Down in Silla Town

Last Friday the family bundled up and off to Gyeongju. We took the train down and on the way I was amused to see the sister campus to where I work looming off on the horizon.



when we got to the yeogwan, Baxter assumed his customary position:


Outside in Gyeongju the evening was frightening:


But it was still autumn when the sun came up:



Squirels were standing on their heads



And the lovely Seokguram Grotto loomed ahead:


As did tumuli
And the harsh streets of Gyeongju (Picture courtesy of Danny):


We wandered through the "open air museum" that is Gyeongju, and ate alarming amounts of sam gyap sal...

You could say it was a good day...

Last Weekend

Since it is already this weekend, I suppose I should post about last weekend?


Which was off the Morning Calm Gardens in Cheongpyeong, which is kind of north-east of Seoul. We had gone on this train line before, but discovered that if you took the train from Oksu you ended up in the Cheongyeongri train station and we were able to catch a train, standing room only, within about 15 minutes. We were in the front car with about 10 college students who were heading up to Gapyeong or Chuncheon. They quickly pulled out the beer, then quickly spilled some of the beer, but everyone was in good spirits.



Once we got to the train station it was a short walk to the bus station, where we discovered we had just missed the bus.


So it was a quick taxi ride to the Morning Calm 아짐 고요 Garden. Alas, we had arrived just about at week to late and most of the beautiful leaves were on the ground, though they were made up for, in volume, by gnats. This will certainly be a cool place to visit in Spring. You can see how beautiful it was BEFORE our visit by checking Roboseyo’s site out. By the time we got there, most leaves were on the ground.

We did get to see one of the world's smallest churches (Photo on right has tiny Injun for scale):


Then it was a walk back through town and a samgyapsal lunch/dinner at a fairly backwoods place – it was where the bus drivers went to eat and we were quite the center of attention with the ajumma hovering and cooking our meat for us. Any random little bit of Korean I could pull out was appreciated and we left, full and happy.

On the mugungwha, again standing tickets, and back to Seoul, drinking a coke and a beer on the floor and sitting with slightly fewer students.

At the Chuseok-hop

So… Chuseok, of course, was not over after 1.8 days. Instead Yvonne and I repaired to the couch to watch movies. The first lovely photo is Yvonne setting up the jury-rigged system we have to show movies on the walls. It actually works wonderfully, and we had noodles and beer and watched Iron Man. I had been given the movie some long time ago by Yvonne’s brother, but had put it in the bookcase where it languished, as a book, until Yvonne found it last week.


Good movie!

The next day, which was actual Chuseok, it was off to Yongsan family park to loll about. Koreans are very public, and Yvonne loves that hang out in public thing, so I bought a pad and we pack up some water-crackers, tuna, and various beverages and go into the park and hang out. Yvonne reads, I read and take notes (somewhere around here is a picture of my “park office” which is similar to my “Train office” which picture I now cannot find on the blog?), and at various times we wander around, watch Korean kids play, watch the dogs run free, or as in one of these pictures, watch the super-solipsistic Korean women find a way to hang mirrors outdoors and make sure their makeup is just so!



And, you know, take pictures of bugs




We stayed out until the sun started hiding from us, and then it was back home to sit around (more reading!) until it was dinner and movie time.



Next day was similar…. A late start and then off for a walk on Mt. Namsan, from where most of these pictures come. When the sun came down that day we went to “Dear Friends” a cute little café up the street and had lemon tea and gin and tonics (I think most people can guess who had what). Then it was time for Yvonne to take off for the train.

It’s a drag – she doesn’t have to start teaching til late on Monday, but the Hagwon insists she be there in case of emergency.

Lo and behold, when I caught her on FB on Monday morning, the imaginary emergency had finally come: Her Canadian (they are largely swine and every last one untrustworthy) co-teacher had pulled a runner, leaving only a filthy apartment and filthier memories.

Heh.. this will be the example the director will use to defend his Monday morning policy for the rest of his life.

My Chuseoked yours in the face...

It was just the Korean holiday for family re-union and ancestor worship, which meant four glorious days off for both Yvonne and I. Yvonne hopped the Mugungwha up to Daejeon. Chuseok is also the Korean National Holiday of Everyone Going Everywhere At Once, so highways and public transportation are wildly impacted..

Anyway, she got up here on Wednesday night. Thursday was spent in that most Yvonne of things, bookshopping. Out at Gwangwhamun, on the way back, we stopped at the exhibition of Haechis (I should note that the human/mascot Haechi is hideous) and took a look.



We had some quick bulgogi and Yvonne was allowed to operate the tongs.



Then it was off to meet Margaret at my office and pass along a fistful of power-prong adapters and some literature. Finally, a trip with Margaret for a few beers in Itaewon, and home for some sleep. For the next day we had mountains to climb.

Yep, it was time to test the old kneebone, and Yvonne had found the steepest, rockiest place in Korea to do so. We hopped on the 6 line (got a happy surprise in a call from the BKF as we were underway) and got off to find the signage in Korean, but quite clear (well, not so much to Yvonne, but that's ok). A nice Korean family adopted Yvonne on the way up. They were clearly afraid that Yvonne's purple face and sheets of sweat were about to turn syncopial and any time Yvonne stopped or slowed, the Ajumma solicitously hovered about her.

The last dozens of meters were up a semi-difficult friction climb, which was difficult for Yvonne, partly because her shoes were shite. But we made it to the top and the nice family shared some apricot and chestnuts with us. Some guys also came over to me and let me toast our "peak" experience with a cup of Makkeoli. I swear... the people who blog about how mean and nasty Koreans are must alway climb up a different route than Yvonne and I do, cause we always meet the cool ones. ;-)



On the way down we discovered we had taken an unecessarily difficult route up the thing. We also discovered (as the climb had hinted) that Yvonne needed new shoes. Her shitty white-rubber soled items wouldn't hold on anything that wasn't bare granite and she spent some time on the way down skiing like a drunk epileptic along perfectly flat dirt patches.



But we made it, and then it was off to get some delicious foodstuffs.

Chuseok Comes Early!

As Thursday is the traditional "early getaway" day for Koreans leaving for their hometowns, to celebrate Chuseok, we are allowed to cancel our Thursday classes. Which I did with a speed that would considered indecent in rabbit sex.

So tonight is Friday night, and so is tomorrow night, and the night after that.

Sweet!

Not so sweet - last night I decided to walk home and thought I might take a stroll through Namsan tunnel. This is just about a mile through Namsan Mountain. The tunnel was hot, polluted, and the walkway a bit uneven. Worse, what I didn't think about was that everything in the tunnel would be, of course, coated in auto exhaust. This meant that when I grabbed hold of the railing, I got a fistful of soot. Also, when I brushed the wall, or touched anything. You'd be suprised at how much af a tar-baby you can make of yourself in such circumstances.


Sweet, though, a student gave me two bottles of wine for Chuseok, so at least I had something to look forward to when I got home.

Now I'm sitting in Gecko's, with a beer and a quesadilla down, preparing to take the shortish walk home.

Wedding Daze..

Down to Busan for a wedding…

I purchased the tickets entirely in Korean .. probably quite ungrammatical, but I was able to communicate that I needed two tickets on Saturday, one from Seoul to Busan and one from Daejeon to Busan and they needed to be together.

Small victories.

The Korean class is helping… the tutoring helped a bit, but the class is quite intensive (although only six hours a week, the instructor piles on the homework and hammers the two of us in class). I finished the first class, 1.1, with the tutor and now I am working on 1.2. There are three classes per level and I hope to go through all of them. It will depend on how long I am willing to drag my ass to a class that is MWF from 7 to 9 at night.

That is particularly galling on Friday, when I should be out hootin and hollerin in Itaewon.

Still, got the tickets and headed down. As I love trains immoderately, this is always a good thing, and Korea is still a beautiful green color as you 300 km/hr your way through it. Yvonne hopped on at Daejeon, and we were fully away.
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At the Busan Depot we ran into two other couples who were going to the wedding and headed out to Gwang alli together. Grabbed a nice cheap (about 38 bucks US) hotel room with a view of the beach and headed over to the wedding.

It was mercifully brief, as Korean weddings can be, and then it was down to the cafeteria for a meal. The pic just above is the lovely couple working the room at the reception in a pub and the one down below is Yvonne smiling because this wedding gave her some new, expensive, ideas to try to pile onto our wedding. The post-wedding cafeteria served some really good food, and I had time to enjoy it with my friends.

At BKF’s wedding I was part of the photo-shoot after, and so by the time I got to the cafeteria everyone from that wedding had eaten and departed. I was the lone Waegukin in the vast hall, and so I ate quickly and skeedaddled. This time we all stayed at the tables until the beer and soju was gone. Then it was off to the deck of a pub which overlooked the beach. More idle chit-chat and general tomfoolery.

Many of the party headed off to a bar, but I headed back to the hotel while Yvonne went downtown to meet her friend Katie and her boyfriend du jour. I did absolutely nothing productive besides watching two episodes of The Simpsons.

In the morning we had coffee on the beach and boggled that, on a weekend as beautiful as it had been, essentially no Koreans had headed to Busan for the beach (that picture from the hotel window will give an idea). Korean vacationing runs on a rather rigid “season” basis and this is not the season to go to the beach.

Consequently, Koreans don’t.

I type this on the way back up to Seoul, Yvonne already dropped off (sob!) at Daejeon. Got a longish piece edited for BKF and finally finished my review of Yi Chongjun’s The Wounded. That pic at the bottom is of my little office on the KTX

If I do a little Korean homework tonight, this trip back up will have brought this weekend back from completely non-productive, to pretty good. And with a trip to the beach and a motel as well.

Can’t beat that.

In Which Yvonne is Pictured Eating...

We took the Mugugnwha to Chuncheon. I always prefer the train to the bus, because Korean intercity buses do not have bathrooms and that can be a bit inconvenient. The trip is two hours and quickly moves out of Seoul and into much more beautiful territory. We arrived at Namchuncheon Station at about 1:00 and set about to buy a return ticket.

All seats for Sunday were already taken! So we purchased two standing tickets and headed downtown to find a yeogwan. This was easily accomplished and the next task was to find food, which was surprisingly difficult and Yvonne even contemplated eating something from a street vendor. Instead we kept walking back towards the train station which I knew was closer to our first tourist destination.

Eventually we found a small restaurant with pictures on the walls and Yvonne pointed to one and ordered it. This turned out to be, when I looked at it more closely, Galbijim which is a delicious soup of beef ribs. The nice ajummah made it not so spicy for Yvonne, and we scarfed it down with rice and beverages.

Then it was off to the Kim Yu-jeong memorial museum. Here I managed to NOT take a bunch of film clips to use on my other site. Instead I filmed the walk up TO the museum and the beer afterwards. I R-tarded!

Then it was off to the bus stop and we miraculously caught a bus that was heading somewhat in the direction of the Chuncheon Museum, which Yvonne wanted to see. At a certain point we saw a traffic sign saying that the Museum was 2 kilometers to the right. The bus kept going straight, so we got off and walked towards the museum. Yvonne got all confused about where we were going and started badgering random-passersby, I just kept walking because, well, those convenient signs that Chuncheon had put up kept telling me which direction to go. ;-)


Eventually we got there, and Yvonne took a quick spin around the museum (it was just before closing). Then it was off to the hotel and I had to do a quick editing job for Ewha University while Yvonne went off on an epic, and unsuccessful journey to find the bookstore in Chuncheon.

Next morning we headed out at about 11 and immediately set off in the wrong direction. ;-) We wanted to go to find a ferry (story of my life) to an island that supposedly featured camping. We wanted to check it out, plus taking a ferry is always cool, and it supposedly had good hiking and biking trails. Our hotelier said that the island (and surrounding Chuncheon) was “like Vancouver.” I consider all Canadians to be transplanted Frenchmen, I don’t care about them or their silly surrender-cities, and I have no idea what our host meant by his comparison.

But we set out, and once again on a path with absolutely no places to eat. I should note that a remarkable number of places in Chuncheon were closed or out of business. Yvonne was demented with hunger and as we passed the “Medizone” a store that sells medical appliances, she looked inside and said, ‘there’s a good-looking restaurant.” Not wanting a delicious lunch of catheters and replacement limbs, I insisted we keep walking

We wandered down to the river, the Ethiopian Korean War Shrine (yah, really), and then beyond.

Yvonne was boinking out again about where we were, but this boinkology was assuaged by some Galbi-Tang that included the biggest freaking ribs in the history of mankind.

We ate, then headed back towards the river. Yvonne gave in and asked directions. They were pretty much the same as what the map had told me, but she felt better, and we walked along to lake up to the ferry. Along this path I took some of the bug pictures you see here, including that one to the left which shows some kind of unfortunate food-chain-type-thing happening to a bee.

We took the ferry and then started to walk toward the resort. A truck driver who had been on the ferry offered us a ride, but in my best fractured Korean I told him we were happy to walk. He accepted this and then rode off.

