of me.  He may have called out "Hey mate!" or used some other outlandish greeting in an accent that I couldn't quite place, though I thought it might be Australian.  As it turns out, they were New Zealanders on a business trip.

We engaged in some loud and light hearted banter as if the people standing between us did not exist.  My Korean friend was amused by the whole thing, partly because he could not understand a single word they were saying.  He prided himself in speaking English very well and assumed they were speaking another language altogether.  He asked me where they were from and had a hard time believing they were speaking a language that he felt himself proficient in.  I found myself in the peculiar position of being a translator for him.

The day ended with him inviting over some of his male friends for a feast of a dinner followed by liberal amounts of alcohol.  His wife prepared the sumptuous banquet and set it out, then retired to the kitchen with a female friend where they talked quietly until called by the men.  There's a saying in Korea, "There are three equals: the king, the father, and the teacher."

The next day I returned to Yongsan and opted to take a bus, stowing my bike underneath for the long trip back up north.  A one way bike trip like that had been quite enough, thank you very much.