Only to stop about 100 meters later.

Excellent dude got out of the truck and, mainly in pantomime, indicated to us we should not walk on the dirt road and that if we went about 20 meters to the left we would find a bike/walk path. You hear a lot of shit, and some of it deserved, about Korean neo-confucian lack of concern for others, but it seems that the further you get from industrial hubs, the more this attitude fades away.

The island is beautiful and we have a place to camp, come fall. We wandered around a bit, sat in front of the market and had a drink, and then slowly walked back to the ferry.

As I was taking pictures of bugs, we missed one ferry. As we sat there waiting for the next one, we took a short stroll and found this unfortunate poodle in a cage. The pic isn’t close enough, but the cage bottom is clotted with dog-crap and fur. Underneath the cage it is a bit worse. Koreans routinely treat dogs in ways that wouldn’t fly in the US, but I should say that this dog was quite healthy and only barked, in a woeful looping way, when we walked away after petting it through the mesh of its cage.

The ferry was quite unsafe by US standards – they never picked up the gate – but I felt no qualms as I watched the pilot work. It reminded me of my days in Louisiana on the boat “The Second One” (perhaps I should not have been sanguine there, as the “First One” had sunk). The pilot could “walk” the boat and pinned it against the dock without need of any rope. Nice-uh. It cost 3-chun for a round trip. Add all the shit you’d have needed in the US and we would have paid a bit more. I guess it’s all a balancing act.

Then it was back to Chuncheon for Dak-Galbi, the “dish” of Chuncheon. Yvonne and I will be going back to Chuncheon, so I will save photos of that for later. Suffice it to say it was like womy…. Er.. it was hot, plentiful and cheap.

Another night waiting for my second edit job… ho hum..

In the morning we took a cab ride to the Kim Yu-seong memorial which is about 5 kilometers (I’m guessing) from the museum. Then, as the hotelier had told us we could walk from that point, we got on a crazy long and hot walk to the waterfalls.

Yvonne had another one of her moments – that girl needs a GPS/Satellite Camera/Vibrator installed in her bad self so that she can stay calm!

But we got to falls and they were just as beautiful as advertised. They were also in a narrow canyon of damp stone walls, so it was about 20 degrees cooler. Nice-uh!

On the way out we had some food and then footed it another mile or so to the next train station. There we got to see why the train was full when we had tried to book on the previous Friday. Ganyeong is some kind of Tommy’s Holiday Camp for Koreans, or at least it leads to one. After our long death march in the sun, we got to the train station and it was already chock full of Korean kids. I was in search of a PC Bang so that I could get the files that I needed to edit, so Yvonne headed to a café, and I headed downtown, which was overrun by kids and stuffed with cars trying to escape.

It was a bit of a zoo. The PC Bang was completely full, so I couldn’t download my files to edit.

No big deal. I met Yvonne back at the Café and we had a drink, then caught the train.

Our tickets were standing, but there were empty seats, which we grabbed.

The empty seats held up for about an hour, and then the older folks who had them got
on the train and we went to the space between cars. It is hotter, but you can sit down there.

Then it was home. Yvonne had to head to Daejeon and I had to head home to edit 20 pages of (brilliantly) translated text.

Chuncheon is beautiful, the people are friendly, and nature is right up in your grill.

I’m going back. ;-)

I will not, however, take the bold step that Yvonne took when she ate the “pizza-cone” fresh out of the microwave!

Back from Chucheon..

And had two editing jobs on the "vacation."

Got one done, working on the other.

Chuncheon was farking gorgeous..

It is surrounded by mountains...

It has many lakes flowing into rivers.

'We shape clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want. We hammer wood for a house, but it is the inner space that makes it livable. We work with being, but non-being is what we use.' (Chapter 11 of Lao-tzu's Tao te Ching)

For now though.. I have to finish the second editing job....

Pics to follow..

Summer Plans..

Are beginning to shape up...

I will teach from next Monday til July 17th. This is morning work, and in the afternoon I will write and try to shake off the rust I've grown since I came back Korea from the US.

From then until my Korean class on August 5th is a bit unclear. In an ideal world I'll make enough money to get to the Philippines and the US, but I don't know. That's a lot of world traveling and money for a poor kid from South-Central Seoul. ;-)

Then back for my Korean class, and more writing in the afternoon, and then a quick 5-day trip to China. Since flying to China is about like flying from SFO to Denver, this should be a breeze.

Then, back to the teaching thing, but this time armed with knowledge and skillzzzzzz!

Burgled!

After being down (for I am nothing if not down) in Daejeon with the lovely Yvonne I came back to find my flat had been burgled..

well, about Daejeon first.

I needed a break from Seoul, so directly after work on Friday I caught the KTX down to Daejeon where Yvonne and I pigged out on Sam Gyap Sal and got a cheap Yeogwan in Eunhaengdong. Next day we got up, had some coffee and stuff, ran into Scott at the Starbucks, and then spent a few hours jamming around the market. At 4 we walked over to Woosong Staff Housing unit A (the "A" in the name is about the order of construction of housing, not the quality of the housing).

There we chilled with many old Woosongers and Woosongettes as the charred flesh and soju slid past bloody gums, down ulcerated esophagi and into contented bellies. Those two pictures here are from Mr. Michael Peacock's collection. The picture up above shows Yvonne about to rock out with her cock out. Or whatever chicks do. It also shows my bald spot. The one below shows my enormous head, which can be spotted on Google Earth. It also shows an Australian known as "Rodney" apparently about to ask for the photographers phone number, or ask her when she "came down to Earth." If he moves that inverted fanny-pack down just a bit? Impressive codpiece my Australian friend, impressive codpiece!

At evening's end we walked back to the Yeogwan - probably about a 30 minute walk in my partially inebriated state and arose the next morning to more Starbucks cofffe, bookshopping for Yvonne, and a cafe for me, to prep for my Auditory class on Monday morning.

Back to her hood for some delicious Galbi Tang (I also had soju).

Just as I was trying to make my escape (and with a suitcase full of stuff that had been stuck at Yvonne's pad since my move three months ago) Yvonne thought I should meet her coworker Donnie (sp?). Which was grand, but he did pull out some remainder of a bottle of vodka that now, well, does not remain. ;-)

We sat around his apartment and talked shit until it was time for me to catch a cab to the KTX and then a train on up to Seoul.

Once in Seoul, I actually caught a cab to my place.. a thing I never do, but I didn't want to have to drag the books with me.

I got home.. opened my door..

and the place had been burgled!

Everything dirty had been taken.

The pillows were back on the sofa.

The floor was clean... DEWD! They took my FILTH!!!!!!!

Apparently the ajumma did her quarterly apartment check and had a go at the messy bits of mine.

I silently thanked god that the Wednesday before I had totally cleaned the bathrooom and my office. If she had come in on Tuesday I might have been evicted.

It's funny, if a landlord in the US pulled a stunt like this I'd be angrified. Here? Par for the course and in fact she did me a favor.

heh..

Team Building Weekend!

It started far too early – just after 6 am on a Saturday. Unless you are still grinding the surface off your teeth in a crank frenzy, this is a time to sleep. But the alarm clock comes without mercy, and so it did to me. I cleaned myself up as best I can, and grabbed a cab to the Uni. Got there a bit early, which was in fact spectacularly early, since the “departure time” had been calculated based on “Korean time” (which is something similar to “Mexican Time” if you live near the border). Everyone showed up, and we headed off just about 8:15.

I really could have used that extra hour of sleep, but made up for it the best I could by napping on the bus. Sleep was impossible after we stopped halfway through the trip and heard that ex-president Roh had killed himself, apparently on account of the corruption probe into his presidency and family.

We took a quick stop at a kind of shrine to a Korean Movie which showed North and South Korean troops living in peace in an imaginary semi-utopia.

We arrived in town and walked through the market, which was nice, but nothing really unusual for a Korean open market. Lunch was adventurous. Seundae (an intestine based sausage), So Mori kuk pap – which is Cow-head soup and rice, and some extra bits of cow head and liver (the only thing I didn’t touch, based on horrible memories from my childhood) and Makkeoli. Not a bad meal, if you forget what’s actually in the thing.

Then it was off to rafting. As we drove up the river, it looked pretty lame – flat and regular. But the rafting was quite fun – the river was very tame, tame enough so that the guides actually crashed us into things for fun. Two of the slenderer girls were on the verge of hypothermia by the end of the trip and the guide kept splashing them with water and pushing them into the river (this was part of the game), despite the fact he had given one of them a heat-blanket type thing, and had the other huddle in the bottom of the raft to get out of the wind. This didn’t make sense to me, but it must be one of those Yin versus Yang things that no occidental tourist can understand. It also began to rain on us, which added to the coldnessosity.

Then back to the bus and off to the hotel. Our lovely office planner snagged me a room with a bed – a giant room, for only 60k won, which I was happy to pay for the solitude and control of the TV!

Then a truly brilliant dinner. Fat-ass Sam Gyap Sal, real sausages, thick mushroom strips, bean soup, rice and beer and soju flowing like beer and soju. Lots of cool chatter with the students and the kind of public good feelings that Koreans are so splendid at. Some folks headed off to a casino after, but I retreated to my big fat Korean room and am watching TV and preparing to go to sleep early.

Word is we aren’t expected to leave until 10 tomorrow, so I also should get a bonus sleep-in type of thing.

Hunter S. Thompson first proposed, in his seminal work of philosophy, “The Barrel Does Too Fit In My Mouth,” we are “A Generation of Swine.” Unfortunately, as though pigs had developed prehensile hooves, the swine have now come home to roost.

The threat of the Swine-flu has begun to drive Asia batty. Getting on the plane at Gimpo was difficult enough, but for entirely different reasons. As it turned out when I got there, I did not have a return-stamp on my visa. This is problematic and thankfully the nice woman at JAL looked at me and asked, “You do want to return to Korea?”

I made clear I did, and after some third-lingual (the exact opposite of trilingual) hijinks, we figured out that I could go to Japan and come back if I ran over to immigration and paid a bit of money. With that, I was through immigration and totally broke (in terms of won). No problem, as the fucked-up terminal I was in didn’t serve any alcohol.

Instead of drinking, I worked on my auditory classes for next week.

I’m sure that will pay off then, but for the moment it merely served to piss me off.

The flight was uneventful, except for my hatred and rage at the two Koreans who ordered wine and then had one sip, put the cap back on, and then eventually returned the nearly full bottle to the sky-waitress. Right under my twitching nose!

We landed, and I followed a remarkably aggressive halmoni down the aisle of the plane. A good move, because once we got into immigration, it was a clusterfuck. We had to fill out a form (basically, “have you had contact with any dirty beaners?”), but it was worded in obtuse ways that made it unclear when they were asking for your permanent information (that from where you lived) and when they were asking for your information in Tokyo.

This caused a massive bottleneck, but that was ok, since eventually each one of us had to stop and have a thermal-imaging done of our heads. Apparently this would reveal the hot-heads among us, and that would show if we had the porcine-plague or not. I was amazed that anyone passed this, as the queue for this thing was in a room that must have been near 28 degrees, and everyone was sweating and fanning themselves frantically.

As I watch BBC this morning, I guess the problem is spreading. China has suspended flights to Mexico and some poor… ahem … swine in Hong Kong are trapped in their hotel as one of them has turned up positive for the thing. I’m guessing that this whole thing will blow over, after all, the flu (of all kinds) kills thousands of people per year. Either that or the world will end in an internal flood of mucus.

But either way?

I’d hate to be working in the Mexican Tourist Organization right at this moment.

Got off the plane and navigated my way to the hotel, with only one moment of fear as the monorail I was traveling on shot by the Dai-Chi Hotel at least two stops before I got to my station.

I was worried, but trusted my map, and as it turned out, Dai-chi has a string of hotels in Tokyo, and this was just another one of them. Like Seoul, Tokyo has a public transit system that punks the Bay Area.

Got to the hotel shortly after midnight, checked in, and took a walk around.

Looks like no one drives in Tokyo, as the streets were swarming with schools of taxis. What taxis weren’t swarming were parked in lines at the curb. I was about done by 2am (and feeling that late hour this morning) and the cabs still sat out there, largely unused.

Today it is off to a Shinto shrine, to take photos for my upcoming photo essay in EAA and then back to Haneda to pick up Yvonne who, left to her own devices, would get off the plane and somehow navigate her way to the hotel behind the Hotel Rwanda.

You know, that one that didn’t turn out to be so safe?

Finally, I used every single Photoshop Skill I have to put together these two photos of Japanese beer cans. Like their Korean brethren, they make amusing claims – “This “koko & kire” taste cheers your mind” – but unlike Korean beers, they taste good and do not have dour color and design schemes.

Anyway, off to the day!

As it turned out, I headed to the synagogue first, but this was a bad go. The synagogue itself was being rebuilt and thus the Jewish community was housed in a nondescript compound loaned them by the local Catholic Community. A short talk later, with one of the groundskeepers, and I was headed of to the Meiji Shinto Shrine. On the way I got some pics of a church that was poured into a vertical section of the corner of one block. The shrine was also quite nice, and once I was done I headed off to the airport to see Yvonne. She got off the plane eventually, and as it turned out she had not been without difficulty, but worked through them. Her bank had picked this weekend to upgrade its computers, and the physical bank was closed for May Day (apparently this caught more than a few people by surprise). This meant that although Yvonne had been paid, she could not access her check! Fortunately, her director is fond of her, and they took her out to dinner and loaned her 700,000 won for the trip. When she got to the airport there were slight questions about her entry/exit stamp (just like the ones I had when I left) but finally immigration said that she could exit and re-enter, as she would have one day to spare.

So, a win. We came back to the hotel, and tried to wander off to some local gardens. I got up hopelessly lost, so instead we wandered through bits of Ginza, and then back to Shimbasi Station. Yvonne was quite insistent that we do something with the rest of the day, so we headed off to Ueno. Most of the temples were closed already, but the park was beautiful, and we walked all the way through it, marking in our minds the places we plan to visit today. Then it was back to Ginza and a truly delicious dinner featuring some tuna and scallop sashimi that were enormous pieces of fresh, nearly buttery tuna.

I hadn’t noticed this on the toilet/douche/butt-heaters in Korea, but as I looked at the toilet seat in the hotel, I longed for the good old days of the slit-trench squatter toilet from the good old days. No threat of ELECTROCUTION!!! with them.

Yvonne, who normally sleeps in til about noon on weekends, arose at 7:30 and ostentatiously pretended to try to allow me to sleep. Her efforts at ensuring my sleep included random switching on and off of every light in the hotel room, repeated emptying of the pockets of her zippered backpack, and a remarkable display of snorting and nose-blowing that would have beggared any swine-flu clinic in Mexico.

She is currently out hunting coffee, while I have a different kind of breakfast – a traditional glass of grapefruit juice, disguised as a beer. It is shockingly delicious. And as the picture here demonstrates, a lovely 6% alcohol.

Man, I love Asia!

The rest was a trip to Ueno. A beautiful park/zoo/museum site which is a day’s worth, or more, in and of itself. We wandered about and eventually split up as Yvonne wanted some museum time, and I still needed to get pics of religious sites. My endeavour was complicated by the fact that my new camera card is apparently flawed, and it conked out after about an hour of shooting. I had to run back to the three places I had taken photos, and retake them on my old 256 meg card. Once back at the hotel it seems that many of the photos on the bad card are still there, but it was a sketchy moment.


OTOH we saw two insane protests about Gawd knows what, both of which featured semi-armoured cars with painfully loud sound systems attached. As someone who observed several of the idiotic “Mad Cow” protests, I have to say that the Japanese protest volume is completely without equal. With that said, however, it seemed that the Japanese protesters were, at least, scared of their cops (who were dressed in very Samurai protective outfits), who didn’t seem to be a bunch of scared 22 year olds, like the local version. We also saw us some Japanese punks, were amazed at how well the Japanese drive (the cabbies are not homicidal!), and didn’t miss, AT ALL, the relentless spitting of Seoul.

Yvonne and I then went to a German restaurant by our hotel, and had some brilliant bread, some good sausage (a thing Korean restaurants just can’t seem to get right), and a pate that Yvonne snorkeled down at a rate that would have terrorized the livers of two dozen ducks. It was a nice goodbye for me, and I left all my metal money with Yvonne, who is no doubt using it to purchase gifts for all y’alls.

Or, used books.

I slept through my flight, the guy at customs was funny and friendly, and my T-money put me on the train to Itaewon.

A good trip all around.

Except for the pussy-whipped dude who just got on the train, and is sitting across from me as his girlfriend assiuously works at popping a zit on his cheek.

Dude! Sack up!

Back in Town.. Train trip down..

On the train to Daejeon, pushing 24 hours of wakeyness, listening to the mellow guitar/saxophone/bongo jam at the end of "Can't you hear me knocking" by the mighty Rolling Stones. It's the end of a highly entertaining and revealing (for me, that is) return to the old places.

Some guy like Santayana once said something like "memory is our own internal system of rumors" and I think I found this while reading a Stephen King novel on the way back to Korea. That might have been all of six hours ago. I picked the thickest motherfucking book at the airport bookstore and that was, of course Stephen King (nosing out the equally logghoreic Dean Koontz. In the same book, King has a character note that memory is also the playground on which we continually build and rebuild our personal myths. This may be true, but King seems to claim that this is self-panegyric in nature,

I have my doubts.

I took a lot of train trips, bus trips, public transport of all kind, and found that my Bay Area …meant that wherever I went I saw something that pulled me back into the good old days. Which largely consisted of memories of failures. Oddly, most of my unabashedly happy memories were triggered by the sight of places I had walked, either solo or with a partner (that partner being, in an overwhelming percentage of the cases, the OAF).

Caught you on TV last night, in a rerun soap You were young and beautiful, already without hope

This is, maybe, why I like Korea… not only does it hold few memories for me (and most of what it does are carefully cherry-picked successes), but it is also a country with no local nostalgia. Oh, sure, they love King Sejong for developing Hangul, and the turtle ships are revered (whatever they actually were), but anything within anyone’s lifetime?

Burn in down, tear it out, make it into highrises. Aside from a rather well-developed facility for nursing historical grudges, a fairly future-based society. And, happily, one in which I have no history.

In any case, other than the 10 lbs I’m sure I gained (turns out it was about 6), the trip home was splendid. I saw almost everyone I wanted to, attending to their rank, as Macbeth very nearly said.

Then he went mad.

Me? I'm going to sleep.

Ugly is as ugly does....

Getting on BART was strangely.. well, spooky, and it took me a while to figure out why. Of course, as usual, I could understand the conversations around me, which were all stupid and petty. But it was also something else, and it took about 3 stops to figure it out.

I was surrounded by ugly people (Thank God I am so beautiful!).

Or rather I should say that I could recognize all one-million shades of ugliness that surrounded me. In the first six months of my time in Korea I became much more aware of differences in Korean faces. But my taxonomy is still pretty broad. It takes a pretty aggressively ugly Korean to impress me for just that reason. If a Korean doesn’t have oozing, bloody string-warts, or hydrocephalacy, then they look ok to me. But in the United States I have 5 decades of experience with noticing and describing all the little things that make someone ugly. So, bored on a train, what am I to do but to catalog this. ;-)

That’s one thing. The other is that in Korea I see a quite different slice of Americans, so my vision of what we look like has been skewed. For instance, there are very few truly old Americans in Korea. Because the vast majority of Miguk outside of Seoul are teachers or professors, they don’t include people over 60, and very few over 50. In fact, I think the demographic swings strongly towards the early-to-late 20s. This is, of course, when people a still good-looking, and have had enough time to figure out how to maximize their looks (before the long, hideous slide begins at about age 30).

Finally, Koreans spare no expense to make themselves look good. No Korean would ever dress as haphazardly as the average US citizen does. And I was taking a BART train through Berkeley, perhaps the epicenter of haphazard retard-dressing in the US (Dreadlocks, nose-rings, and burkhas? Dude, you’re a white guy from Orange County!).

Throw all these things together, and you get a difference (part in my head and part based in demos and behavior) in how people look.

OTOH? The weather here is great!

Texassery

First, to prove that Konglish is worldwide, I present you with an authentic "should have been poofed proofed first" sign from Texas. How many mistakes do you see?

Second, to assuage the OAF and to prove that not all is bad down here, the parents at breakfast..

Tomorrow I leave for the Yay Area....

This and thattery

Some scrapticiousness...

• MACY'S SUCKS: As I navigated the public transportation from SFO to San Jose, I realized that I would be passing the Macy's I intended to shop at. Since I was more than four hours before check-in time I decided I'd stop and do my shopping there and then. Walked in and asked the guy (oh, "sales-representative", I should say) if I could leave my bag at the counter. He flatly refused saying he "couldn't be responsible." I said, ok, is there a concierge around here? He said, "No in Macy's and I don't know about the mall." So, I couldn't shop there. I trudged out and towards the bus stop and, lo and behold, saw a Men's Wearhouse who were more than happy to see me leave my piece of luggage in front of their counter.
  
  Consequently, it was Men's Wearhouse that got my $375 of shopping. In this economy I can't imagine how a Macy's can't find the way to help me spend some money in their shop. And this Macy's is right across the street from Santana Mall, where the shopkeeps are forelock-tugging obsequities who would do anything for the sale (well, not that!).
  
  
• The hotel was splendid and the next morning BKF picked me up. He and JAE had a bit of an adventure as they ran over a box-spring that flew off of a vehicle in front of them. When I spotted them in the parking lot, they were snapping various pieces of plastic body to the metal frame underneath. This worked in all cases, so in essence the car wasn't hurt.
  
  
• Then it was off to Rossotis for burgers. The BFK and krewe as well as MAF and chilluns. I snapped a few pictures of these folks (more to come), and some follow here (as the OAF let me take her small camera on the condition that I take pics of everyone she misses):
  

Katherine plays with the creepy "stick to anything and stretch to anything" pig. I brought this as a gift, and since it was made in China, playing with it has probably taken 5 years off of all our lives.

The great unifier ponders the many uses of kamcha (sorry, no Korean keyboard here in the Empire)

The JFLO chilluns attempt to cadge free drinks.

The lovely JAE clowns for the camera

One more of the great re-unifier...

A fun time (I think) was had by all.

The next day was off to Texas and the Parental Units....

Meanwhile, back in the States...

The flight was.. well, an international flight. Got to the airport and immediately spotted the tour of 35 Korean kids who were getting on the same flight as I was.

This is never good.

Got on the plane and was sitting next to a guy about my age who had been in Korea for a week (his first time) and we had a grand time swapping stories of eating the inedible, Korean drinking, and trading cultural animadversions. The Korean kid behind me looked like an innocent little girl, but as soon as I turned my back she turned into Pele, Maradonna and Beckham indulging in an open-goal kicking contest. I didn't sleep on the plane.

The public transport hookup from SFO to SJ was good. The main things I noticed in the US were the lack of spitting, the amazingly clean air (no smog or bad smells), and the vast amount of space among and between buildings. Korea is without property setbacks and space between buildings (unless it is a vacancy or wreck), and parking lots are pretty rare. I walked around and shopped for clothes.

I also went to a couple of my old hangouts and found them without charm. I ate at a Mexican place I used to frequent, and couldn't clean the plate the way I used to. The old bar just seemed cruddy and dank, so I did more walking about and watching TV in English.

As I type it's 5 am (hello jetlag) and the lobby of the hotel is empty. I see MAF and the BKF today for greasy burgers, and will consider that the "official" start of my vacation in the heart of the empire..

Incheon Airport

Has a wonderful free computer lounge - a macbook even. This makes up for the fact that the ticket I purchased on KTX, far ahead of the holiday rush, was mysteriously for a train that no longer existed. It had to be traded for a later train and it cost an extra 2,500 won as well (so there went my profits from the 48 pounds of coins!).

It seemed that most people had done their Seollol traveling on Friday, so the train, subway, and the subway-train to Incheon were pretty empty. It's a cold day, so those heated seats were particularly welcome. 10 hours of flight, and then I'll be back down in the US of A. Strangely, I'm not as excited about that as I thought I would be. I'm dying to see all the peoples I haven't seen, but the idea of, say, San Jose, doesn't move me that much. ;-)

A nice dude on the last train noticed that I was about to get off at the wrong station (the English announcements, oddly, were one station out of sync - I've never heard of that before) and scooted over to tell me that I was about to get off at Gyeyong station and be in the middle of nowhere. The reputation Koreans have with some expatriates for not being helpful seems completely undeserved to me. Any time I've needed help, and times like this when I didn't even realize it, there always seems to be a helpful citizen about...

Off to see if they'll sell a brother a beer in this airport.

UPDATE:

As the picture suggests, they will....

What is 48 pounds of Korean coins worth?

I discovered the answer.

Since I arrived in Korea I have been saving my loose coins in plastic water bottles with the tops cut off.

Last night I poured 2.3 bottles worth of coins into some plastic bags, and put them in my backpack. The straps groaned at the weight, so I put the whole thing on the scale to see what it weighed - 48 pounds.

This morning, the backpack seemed on the verge of snapping somewhere (or was that me?), so I took a cab to the KB bank, which has a coin counting machine (a rare thing in Korea). I don't have a bank card with KB, but the 아저씨 at the bank was quite helpful, pulling out his own bank card (or a card the bank gave him for this purpose) and getting the machine running. He was a bit bemused when I pulled out the massive double-bag of coins, but was quite a good sport about it. I fed the machine for about 10 minutes and then it stopped.

I had filled it up as full as it could get! The 아저씨 had to go get someone to open the back of the machine and emtpy its contents. While this process was going on, some poor Korean kid with a baggie full of change showed up. He took one look at my bin full of coins, and the bag of coins still remaining on the top of the machine, smiled ruefully and walked on out of the bank.

The machine went back on line and I finished pouring my coins in.

The haul?

nearly 450,000.00 won.

Of course, since the won knows I am going to the United States it has been tanking ferociously against the dollar. Consequently my haul will convert to about $2.38 in US currency ;-(.

Still, now I know what 48 pounds of coins are worth.

As I’ve just woken up from my Thanksgiving Drunkenness, I’m thinking of brilliant moments from Thanksgivings past.

One of these brilliant moments was crabbing. (This is partly spurred by an email from my sister, which came, Blackberry style, from another crabbing extravanza).

But, sister aside?

Crabbing is for men.

Manly men. Men who swear (Mainly when they bang their heads against something on the boat, lose their buoys, tangle the prop with rope, or turn 200 yards of other rope into a Gordian knot).

It is also an outstanding opportunity to roll out onto the sea and commune with nature at its saltiest.

It’s not so good for a photographer, as most of those opportunities come while the little crab boat is hammering through swells and salt-laden seawater is threatening the integrity of your lovely lens.

By “lovely” I mean to say “expensive.”

Still, on a good day, even a wussy photographer can enjoy it. There’s a certain rhythm to whacking in and out of the waves and even if the boat seems in constant danger of sinking (only to me, I should add) the high tech equipment onboard seems quite cool.

It never starts that simply.

I drove up to the coast early with the OAF to follow. I got to the hotel, skidded over to the trailer park (and I mean that in the best possible way) touched in with the fambly, and headed back to the hotel by the sea (and the totally obnoxious lighthouse horn).

I wandered about a bit and wondered about a bit. Then walked out the hotel door.

Lo and behold, apparitionally, there was the OAF. We walked into the hotel and I showed her the arched room, the fireplace, the view. She wandered around for awhile and I asked her if she wanted me to light the fire? She glared back at me. I asked about three more questions to which she was unresponsive or snarly. I asked about her mood.

She looked at me like I was insane.

I asked again, “why are you so crabby?” (heh! Get it? “Crabby!!!!)

She thought and said, “oh, because my car died at the gas station down the hill.”

This was at least 10 minutes AFTER she had arrived and in the interim she had forgotten that her car was dead, and not just dead, but actually pulled up next to a gas pump. She was still cranky, but the fact that her car was dead and gonna be towed had completely slipped her mind.

It must be nice to live in the moment.

Fortunately, she had stopped at the first gas-station in town, which was only 150 yards from the hotel. This was extremely fortunate, as the BAG had stopped about 10 miles out of town and the car had restarted there.

Turns out it was just a loose connection to the battery post. Good news for the OAF, bad news for the car which she was soon to total in an accident that is an entirely different story.

The next day it was off to the crabbing and the RV park (I swear, someday I will be able to say things like that without the loathsome hipster disdain that creeps, unbidden, into my voice. I suck).

Totally fucking awesome. The crabs came in (we had a vast haul on the last day) and the chefs did the other thanksgiving foods to perfection. We may have been in a trailer park with a big neon palm tree, but it was the best trailer park, ever, with a big neon palm tree. And, really, it was kind of my goodbye party to/for the US.

I doubt any Thanksgiving will ever rival getting lost with the BKF and JAE in the rainstorm in Death Valley, but this one gave a pretty good run for it.

I should just mention that in many of my photos HYS looks a great deal like another of my favorite acronymicons, HST.

TEACHING MOMENT – THE BAR, NARITA

“as the sun sets over cheap Korean monster-movie scenery”

Having just concluded an IM chat with MAF who, as usual, cracked me up all over the place, I’m having a glass of some lovely wine. ( I place this lovely moment in the present tense, because that’s where I live). As I sit there pumping out semi-spam emails asking people to complete my Korean blogger survey, some old Japanese guy, with pretty good English, approaches me. He’s in his 60’s probably, maybe 70’s, and comes up and asks if I speak English. I’m still new at this trophy white guy game and not yet bitter, so I say yes.

He asks if I can give him some interpretation of English literature. This of course, is right down my alley, and since I still have half a glass of wine, I say yes. Unfortunately the work of “literature” he’s reading is from the goddamned “house on the prairie” series.

OAF would dig this, but if you’re trying to teach someone English, I question the approach. This shit is over a century old, and was intentionally anachronistic when it was first written. Old dude’s questions are all about phrases like, “down Arkansas way,” which don’t seem to be phrases that would be used much with Japanese visitors, or come up much in what I might characterize as “real” literature. Still, we work through two pages of questions, and the guy is pretty sharp.

The final question is on the phrase “before the kernel lit on the floor” and the old guy doesn’t have a psychotic fit (as I would have done) when he learns that this meaning of ‘lit’ is not only never used in any spoken English I’ve ever heard, but also has nothing to do with fire or written works. And, to be fair, it makes me think about the usage. It’s “lit” used as a verb to be, I think…

I lit out… (sort of like “go”, I guess)
It lit on the floor… (meaning “hit” or “was”, I think)

But no, I realize, these are just contractions of “alit?” So really just a version of “went” and not the verb to be?

I dunno, I don’t have any resources, including a dictionary, here in the land of the Rising Sun…

Something to look up when I get back home.

For no reason at all this makes me think about a similarly unusual use of “like”

There’s a pain in my heart
And it hurts
It’s like to tear me apart
And what’s worse
I knew it right from the heart and I know
That’s just no way to go.

All this thought just makes me want another beer.

For the moment, I’m eating onion rings (truly horrible – they seem to be fried in some kind of sweet oil) in the hotel bar, and waiting for my hamburger (arrived as I type.. side dishes fries and brocolli?). There’s doubles badminton on the TV (this is supposed to be a sports bar) and a buzzing in my head.

I’ll be happy to get back to the 2nd homeland….

More blather..

This morning I woke up broke and decided that the easiest way to get money was to rob a bank.

This plan came a cropper when I realized that I lacked the necessary Japanese to say “put the money in the bag, and no one gets hurt.” In fact, stripped of even my rather miniscule Korean, I am back to pointing and grunting when I meet someone who does not speak English. Annoyingly, I also find myself talking to the Japanese in the limited Korean I do know. It doesn’t achieve anything.

So, with bank robbery out, I took the shuttle bus over to the airport. Thank god I brought my passport with me, since there is a passport check as you drive INTO the airport. This was a new one on me and I wondered what would have happened to me had I not brought the passport. When I got to the airport I couldn’t find an ATM that would accept my card. Last night, in the lobby, I heard some Indian travelers complaining that they thought “Japan was modern and would have ATMs everywhere.” It’s weird, Korea is certainly better in this respect. So I changed my leftover Won and went downstairs to catch my shuttle back. Lo and behold, a Citibank ATM! I pulled out a modest amount and hopped the shuttle back. Out here in Narita the landscape reminds me a lot of Texas, albeit with a bit more bamboo and Chinamen. The hills roll slightly, and the houses are slightly run down but modern.

I also saw my old friend the KLM pilot (I also saw him last night, sitting in the bar and pounding beer. Alas, I could not join him as the bar is cash only and I was fresh out) and he was apparently headed for another drink.

So now, I sit in the hotel room (the weather looks to cruddy to head downtown) I’m watching Australian TV and, gosh, the journalists and politicians are erudite and clever and the least of them would crush the best of ours. And not it’s on to “Inside Business” which ought to be pretty…. (wait for it) …… rich (!).

Too Many Words, no Pictures

Several things I like about this hotel. It has slide under drape tracks. That is, where the drapes meet in the middle of the window, one slides directly under the other so no evil light can pour through. This is an idea that all hotels should use. So says I! Also, the tap water is drinkable here. Not that I’ve had anything but beer, but still, should the need arise I will be prepared. Finally, they have the best TV thing ever.. the TV is bilingual. It has, I think, three languages and you just pick the language on the remote control and you have Japanes, English, and whatever the other one was. On the bad side, in this hotel, at least, no crazy porno channel.

I woke up to discover that I had missed the early bus to downtown Tokyo. Narita is like an hour out in the boonies. When I came back down to catch the second bus, I saw the alarming sight of two KLM pilots sitting out on the bench drinking. One was drinking one of the petite Heinekens they have around here, but the other was drinking wine straight from a bottle! His eyes were massively bloodshot, his skin pale, and his hair was matted. I tried to snap a picture with my cellphone, but I’m not sure it came out.

On the positive side, I met some Australian guy who apparently makes his living wandering around giving presentations on something or the other, and as he had been to Japan some years earlier, he knew how to navigate the trainlines and made my journey to Seisen quite easy. We chatted politics on the bus on the way over.

Tokyo (and so far all of Japan – the view out my hotel window was of rice-fields and hovels) looks a lot like Seoul, except I had no idea it was so laced through with waterways. I will say that the general level of English ability here is miles above Seoul. Not just at the hotels (to be fair I never stay at Western hotels in Korea) but on the transit system. Everyone seems to have good English and I’m going to be interested to see if this holds up. I paid my 20 bucks(!) for conference registration fees and now I’m sitting ig a typical classroom waiting for my presentation to begin. I’m scheduled for 50 minutes, which seems a bit excessive, but we’ll see what happens.

I don’t want to write too much here, cause I might need the computer for the presentation and though the outlets here are 110 volts, they are of the two-pronged variety (I had to unplug the Ethernet box at the hotel to free up an “end” outlet on an extension cord there. The extension cord was hidden in the box that held all the internet wiring and if the help had come in while I was casually moving refrigerators, desks, and pulling cables from their internet setup, I’m sure I would have been evicted.). Perhaps I should go in search of a three-pronged one.


The presentation went off without a hitch, if anything I was over-prepared. The conference was pretty much what I expected, the program was printed on 11x17 paper which couldn’t be folded in any way that made the conference start on the outside of the result and also go in the right time-order. The kid at the registration desk slept most of the time. The campus was an interesting mix of Harvard and Dumbledore and the crows in Tokyo were in fine form.

I only went to one other presentation, but the guy was relaxed right to the point of lost sphincter control, waved some handouts in the air, mentioned a few websites and then said, “well, I’ve finished early. Good, because there are some other presentations in this time slot that I’d like to see.” With that said, the guy did give me a couple good ideas for my listening classes. Anyway, I had a good audience that asked some good questions, and I also had a chance to talk a bit about the listening glass I’m creating for the Big Pink Business School (which, now that I think about it, has not one jot of pink anywhere in its decoration – probably a conscious effort at distancing the Business School from the reputation of the College/Uni).

Getting out was a bit more complicated as Seoul Station is under serious reconstruction and everything inside is covered in white plastic so you real do feel like a rat moving through an undifferentiated maze. You can’t get around the outside as it is blocked by tracks, so I spent some time wandering back and forth until I saw the sign the pointed the way. I had, of course, just missed a bus, so I had about an hour wait.

At night, Tokyo really comes alive and on the way back out I did notice that it seems to have a more relaxed and varied (modern) architectural style than Seoul. Seoul seems to hop from the Soviet to the funky, with little in between, and Tokyo definitely had more looks. And the water lacing through the place is a really nice touch as you drive through. Also, no one spits! I did not know that the Japanese rode on the “wrong” side of the road and thus that their driver’s side is our passenger side. Not a major thing, but it took a second or so before I assimilated it.

The ride back was cool, the town was lit up, and I almost got away with having an empty seat, but at the last minute two.. well, I’d call em ajummas in Korea, came in and snagged the seat next to me and the one in front of that. My white-guy repulso-powers were overcome by the power of companionship. I cursed the gods, since I could see there was one more empty seat in the bus and God rewarded me by, with literally seconds to go, filling it with an old lady who slumped back and kept rolling onto the kid she was sitting next to. Seeing the kid’s pain made me feel better, and I just watched the excellent scenery float by and soon enough I was back at the Radisson.

When I got back I was broke and this hotel has no ATM and no way to change cash, so I had to go to the restaurant for dinner as it is the only place that accepts credit cards. Bummer. ;-)

I hope to get back down to central Tokyo tomorrow, but it really depends on how much work I can get done on the WCTA paper – The rest of my stay could turn into some really expensive Hotel Medicine.

Nothing wrong with that, of course.

I hope some of my cellphone pictures come out and I also hope I can figure out how to email them to myself.

Cause I’m a retard, that’s why!

Why I'm like an outhouse at a Dead Show

Cause I'm overflowing with shit.

I went one more gate and there was the bar. Sure, it was exposed on three sides and well lit, but it was a bar.

The flight was uneventful. We flew over the East Sea (the map kept showing Dokdo and Ull ngdo islands and I wonder what that meant to the Japanese on the flight). We flew across the mainland of Japan, landed in Narita, and then proceeded to taxi half the way back to Dokdo. That's some long airport.

The van to the hotel was full, so they grabbed me and some stewardess (50, ugly, outweighing me and, thankfully, silent) a cab and we got here. Nice room and I fell in love with the place immediately when I saw the Sapporo Beer vending machine down the hall!

I was a bit less impressed when I discovered a 16-oz beer costs about 5 bucks. Oh well.. the taxi drive over, which was only about 10 minutes, would have cost 30 bucks (if the hotel didn't pay) and I'm starting to get the idea this place is a tad expensive.

New ad campaign for Korea. Sure, we don't have the snow-monkeys, colorful temples, or Mt. Fuji - but man are we inexpensive!

Also, on the ride over I did some good work on the next paper (got the theoretical section done, most everything should flow as a result of that) and also got a free Heineken. So, you know, win-win!

Tomorrow I'm told it's an hour to the college, and my quick looks at the subway maps here just confused the shit out of me - they are owned by separate companies (two, at least) and the map on the intarwebs did not seem to have any of the stops on the map that Seisen University gave me.

Oh well, that's what concierge's are for..

Some more reasons I like Korea (and one I don't)

The trip up to the airport was grand.. KTX, then the subway, and finally the airport train. Two out of three of these had grand views - and as two nights ago Fall, well, fell, everything is mild and lovely. ICN is a great airport and I'm always amused at how much easier it is to get on a plane here. They do all the same security, it just seems to work better.. Maybe it's the language barrier and I just can't tell that the security folks here are the same witless riffraff we have in the states.

But I don't think so.. cause it moves.

Then, I remembered one of the few things I don't like about Korea - no bars in the airports. This has jumped up to number two on my list of most disliked things in Korea (the heat and humidity of summer don't count because, really, how can you blame that on Koreans?). Number one, of course, is the promiscuous spitting. Number two used to be the crazy driving here, but then I realized that this is just something you get used to. If you were brought up here you'd know it by heart... look both ways.. three times. ;-).

I betcha the airport in Tokyo has a bar!

In any case.. a couple more hours and I should be Discovering Japan..

as the tears slid sideways down my face
I woke up speaking in the tongue of a different race
And as the plane touches down my watch says 4:02
But that's midnight to you!

Updates (and pulled plug)

Amazing how much you can get done when your internet is pulled. One of the "bad" things about moving apts is that I got reamed for 100 bucks of penalties on intarwebs because the new building won't accept Inet service from my old provider...

So they came today to take my porno away! This meant no random searching around for internet meaning.

But, it did mean that I got my list of things to do.. well.. done...

I have a good "moving towards final" draft of my paper, I fixed up my CV.. and here is Seoul, brother...

Heck, tonight I might even read something!

First, two quick pictures from the night before. Here is the OAF posing by the river. And, as we walked along the river we saw, under each bridge, some kind of entertainment and crowds of Korean couples and families. I think I’ve mentioned it before, but one of the truly grand things about Korea is the amazing amount of public entertainment and the Korean pleasure in going out and doing social things in public. Even in the shittiest weather you can find Koreans under bridges, playing cards, drinking, sleeping, fishing, whatever. That was certainly true this Saturday night. Under one bridge there was some flute music, and under the bridge in the picture, someone was showing cartoons on the opposite wall.

Sunday was a quick trip to the Starbucks and then up to Insadong. The OAF had been to Insadong twice before, but on a previous trip she wasn’t really happy with. This time, with sun beating down, she happily bounced up and down the cobblestones saying, “I’ve never been here before,” and “They didn’t have all these cool things before.” I didn’t point out to her that if she had never been here before she could scarcely remember whatever cool things might or might not have been around. After a couple hours wandering about, we had tea in the same tea shop, several years ago, that Ed first introduced me to Mrs. 신 – who promises to be most helpful in my efforts to get that next job.

On our way out the night before we had noticed that the “Restaurant That Serves The Ickiest Soup Ever” was now swaddled in the framing and cloth that Koreans put up prior to demolition. The Maitre’ D however, was sitting outside the cloth sheath and when he saw my look of befuddlement he quickly walked us through an alley and to the new version of the old restaurant (which, mysteriously, was mentioned in the translation that BKF and I just worked on). So, if you want some delicious hemmorhage soup you’re gonna have to come to me for directions. ;-)

Then it was a walk back to Cheonggye Plaza and the food festival. This was a major disappointment. There were only about 20 booths and they were all standard festival faire, by which I mean non-food festival fair. The OAF had some corn that was so soggy we tossed it out. When the New York Hot Dog is the tastiest food at the Korean Food Festival? Something went a bit wrong. I hung around for a bit and watched people get a shot at the ttok-dough (entirely different from Dokdo!). You had to really pound the crap out of it in order for the smallest bit of dough to fly, and it was interesting to watch people try. Then it was off to the Texas bar for a beer and to Seoul Station to get the OAF back to South Central in time for her work the next day. I also bought my ticket for the next day – but this time I got a 새말 ticket, which is much cheaper and the trip, as it turns out, more scenic if a slight bit longer. I went back to the Hotel and was so tired that I didn’t go back out again. So when I lay my head down at about 10:30 it came as a considerable shock that I couldn’t go to sleep. Just could not.

Finally dozed off sometime near 1, woke up at 3:30, and then woke up again for ‘good’ at 6:30 the next morning. I spent the whole day in a semi-coma. The day was highlighted by a sweaty trip to KLTI to drop off the BKF’s translation and then a trip back to Seoul Station to discover that I had purchased a ticked from Daejeon to Seoul and not one for the direction I wanted. The nice ticket lady exchanged these tickets with minimum fuss although I did have to wait an extra 40 minutes to catch my train. The ride down was nice, except for about 20 minutes of atrocious behavior by a child sitting behind me. Then it was home, off to the CafÈ Idee for two glasses of wine (French! And for only 5 bucks a pop) and back home for some sleep which came quite easily.

I woke up the next morning to discover I had lost my electronic dictionary, which was a bit of a bummer, but I was soon to get over it.

Catching Up: Part Three - Good Kwangju-ju

A pano of lovely Kwangju from the road up Mt. Mudeungsan

Then it was time to head down to Kwangju to see the "family." 종규 swooped down on Saturday morning and picked us up. Other than nearly being crushed by a bus, it was an uneventful trip down.

We got down there and, Korean style, headed straight out for lunch. It was up to Mt. Mudeungsan and a brilliant outside restaurant that served boiled chicken and the Korean equivalent of Buffalo Wings. It had been raining, but the rain broke just long enough so that we could eat. While at lunch I busted out the magazine with my photo-essay of the BKF's marriage. Bringing that was probably the smartest thing I could do. Both parents loved the pics and immediately asked if they could keep the magazine. This, and the soju, started the visit off quite well.

After, we trekked up to a temple on the side of the mountain, and then further up the road to a little watering spot. This was all extremely beautiful. That picture up there on the left is from the parking lot of the temple. The building is what the OAF would call a "temple" but most people in Korea know it as a 화장실 (toilet). Over to the right is a picture of what I think are prayer requests? I dunno, perhaps the BKF can drop in and help me on that. Finally, from that temple, below left is a bit of art that struck me as odd. This type of art was on the outside of the main building - it was on all the exterior panels. I'm not sure why it struck me. I don't think I've ever seen temple art done solely in this kind of blue-mood and the style strikes me as a bit different. I'll have to look back at my other photos to make sure I'm not imagining this.

It could also be the result of my narrow experience with Korean culture, but these panels stuck out to me.

Then off to find a love hotel for the OAF and I. 종규 knew of a good one called Shilla and so, for 50K won we settled in there. It had a big old flat screen TV, good AC and also a computer which could be run to the big old flat screen if desired. Being that it was a love motel it also had, directly outside our door, the requisite vending machine full of improbable looking devices to improve the sex-act. As the OAF and I are not married, we cannot indulge in such shennanigans and instead I took a photo of the thing.

Then it was off to a tuegi-galbi dinner which was extraordinary. I got to practice my shitty Korean on the Lee's who were excellent hosts and even better company. We managed to make due with the language gap. 종규 did what he could to translate, which was often pretty good. His English has improved since I met him in the States.

Then it was off to the Shilla and sleep.

Next morning we went over for lunch at the families' house, this time including an Uncle I remembered from the wedding. Same deal with lots of friendly chatter and Korean practice for me. Eventually though, we had to head back to Seoul, with the promise that we would return for Chusok next month. Should be (other than the legendary Chusok trafic) fun.

The lovely pic to the right is of one of the traditional Korean bells. Its picture will certainly show up in the "Heavy Metal" advert in my series of imaginary magazine advertisements for Korea.

Until then, however, with my photoblogging at least a little caught up, it's time for a lovely soju-based cocktail and some rest.

All in my new place, photos caught up, and another rev of "Camel Pouch" back to the BKF. That's enough of a day for anyone!

Catching Up: Part One - Second day in Seoul

Was grand...

Got up and the alien wanted to go bookshopping, which we did a little of and then got involved in a pretty cool event across from the bookstore.

Saw a very large pavilion/temple with some traditional guards massing outside it and wandered across the street to check it out.

After something like a changing of the guards, we were invited up into the pavilion for a bell-ringing ceremony. Being more interested in taking photos, the OAF and I lurked around the edges. At a certain point the guy leading the thing caught me counting along with him in Korean. He stopped his spiel and asked me if I spoke Korean. Which I do just well enough to recognize that question and answer that I don't speak very well. Still, it was funny to watch the two "LA" (OAF's characterization) Waegukin stare at me like I was some kind of funny monkey. Of course they had no idea I had just exhausted all my Korean except for taxi directions and food orders. ;-)

We stayed for the bell ringing and then headed out to Itaewon, where we visited What a Book, the largest used-bookstore for English-speakers. I got two books which will be quite useful for my upcoming paper. On the way up a hill laced with bars, the OAF struggled behind me a few steps, so the bar-girls (there is probably a more precise term) thought I was alone. As the only guy walking up that particular hill, I represented interesting trade, and they hollered various invitations to drink. On the way back down I had the OAF walk next to me.

As something like protection, I guess.

I'm easily influenced, you see.

We wandered a bit more, had some Galbi for late lunch, and then buggered off back to South Central.

New Pad

I'm excited to be moving, as I always am. I really like tossing things out, and since I have to walk all my belongings down three flights of stairs, up three blocks and then up five flights of stairs, this is a good chance to shed some things.

Also, it will be a relief to move out from underneath TMS. I'm sure that since I'm such a noise-pansy I'll find something to dislike in the new place, but for now I am optimistic. The place is a bit messy (rice strewn here and there, bits of fluff on the floor) but I like it. When TSR was in the place he had a couch, and there was some rumor that he was going to leave that for me. When he left, however, it was unclear who would get the apartment, so he apparently gave it to someone else. This turns out to be a bonus, as it makes the place much more spacious (the picture to the left somehow makes the place look smaller than it actually is).

I'm also glad the new place has an area I can dedicate to the computer and books. Sharing a table between computer gear and dinner never really worked out for me. The "kitchen" in the new place is minimalist - 1.5 electric burners, a sink, and a dormer fridge, but I've dealt with a lot less than that in the past, so I don't think that should be an issue.

For today, this all just means a lot of trips up the hill with various furniture and with my suitcase on wheels.

It's a heck of a way to spend my vacation!

;-)

SeoDajeon Station to Seoul

On Saturday we headed up to Seoul with the intent of checking out some bookstores in Itaewon. I tried to get on the Saemaul train (as noted yesterday) but we ended up on the KTX. Then it was a quick hop to our Yogwan, which was a little difficult to find. But as we stood outside the Jongno-3 subway station looking at the map, I noticed that one of the other bookstores (Kyoungpoong), one we hadn't planned on seeing on this trip, was actually just across the street. So that was rather a bonus...

We got to the Yogwan and checked in (as the art photo of OAF in the mirror demonstrates) and went out for a walk.

Out the backdoor, down the alley and ......aaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiyyyyyyyyyyyyyeeeeeeee! There it was! The evil soup-store that I had written about three years ago - the one that served hemmorhage soup! (NOTE: The pictures are gone from that post, for whatever reason). I snuck by Hae Jang Kook place, nearly retching as I did so. We wandered about just a bit more, down past the US Embassy which, as always, was surrounded by Korean troops. And then, in a bit more good luck, we ran across a second bookstore that we had not intended to visit - the Kyobo. So we ate some delicious broiled duck and I headed back to the Yogwan to watch history channel, while the OAF bookshopped.

She returned at about 7:30, but it was far too rainy to go any great distance, so we headed to a club across the street. I ordered a Cass, but then noticed there were some draft beers at the bottom of the page. Using my poor Korean and pointing to the menu, I asked if there were draft Cass. The waitress "anio'd" me and ran off to make the OAF's hot chocolate. She returned with the hot chocolate and a massive shot of Tequila! I'm not sure how the waitress got tequila from a menu page that only had beer, but in the interest of international amity, I gulped the thing down anyway. Of course that came back to haunt me later, but at the moment all was good.

Then, one more club, and back to the hotel to watch some TV and prepare for the big day in the bookstores in Itaewon.

Weekend in Busan...

On Saturday, despite pouring rain, the OAF decreed that I must spend a lot of money and take her down to Busan. This "request" was despite the fact that a Friday-night full of bar-hopping left her incapable of reaching my Deajeon love-pad before noon on Saturday.

But she was insistent, and so we trundled down to the yeok, and hopped the THX to Busan. In any case I wanted to get down to Busan to meet James Turnbull, who writes the rather excellent blog, "The Grand Narrative." And a trip on the THX is rarely a bad thing. Trains leave frequently, they are clean, they rock (reaching nearly 300 KPH at times), they include a tray service that serves beer, and the Korean countryside is just spectacular at this time of year. Oddly, I also seem to get my best language study done on the train. So down we went, me with my nose in my Korean language book

It took just less than two hours to get to Busan and when we got there the skies had opened up and I, of course, had left my umbrella behind. We scampered the 120 meters from the train station to the subway. We were heading to Haeundae Beach, where James had told us of a nice and inexpensive yeogwan. By the time we got to our stop on line 2, rainwater was coursing down the marble steps out of the station, and running like a river down the smooth marble of the overflow troughs on either side of the stairs.

So we went out and got wet. And I got an umbrella. We wandered down to and then along the beach for a bit, eyeballing places that we could eat, and then called James to find out the name of the yeogwan. It was "Bridge Motel" and, of course, it was at the opposite end of the beach from us. We walked back over, got a room, and dried off a bit. The room didn't face the beach, but it only cost $48.00 and was quite serviceable - it even had a Western style tub.

Then it was back outside, where it was still raining, but not in sheets. At a third story boite with a lovely view of the entire beach we had a beer, a strawberry smoothie and the "peaches" side dish that many bars have. Ten bucks for a can of sliced peaches in syrup that are tossed out onto some ice.

One of the really pricey food options in Korea.

Then it was a walk down to a brilliant Galbi place which was old-fashioned enough that the toilet was outside and there were no smoke hoods over the barbeques on the tables. The other truly odd thing was that no Kimchi was served with the meat.

Anyway, the pictures are here.

Finally we left the restaurant and called James. We agreed to walk back to our hotel and meet him there. Then it was off to a bar-girl bar. A bunch of young women in reasonable scanty clothes serving, and sitting and talking to, men or groups of men. They ignored us completely as we were with a woman and waeguk as hell.

James told many an amusing story, often with his Black Russian pressed against his forehead, but I think those tales are not mine to share. ;-)

Then, at James' suggestion, the OAF and I walked back to our hotel. Once their we decided (by which I mean the OAF forced me) to go back out to the beach and it was a wise decision as the rain had cleared and celebrants were shooting off unsafe and insane fireworks (conveniently sold, by a man on the beach, from a cart). We finally wandered back to the hotel at about one and sank into dreamless sleep.


On the way back we came across a guy who didn't quite make it to his own house. If you look to the left of his feet you can see, in the dark damp and disturbed sand, the troughs in which his feet struggled, without success, for some last bit of balance.



DAY TWO TO FOLLOW....

Finding Icheon; Losing my Camera

So this was the weekend to visit Icheon, which I had narrowly averted missing the previous weekend as I traveled up to Incheon to pick of the OAF. OAF came over about mid-day on Saturday and watched me frump around and not get much done towards moving in the direction of the Bus Station. Finally, with some sub-nagging, she got me going, and we headed to the office to get my long-lens, to the bank to get some big bills, and to the barber’s because I was beginning to look like some kind of hideous savage. The barber ajumma was asleep on her couch and it took a couple of seconds to wake her up. Certainly something unlikely to happen in the US. She gave me a pretty nice haircut and then a post-haircut shampoo in cold water. Because it was over 30 degrees outside, the cold water served as a tonic for this troop.

Then it was back home to pack our stuff up, and a taxi-ride to the bus station. The bus was scheduled to leave at 2:20 and we made it with at least 10 minutes to spare. We both napped a bit on the way up to Icheon, and as we finally pulled into town I could see the Hotel Miranda, which is the “western” style hotel in the town. “Western” style typically means that you pay more than three times as much as you should. We got to the bus station and bought our return tickets for the next day, just in case there should be a stampede of people returning from the Ceramics Festival to Korean Home Town. Then, it was out the back door of the bus-station and on that street, as is normal, there were a fistful of hotels. We went to the HillPark and got an adequate room for 40 bucks.

There had been no maps or information at the bus station, but I suspected the Hotel Miranda would have some. We tried to grab a cab, but the cabbie gestured to the other side of the bus station and when we walked around it, lo and behold, the Hotel Miranda was three blocks away. We walked over, past 5 barbeque joints, including at least two whose specialty was bulgogi. The Hotel Miranda is also a water park, so on the left side of the Hotel entrance there were families of Korean sitting on the sidewalk eating lunch and drinking beer. We went into the hotel and, as I had hoped, there were tourist maps and pamphlets.

We grabbed one of each and then headed back for an early bulgogi meal. This was the first time that I had ever eaten bulgogi without the BKF and I felt like even more of a cheater when I ordered a lovely icy bottle of soju to wash the thing down. There was only one bad moment, when the OAF ate a piece of garlic and hollered, “oh, that was terrible onion!”

The garlic was such a terrible piece of onion that the OAF sat, stock still, for 5 minutes, sweating and trying to will herself to vomit. It was one of her oddest restaurant performances, and I was lucky enough to be present. In a few minutes she was back to OK, and since it was still early, suggested we head out to the farthest-away site on the tourist map. We grabbed a taxi and headed to Icheon Ceramics Village. This was half-closed, but still had plenty open. We wandered in and out of shops and bought a few gifts for folks in the back-home.

Then we walked back towards town until a taxi could find us. There was still daylight, and the OAF was keen to explore, so we decided to go to the lake. The lake was also the front of Seolbong Park, which contained the Ceramics Festival and a couple of museums. We hied hence to the Festival and wandered around figuring the layout, watching the “make your own pottery” site, and then back to the traditional Korean kiln that was on the right side of the entrance. It was in full flame and I took some pictures of the mouth of the thing. This required me to lay full out on my stomach, and when I got up and brushed off my shirt, a man walked up to me and waved me over to a table surrounded by other Koreans, a few in traditional kit. He offered me a cup of Makgeolli, and I’m never one to turn down a drink. I had read about this drink, it’s just a bit above beer in alcohol content, so it was good to taste it. We sat around and talked about the kiln, ceramics, and Icheon in general, until it was time to go back. It was a good thing the OAF had us drop by, as the next morning the kiln had been shut down to cool the ceramics inside. Since one of the reasons I had come to Icheon was specifically to get a shot of a functioning kiln, this would have been a bummer.

Not as big a bummer as losing my camera with the chip inside. Which was what I immediately proceeded to do!

We grabbed a cab to the Bus Station and got out to wander around. I wanted to take the OAF to see a building with lit sailing rigging. So we walked over to it, but there wasn’t a good spot to take a picture. Finally, all the way around it, there was a break in the trees and I opened the backpack to get the camera….

…. Which of course was not there. Logically, of course, since I had left it on the back seat of the cab. ☹ Wonderfully, I had no identification on the camera or (and I only figured out that I should do this right at that moment) file on the camera-card saying how to contact me.

I had this crazy thought the cabbie would swing past the place again, looking for me. So we headed back towards the Bus Station and, a little bit down the way, both realized that we hoped

a) The cabbie had got into the cab queue at the station (once in, you can’t get out until you pick up a ride) and

b) No buses had arrived.

We got there and searched all the cabs in the queue… about ¾ of the way through the line (which I idiotically did from the back of the line) the OAF said, “don’t look in that one, the cab was white.”). And this made things quicker as I ran up the queue and only looked in white cabs.

None of which had the camera.

But the time saved.. ah.. the time saved. ;-)

The cab stuck at the traffic light, turning left? It was our white cab and two Korean guys and one very confused cabbie were trying to figure out how the hell they would track down the stupid Waegukin who had left the camera in the cab. The guy in the front seat spotted us and started waving the camera out the window. We rushed up and grabbed it, exchanges some heartfelt Kahmsamneeda’s and parted.

You get 200 Koreans together and god knows what you’ll get – it could be a party and it could be an anti-free-trade riot. As a group Koreans will believe most anything: Say, fan death, or Mad-Cow in the streets. But any individual Korean (or group small enough to make a conscious moral decision)? You will have some of the most honest people in the entire world. This is the second trip I’ve tried to lose something quite valuable (passport and money two trips ago) and in each case it was returned to me. Try being that forgetful in the United States (or any of the countries BAX has put his camera down only to find it gone in a trice).

In celebration of the loss of the loss, we headed to the WA bar where I had two San Miguels, the OAF had a coke, and we shared a lovely plate of iced peaches and orange slices.

Which left us with one more day at the Ceramic soiree.

ZOOTOPIA!

Aaaah.. I'm back home and actually doing this from the Monkey Bar at the local airport. It was so tragic to miss this on the way out.

On Saturday I bailed on the conference and set out on a walking expedition of the park, which began with the zoo.

The zoo was clearly marked with a Stonhengian “ZOO” sculpture so even I couldn’t miss the entrance. It was a nice zoo, but it was also a Saturday so the place was full of kids. All having important formative moments, no doubt, but running around like the mad-chilluns they are. It reminded me of why I prefer the zoo during the week.

The zoo is free – a very nice touch - so you can wander in and out of it as you see fit. There is plenty else to explore in the park, my hotel guy said it is bigger than Central Park in New York. Having never been there I just nodded my head as though I knew what that meant.

I believe he thought I was a man with intercontinental experience.

That's the only way I can explain the fact he followed me to the men's room every time I .. er.. 'went.'

Anyway, I had “breakfast” at the zoo, a tasty hot-dog, a truly awful hot-pretzel (most of which ended up in the garbage) and a Bud Light of epic proportions. Because the Zoo is a semi-educational venue I should note that I learned something I never would have suspected. Turns out there is a “season” for cotton candy. And when the cotton candy fields lay stripped of their crops, a few forlorn cardboard stalks poking uselessly in the air? When the seasonal Cotton Candy pickers have packed up their jalopies, tattered belongings, and sad families to move farther south to pick the Kettlecorn and Corndog crops? The Zoo has to stop serving cotton candy.

Who knew?

I also spotted this water-fountain with a dedication that seemed strangely apropos. The water fountain was donated by the Sippy family, who do good the only way they know.

Also, they had been hard at work on the Blue-Monkey Extermination Project as dozens of the savage brutes were hung like bunches of fruit at each concession stand.

Then it was a continued walk down the hill. This was kind of interesting because I walked past probably a mile of unused street parking as people headed up to the $10/$20 parking lots. Oddly, when I finally walked back, I walked on the inside of the park, which was pretty jungular. Here, people parked at least a mile away from the zoo and happily walked to it. I guess it's the difference between walking alongside a freeway and walking in some lovely green stuff.

On the way down I passed a big old metal sculpture that would look tacky at the Tiki-Room in Disneyland and looked even weirder on the side of the road. I suppose it represents the brass balls, steel will, and iron determination....

...aah.. I really have no idea..

Another mile or so down the road is the Science Center which is on both sides of the freeway (the freeway is spanned by an enclosed bridge which contains several amusing displays including radar guns so you can actually put a number to the lawless driving of the unconcerned Mid-Westerners out here). This is a really cool place and you could spend at least a whole day there. They had a Gemini capsule and although I knew from high school textbooks that they had been small, standing in front of the thing was amazing. It looked like something from a carnival ride. Which, I suppose, is about right.

There were dinosaur exhibits, a massive Rube Goldberg device and probably hundreds of hands-on things for kids to do, which kept the ankle-biting down. A bunch of cool things cost money and were scheduled (they have one of those plastinated people exhibits) such that I’d have to wait around.

It also included the "ice cream of the future" which is (as I noted before) the inspiration for the add campaign of a competing college.

It was completely cool, but with a blister developing on my little toe (yeah, I'm a wimp) I decided it was time to start the hike back to the lovely half-price bar. It had been three or four hours of tromping, and I was ready for a chilly one.

Just a final note about that bar. I did all my eating and drinking there from Thursday night to Sunday morning (when, alas, it was actually closed!) and this totaled $64.00. The bartender says the owner is re-thinking the half-off policy and I can figure why. But I was lucky enough to be around while it was still ending.

The life I freaking lead!

In The Outer Circulatory System of Darkness...

The journey of a one mile, much more the journey of one thousand miles (roundtrip, you skeptic), begins with a cocktail. This is folk wisdom I am sure I have noted elsewhere. And so it is that, yet again, I found myself in the Monkey Bar in the Big City Airport. This time I arrived at the airport sober, so I could actually make some judgments on the drinks. Well, the two I had, which were both margaritas. Excellent. Baby crushed the limes in front of me and I sat there working on my conference paper. The flight was a bit delayed, so I was able to order the second one.

When I got to the gate, the little Filipino dude who took about 30 seconds comparing IDs to tickets (yet oddly never once looked at the ID and compared its picture to the person presenting it) pulled out something like a mascara pencil and made big old circles around the two instances of SSSS on my ticket.

Turns out I’m a potential terrorist.

I always suspected this.

Sadly, as usual, I squandered any potential I had, and after something resembling a heavy-petting session with an even older Filipino than the one at the gate, I was let through. The nice woman at the gate warned me that this would happen again on my way back, as I had purchased my tickets within a week of my travel.

Huh?

So terrorists don’t plan their attacks? They’re just sitting in the cave, partying madly for guys who don’t drink, do drugs, date women, or shave, and all of a sudden Abdul jumps up and yells, “Hey, Abdul! And Abdul and Abdul and Abdul and Abdul Mohhamed. Oh, OK, even you Abdul! Let’s get tickets on some planes, before the weekend, because my uncle Abdul is visiting on Saturday, and we’ll do some terrorism! Let’s go!”

That doesn’t make sense…

I realize that I’ve typed more than a page of academic text here, and all that tells me is that I should have had one more drink. It’s far too early in the day for me to get into any of the codeine or few vicodins that I have as a result of my various joint pains.

On the other side of this flight I have to pick up a rental car and part of my strategy there is to be able to speak and have control over my drool, bowels, and eyelids. Mixing drugs with these drinks would be bad (I hasten to add that they would be bad only because they would result in denial of my rental car. Let no man claim I’m against any kind of mixing of things that alter mood. All by responsible adults. Of course.).

But I swear to god.. if they push this flight back anymore than the 20 minutes they already have? I’m swallowing everything in my kit bag, including the shaving cream and slightly soiled thong underwear. And for those of you who are grossing out at the thong underwear? Of course I don’t wear the things. What kind of idiot do you think I am?

I found them in the airport parking lot.

And now, with the flight complete it is really only about a half hour late, not nearly as dire as the leaving an entire hour late might have suggested.

Why I Shivered Myself To Sleep Last Night

Gutted, like an Alien would suck the goo from an otherworldly bug on the shores of a tarpit, on a planet far, far away.

Run to the Hills

Aaaah.. a trip up to the Lovely Sister's pad to see the parents, in town from some island right off the shore of the country. The ride up was completely uneventful, although it took far longer than it should have. I was looking for a certain kind of Swiss Army Knife (SWAK) to replace one the the Replacement Dad had lost during airline travel. That alone is a funny enough story, as once at the airport RD realized he had the knife on his person and ran over to the airport folks to figure out what to do about it. They wrapped it up, bundled it in a box, and checked it into luggage. Upon landing, RD and Moms picked up their luggage, with the wrapped box intact.

Except now, mysteriously, it was empty. Which means that one of the fine TSA folks who protect us from terrorists (well, them and permanent incarceration without charges at Guantanamo, CIA torture, and the death of habeas corpus) now has a lovely SWAK.

But the RD didn't and so I had a task I had to perform.

As usual, I failed completely.
My attempt to find the "Explorer" model led me on a merry chase. Which means I stopped at ever sporting goods store, gun store, and camping store on the way from Big City to the hills. And they had lots of SWAKS.

Apparently Swiss Army makes something like 5-Brazilian (ask George Bush, the lesser) different models of knives. Heck, I learned that some of them even had two toothpics built in. This is in case you and a close friend ever both need toothpicks, but your friend is some kind of clean freak who won't use yours.

The stores I visited had the:

Discoverer
Mangler (every blade is the double-toothed saw. So is the handgrip)
Hunter-Gatherer
Murderer (Came with duct tape and plastic bags)

and every other knife known to man.

But no "Explorer."

Besides that, the only thing of note on the trip was two gas stations who had gasoline for under $3/gallon. This does not happen much in the Golden State and so I took a picture of the prices just to prove this to any sceptics out there.

Once on the hill, it was food and wine and party til nearly midnight. Past my bedtime really. But fun. The food was outstanding and I drank wine until about 10:30 and then guzzled as much water as I could until we went to bed about an hour later.

Slept in til 8:15 or so and spent the morning working with MLS on some political mailing pieces she is working with. The local folks have good intentions, but at the local office level there is no one with any marketing or design experience and the pieces they want to send out, unfortunately, show that lack.

Today it was all about wandering around the meadow-lake and bothering small insects, many of which I photographed, so that's the pictures.

Then, a return to the home of MLS and a bit of hanging out with the parental units. It is a pretty chill day if your big issue is whether or not you should stay home and eat yesterday's leftovers, or go down to the local greasy-spoon and soak up some of that good old-time charm that typically manifests itself in bland food that is too hot, bland women who are too cold, and beers at over $4 a pop.

It's an outrage, but it's a local one, so I suppose I am ok with it.

Tomorrow, the long ride back down the hill, and I shall leave as Aurora's golden fingers lightly open the doors of my eyes...

....and reveal my hangover. ;-)

USA!

Fuck Yeah!

And to Japan..

Fuck Yeah!

Thus ends our 4th of July minute of xenophobia and chauvinism!

Remembering the Word Count Days

Aaah.. those happy days in which my struggle was to create enough output for this thesis thingie. Now the beast rests at slightly over 17,000 words and I must have cut at least that many out in drafts.

Anyway, I have done three revs this weekend. Obviously it gets easier as it gets better. And between coffee bars and the old-fashioned kind, I have had the sit-down, sit-up and write time that is necessary for this thing.

I think it will go out to my informal editors at the end of this week, and then to my advisor next week. Could it be concluding?

Would be nice. Then off to Korea for a year or so and some more writing.

Or something. ;-)

Vacation Land(ed)

When, last spring, my friends (the three of them and some barfly acquaintances) heard that my mother would be flying me and my BAG to Mediterranean climes they chimed in with a lot of jealous palaver.

If by jealous palaver you mean hatred, despair and wishes that I would die.

If I had a dime for every time someone claimed that the Continent would be wasted on me or…

Oh.. wait, they said I’d be wasted on the Continent and they were dead right.

It’s my mom for god’s sake. It’s the Continent for god’s sake. And with all else moms and I share there is also the love of the grape. And there we were, with all that lovely grape juice, pops with a pipe, and the BAG with bookstores. So we all fed the beasts within.

We wandered from lovely place to lovely place.

I, as is my wont, snapped pictures.

I think I’ve covered this elsewhere, but I hate pictures with people in them. To me a picture of an architectural or natural wonder with people in it is like a picture of a porn star with her yeast infection and tattoos showing.

Just wrong… a kind of defilement.

“Hey look Palookaville! I’m here in front of something that dwarfs my pathetic life. But the group tour stopped here before we went to the Microtel (outer) Rome!”

er… this wasn’t supposed to turn all bitter.. the point is..

some of the photos came back to roost in a semi-lovely university publication…

this would be a screen shot…

and this would be a link to the pdf…

as if you stupid tourists care..

I’m off to base-jump into a undersea cavern filled with lo-cal rum, the best margaritas you have ever had, a native guide with a well-stuffed loincloth, slivers of the true cross, and food as the savages themselves kill, prepare, cook, and eat.

Later?

I’ll parasail out with a fistful of antiquities.

So.. like… your vacation sucked compared to mine..

;-)

The Long Ride Home

The next day we were crippled. We limped into Yosemite and did very little things. One thing we did was take a small diversion. On both highway 120 and 140 I had noticed a little road named “Foresta” and it seemed to run off to an area where there had been a serious fire. There was also a meadow and some A-frames. Over the serious whining of the BAG I cut off here and we drove down to into the meadow. We found, go figure, a moribund town named Foresta which consisted of an apparently abandoned fire-station and a lightly occupied cemetery named the ‘Foresta’ cemetery. This made the BAG happy – since she has me as an older boyfriend she is always happy to see where the old go to die.

Took some photos, wander about, and headed to the valley. We walked to Bridal Veil Falls. This is an epic journey of up to .25 of a mile (if you stagger as seriously as we did). We headed out to Mirror Lake, where we had been a few years ago in the dead of winter, with a trio of Koreans, slipping, sliding and falling on our dumb asses as we struggled up and down the last icy quarter mile. When Yosemite is dry the walk is trifling and we made it in a trice. We sat up there for a while and that is where these tricky "mirror" pictures come from. At some point the BAG grabbed me by the shoulder and had me take the picture you see at the bottom right. That's right. No vapor trails. I don't get it either.

After that it was to the Yosemite Cemetery where the BAG fruitlessly searched for the grave of a Native American. She took it badly when I suggested that anywhere in the US she looked was pretty much the grave of a Native American. They are pretty testy considering all the Government cheese we’ve squandered on them. I was happy to see the gravestone (pictured) with the phallic headstone and the inscription:

“Ah, that beauteous head if it did go down, It carried sunshine into the rapids”

which is pretty much how I feel about getting good head.

It was getting late and the BAG wanted to go back to Yosemite Falls so that I could take more pictures. I didn’t want to walk anywhere and we bargained for an hour and a half of time sitting on the valley floor. If there’s a better place to read a book I don’t know it. So we headed to Groveland and the Charlotte Hotel. A lovely place and we settled in. I wandered across the street to the Iron Horse Saloon and had two beers. The BAG went back to the hotel to check out dinner at the restaurant there. I headed back as well and we read for awhile. Then it was an excellent dinner. I know that I’m comfortably off now, because when the bill came in and they’d missed a glass of wine I drank, I mentioned it to the waitress so that she could add it in there.

Later, on the way to the car, or something.. perhaps to pick something up for the lovely BAG, I heard the band in the bar across the street playing “All Along the Watchtower” and was seduced by its mighty beauty. I shot across the street and sat in for just three songs (after all, the mighty beauty of the BAG was still in the Hotel and she would clock me a new skull-hole if I didn’t come back in a timely fashion) and slugged down a quick shot with a beer back. It was a beautiful thing.

Next day we had some lovely breakfast and the BAG asked to see the map. She picked out a path home that I had been considering – highway 49 to Jackson (we know of a bar and bookstore there) and we decided to take it. I was slightly impressed by this, since the BAG is not a map-reader at all, and there’s a tangle of roads right around there. Anyway, we had agreement without discussion, which is the sign of a happy couple or a fascist government – perhaps I have switched the adjectives there? This path took us back through Jamestown, Sonora, and up to Jackson. On the way I saw this lovely sign indicating a pleasure pit off to the left. I also tried to get some pictures of Hawks on the wing, but this is like sobriety – it never works out for me.

We had lunch, she headed to the bookstore and I to the bar. The bar had this lovely old-school machine offering devices of pleasure for less than one dollar. The dispensing slot in the middle actually suggests that I purchase all 12 "extenders" and "pleasurers." Like I want sex that much anymore! An hour later I was done with the bar slightly before she was done with the bookstore. Just slightly though, since as I drove down old Main St. to the bookstore, she was walking back.

We rolled the Delta and ended up home. It was a splendid nature adventure.

You only Yurt the Ones You Love

The next day we headed back into Yosemite. The sign for services/stores which had previously said “services open on Friday” now sported a penciled-in “at 5pm” which we both found a bit disappointing. We ate some breakfast from cellophane containers and headed for the Mist Trail. Getting off to bus we were treated to a couple of deer doing that dear thing that only deer can do. I snapped some photos and then we started up the trail proper. The trail was lovely. I was told the trail was lovely. I could not see beyond the stinging sweat pouring into my eyes and all I could hear was the threat that the explosion of my heart might overcome the thunderous rasping of my lungs. Since this was wintertime, the Mist Trail itself was closed (that is the inside bit of the trail that runs up next to Vernal Falls), so we were forced to take the Muir Trail loop instead. It is considerably longer and much less scenic if you are interested in hiking waterfall trails in order to see, well, waterfalls. We trod mightily to Clarke Point at which case the BAG’s hip was tightening up and I was in complete systemic failure. We took a couple of photos with Nevada Falls in the background, a few little nature shots (the bluejay, for instance), and then headed down the hill. All the way we were either right in front of or right behind a single-mother with a hideous little gang of children who insisted on throwing frozen snow at each other, and when that wasn’t available resorting to sticks or dirt. I almost nobly offered, to the harried harridan, beating the little shits soundly for their misbehavior, but decided it was her cross to bear. At each turn of a switchback, Yvonne looked up to the sky and cursed whatever vapor trails she saw.

Eventually we made it back to the bottom of the hill a process which, surprisingly, involved a minimum of falling.

Despite how painful it had been, this entire ordeal had only consumed 2 hours or so of the day. By the time we were done, of course, we were too weak to do anything but screw around in Yosemite Village and hang out in the meadow and take 8-million shots (SmartCard in camera!) of a Red Robin, which was the only the second animal (see bluejay above) stupid enough to get within three miles of me the entire vacation. Well, at least when I had a camera and there was a card in it.

Eventually, wounded badly, we headed out on 120 to the fabled Yurt-Hut. About as soon as we left the park boundaries (with the odometer set to 0 again, so I could get a 5-mile notification) the BAG and I both began to have a squirmy belief. She was sitting in her seat kind of twitchy and so was I. As we began to round familiar corners, I believe it was the BAG who first said, “you know, this is going to turn out the be….” And then we saw it. Yosemite Lakes was the very same store, gas-station, and Inn that we had stopped at two days previously. We had been unable to find it DESPITE HAVING BEEN THERE less than 48 hours earlier. I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry. The store, of course, was closed, so after driving down to check in, we had to roll to Groveland to get some vittles for fixing.

The good news was that the Yurt was nice, very big, and on a sort of scenic rise. The bad news was that the folks in the yurt next to us were a bit loud – we heard their TV blaring as we came in. We ate dinner, watched a bit of TV (the yurts had TV’s, stoves, refrigerators, full bathrooms, and skylights – not your Mongolian father’s yurt).

We went to sleep at exactly the time the folks next to us, well, a woman anyway, went mad with either her lover or her vibrator. The young woman had an astounding line in profanity. I, still unused to having a hand-held recorder, was a bit tardy in remembering that it was in my computer bag, but eventually I did and recorded one of her lesser outbursts here (mp3 (smallish) or aif (largish)).

BAG watched the full moon through the sun-roof and we eventually drifted off agreeing there was no way I was making it back into the valley in time for my photo-walk. It had been doomed from the start, and now it was official. Opening the 6th Heineken was merely the christening of the event. The lovely fireplace/heater was also complicit and the BAG had her evil role as well. All in all, a pretty good day.

Into Yosemite and Out of My Mind (Day 2)

The next morning we took a quick walk around Jamestown, and I photographed the BAG with every wooden statue I could find. Then it was a quick trip up behind Jamestown to check out the Railroad Museum which was astoundingly boring. I headed down a west-ish cutting road which I reasoned must cross Highway 49, since we had crossed 49 on our way up. We drove just long enough for me to begin regretting I hadn’t gassed up in Jamestown and then, lo and behold, I saw from above the big stinking reservoir below Priest’s Grade. The mystery road had cut neatly back to Highway 120 and within minutes we were shooting up New Priest’s Grade. Got to the top and passed the first gas station at Oak Flat as well as the one at Groveland. I knew there were gas-stations in Buck’s Meadow as well as another one just before the park entrance. Got to Buck’s Meadow, pulled in and was just starting to get out of the car when a Cooter-esque dude sweeping the gravel off of the.. well, the gravel.. said, “them pumps are empty.” This was also true of the other gas-station in Buck’s Meadow and now I was getting a bit uneasy. We shot on for another 11 miles or so and, lo and behold (really, "lo and behold" twice in the same post? Three times now?), there was the other store/station I knew about and we quickly skipped off the road which revealed to us --- the “closed for inventory” sign. Down the road there was an Inn, but it was deserted, so I pulled around and back onto the highway.

We made Crane’s Flat without any trouble and gassed up, but some aspects of the closed gas station and store would come back to be amusing later.

Anyone who’s ever driven into Yosemite knows the feeling you get the first time you see Half Dome neatly tucked between the two walls of the valley. So we had it. There was road construction everywhere, but the park was essentially empty as that photo on the left shows. That is the road to Yosemite Village and we were literally the only car on it.

We drove into the Village and as we did I pointed up to the sky where two vapor trails crossed, “look,” said I, “it’s a cross.” That seemed uncontroversial, but in that very moment the BAG developed an unwavering and psychotic hatred of the vapor trail and every time a plane crossed the valley (pretty often since it is on the way to Sacramento, Oakland, San Jose and SF airports, and that’s just going west), the BAG bristled like a rabid dog and hissed, “there’s another one, why do they have to do that?” Sometimes her finger pointed shakily into the sky, sometimes her little fists were balled in rage, but each time her voice and body shook. I began pointing vapor trails out just for fun.

After a bit of time in the village (and signing up for a photographic walk at 9 am on Saturday that I was certain to miss by sleeping in) we headed off to Curry Village which was essentially closed for the season. Again, a weird scene since it is normally packed tight.

We headed off to view Yosemite Falls and when we got up to the top viewpoint I took out my camera and started taking pictures. Other photographers were there as well, and since I had a cooler camera and bigger lens in my bag, I took them out and began using them. I also clambered on the rocks and scrambled up towards the fall to take even closer pictures. The other photographers, I noted, were in awe of my equipment and skills and looked at me with something approaching reverence.

Too bad I didn’t have a SmartCard in the camera I was using. So. No pictures of that. Vastly over-rated in any case. A bit of bad landscape.

This is getting to be a disturbing habit.. I change cameras and don’t make sure they can actually take pictures. I later discovered that my newer camera has a setting that doesn’t allow you to “take” pictures without a card in the camera and I set it that way. I hope this helps. I could use the help..

After a short visit to the meadow, it was starkly revealed how much help I need. The night before I had realized I had left the cord to my iBook at home so I was only opening the laptop to download pictures to it or to access the screen-shots I had taken of our hotel reservations. This is my normal technique for saving such things and I was a bit confused when I opened the screen-shot for our lovely two-night stay at the Yurt-Village and the screenshot had no phone number, no address, nothing but the name of the place, “Yosemite Lakes.” Fortunately I did recall a little about the web page and knew that it was located 5 miles from the western park entrance. No problem, I’d shoot down 140, set my odometer to 0 at the park entrance and start eyeballing places about 4 miles down. A brilliant plan, but it revealed nothing. Between 3 and 7 miles down the road was a lovely stretch of river and trees, nothing else. I stopped at the El Portal store and they had no idea what I was talking about.

We rolled back up to the park. Back down 7 miles, back up to the park. Trying to phone anyone we could as eception kept cutting out. We finally reached the BAG’s brother who in a quick (and wildly inaccurate) Google search informed us that we had reservations in Modesto. This was not gonna do. We stopped back at El Portal and this time there was a guy who made the previous day’s Cooter-esque dude seem positively like Cary Grant. But he said he knew of a place like the one we described and in fact had applied for a job there. I paid half-attention, more fascinated by the mossy cave-opening he had by way of a mouth and the teeth that wobbled loosely in their settings, shining green and black in the waning sun. Well, those teeth that were still there, anyway. But the place he was talking about was back on 120 which is not, as everyone knows, the west entrance. This sounded a bit better than Modesto (so does Hell, to be honest), but since the guy was cradling a half-empty fifth of Vodka in a brown-bag I wasn’t gonna take his word for it. So we rolled back up to the Cedar Lodge (a hotel we had noticed along the way) and the very helpful Cara Googled “Hillside Yurt” and “Yosemite” and, wondrous thing, old snaggle-tooths had been dead on. By this time it was getting dark and the BAG was making a remarkably wide variety of snide remarks about my navigation skills. I decided to get a room at the Cedar Lodge, call the Yurt-hut and say we’d be in the next night. This cost me the price of the Yurt for that night, but it was worth it to get off the road. Cara, impressed by our tale of woe, upgraded us to a room with a big old spa (that little head in the "spa" pic is the BAG) and we spent the night there, BAG spa-ing and me cursing the Yurt-Hut for calling 120 the “west” entrance (I cursed them because it couldn’t possibly have been my fault for not having their address or phone number).

The BAG proposed that, according to a theory that I have long held about terminal degrees - they produce stupidity not education - my day without a computer cord, without a SmartCard in my camera, and with no direction home was the result of my proximity to my MA. I think I only hit her once. So that's good.

I’m sure the stars were out, or something… but I focused on drinking myself into oblivion and so largely missed them.

The next day, we were to head for the dreaded Mist Trail...

To Jamestown

I was scheduled to get out of work at 4:30 and to my complete amazement did. The trip from Big City to the Delta went relatively easily and by the time we hit Highway 5 we were contemplating possible hotels for the night. I had seen a bed-and-breakfast somewhere out in “Fish Something or Other” but I had no idea where this might actually be. I knew that once we were past Escalon hotels would get scarce so I stopped at a gas station, gave the BAG a $20 bill and asked her to purchase a map of California. 5 minutes later I was still sitting in the car and the BAG had not reappeared. I stepped into the store to enquire and there in the corner, under a large mound of opened maps (most of which were of Sacramento) the BAG struggled to breathe. I refolded most of the maps and stopped the BAG from continuing to drill through the rack with maps of Sacramento. I pointed out that since one map of Sacramento was pretty much like the other, it might be time for other options. Unfortunately, none of the other options included California or Northern California. As the BAG continued to juggle maps she lost track of the $20 bill and left it behind for the lost (“lost?” by the map racks? Irony baby) homies of 7-11.

She has a loose way with money. If it is mine.

We could neither find “Fish Something or Other” nor raise the hotel on the telephone and thus we soldiered on after determining (a bit of mathematics based on road signs) that Sonora wasn’t too far away beyond the turn-off to Yosemite. We stopped a bit short of that in Jamestown and found a lovely little hotel (The RailTown Hotel) which charged less than seventy dollars for the evening. As we walked in I nearly had a heart attack as a savage canine of massive dimensions gathered itself to leap at me from the bed. Reeling backwards I stepped aside and yelled, “take the Indian! I’m a heart attack waiting to happen.” Perhaps I also pushed the BAG in ahead of me. She has one version of the story and I have another.

It was a stuffed animal, but I could have used a bit of warning. You can see a picture (over there on the right) of the savage beast completely sucking up to the BAG. Shameless. Both of them.

We went around the corner and had a lovely dinner before retiring to bed. I locked the stuffed animal in the bathroom, just to be safe. The BAG kept getting out, so I finally gave up on her...

Holiday in the Sun

Turkey Day came fresh and bright, which was a nice thing after the rain-squalls of the previous night. The lovely BAG had been poking around in the little envelope in which our cabin key had been packed and, lo and behold, she pulled out two squares of paper. Each piece was a free breakfast at the restaurant at the campsite and so our question of where we would be having breakfast was solved.If the woman who checked us in had mentioned this little bonanza, neither of us had heard her do so and that made this a lovely surprise.

I drank the wine that I hadn't spilled the previous night (yeah, I know, complete wino move) sent the first post from yesterday off and we got our stuff together to go out a-beachin!

That picture over on the left is the carefree BAG heading down the hill from our cold cabin. You can see it was pretty darned nice. If by nice you mean puny and windswept. But, you know - nice.

The thing over there on the right is the Eye of Sauron from the lovely semi-sculpture, semi-garden place between the restaurant and the store of the campsite.

Breakfast was good and we headed on out.

The f irst beach, which the BAG INSISTED we visit, turns out upon internet research, to be a nude beach. This would explain the old fat guy walking around nude. It still doesn't quite explain why the BAG enjoyed it so much. Unlike the last time we stumbled (well, me anyway) across a nude beach, I couldn't get the classic pic of the guy washing his hands in the creek. Those proto-Neanderthal shots are the bomb!

Anyway, the second beach was very nice as well, as the pic to the right should hint at. At about 2 it started to get extremely windy and cold, so we headed up the highway towards a road along a creek that had been recommended by the campsite hosts. It was incredibly boring and the road ended abruptly, which we took as a sign to head back to the campsite.

By this time we were a bit hungry but since we had reservations for a complete Thanksgiving dinner we didn't want to eat much. So we grabbed some cheese and pemmican (can't escape from the BAGs essential Cheyennese nature!) and headed back to the cabin to eat.

We opened the pemmican and it was wondrous "State Miracle Pemmican!" The first piece I pulled out is over there on the left - an exact representation of the state of California (with the lines of fat which laced the meat exactly describing our internal waterways and freeway system). It was a complete miracle and I celebrated it by scarfing the stuff right down.

About 30 seconds later the BAG pulled out a piece and started laughing.

She had pulled Montana.

Later, I caught her chewing on yet another piece of the meat in a vain effort to turn it into something resembling Texas.

But the first two were legit, and if this ever happens again I believe the BAG will have a strong argument for three different miracles and thus an induction into the ranks of saints in the Catholic Church.

The lord moves in mysterious ways.

After this it was all just waiting for dinner, which was quite satisfactory and one thing about getting a plate at a restaurant is that it interferes with gluttony. This is a good thing. Dinner didn't start until 7:45 and by the time we got back to the cabin it was time to get under the covers, fire up the matress heater and cling together ("cuddle" as the BAG insists on referring to it) for heat.

Not quite a Thanksgiving like the epic one in Death Valley, but better than staying at home and watching football games.

HAPPY BIRD-EATING DAY! (Featuring hot, bird-on-bird action!)

Amusingly, when the BAG and I arrived at the first beach (mis-named "Bonny Doon," at least for one of the seagulls in the picture) we came across this lovely Thanksgiving tableaux.

And we wish the same to you and alla yours!

;-)