On Friday night, we had an awesome time with my good friends Dawni, Johnny and Lina (the latter two are Koreans, and they're awesome...it can be pretty hard to meet and make friends with Koreans, but Dawni seems to be very good at it, and I'm so happy that she's bringing them into my life!). We just went out for good cheap pizza (it's a new joint and we're starting to be regulars, so they're super nice to us, giving us freebies and discounts all the time), then went out for coffee before I sadly had to head home (I hate being a slave to the bus schedule).
On Saturday, I visited my friend Brandon in the hospital (had his tonsils out) and packed my stuff to head to the Masan Reservoir for a nice little foreigner party. My friend Ryan throws these (you may remember him, he too me out for dinner and helped me get started a few days after I landed in Korea...a top-notch guy...definitely will suck when he leaves) every few months, though we're all hoping we can make it every few weeks!
So we met up in the afternoon, hiked to the lake/reservoir (remember all the pics of the waterfalls I took a few weeks ago?? No waterfalls now....the creek's totally dried up! Good thing I went when I did), and found our little pagoda, which would serve as our party headquarters for the next 12 hours or so! (Taken on Sunday morning).
Soon, the table in the pagoda was covered in equal parts alcohol and snacks (including Ryan's delicious home-made cookies) and the party was on. More and more awesome people kept showing up, and I'd say at its height we probably had 30 people there.
After spending roughly two hours blowing up a little rubber dinghy, we hit the water and it was beautiful!! Amazingly warm and surprisingly clear...bullfrogs in the weeds and turtles swimming around us...yup...doesn't get much better. Thanks to light pollution from Changwon, it never got dark enough to get us in trouble...who knows what can happen with half a dozen people holding on to a dinghy in the middle of Korea???
We swam to the other side of the lake and back a few times and generally lived like we were the only ones in paradise...twice while out on the water (we were in there for probably 3 hours total), the monsoon rains let loose, making the experience all that much more surreal and more "Korean." What can I say? Another great night...how often do you get to belt out Modest Mouse's "Float On" while hanging onto a dinghy in the middle of a lake in Korea with some awesome people from all corners of the world?
By about 1 or 2 a.m., most people had made the treacherous trek back to civilization, but 4 of us (Ryan, Allison, Conrad and I) decided to make the pagoda our home for the night and chatted for an hour or two then went to sleep.
On Sunday we woke up to this:
Not too bad at all...after cleaning up, we hiked out of the forest and parted ways. I took a quick 3-4 hour nap and headed back into town to meet up with Ryan to look at a motorbike.
When the guy pulled up I was instantly impressed then quickly disappointed. I was impressed because the bike sounded great...disappointed because I realized that whoever owned it previously went to the Sticker Store, bought up their entire stock and applied it to every square inch of this poor bike. It has stickers from all sorts of manufacturers the bike has not, does not and will not ever have parts on it from. (For one thing, the bike is a Hyosung, but it had Suzuki, Honda, Yamaha and Mitsubishi stickers on it...and that's just the bike manufacturers...the rest ranged from NOS to four different types of tire makers...close to 40 in total...yikes).
Anyhoo...the bike is a 2000 or 2001 (or thereabouts) Hyosung Mirage. I've always wanted a small-displacement cruiser and one day retrace Che's ride through South America. What I love about this bike is that, unlike most 125cc bikes, it's a 2-cylinder V-Twin, rather than the much more common single cylinder. This makes the bike much, much smoother and it sounds like a real bike and not a lawnmower.
It's a 4-stroke oil cooled engine mated to a 5 speed manual transmission...it even has a dual caliper disc brake in the front, which is a nice touch.
Now...onto the bad: cosmetically, she ain't no beauty queen. The seat is ripped, the paint is scratched here and there and there are random imperfections from pretty much nose to tail...but nothing above and beyond what one would expect of an older, basic bike.
Mechanically, on the other hand, the bike is an all-out winner. It starts on first try every single time, it runs and idles like a dream, sounds great, the transmission is tight, shifting is accurate and the brakes are top-notch. A few hours before selling the bike, the previous owner put on a brand new rear tire, brand new rear shock, new ignition lock and gas tank cap/lock, new lights (including LED turn signals), new spark plugs and a fresh oil change! After de-stickering the poor guy...here's a horrible picture of it in my carport...not bad considering I paid about as much for it as a friend of mine spent this weekend on ONE night in a fancy hotel in downtown Seoul...and she wasn't as impressed as I am with the bike.
I put about 120km on it the first night of owning it and the thing runs perfectly...but there is a LOT to do on a bike...for those of you who don't ride...check this: left hand does clutch, left foot shifts up and down, right hand does throttle and front brake, right foot does rear brake. In addition, your left thumb does the horn, turn signals and high/low beams, your right thumb is responsible for engine kill, engine start and turning on/off the lights...at first it was a little overwhelming, so I just practiced on my street and did silly things like hit the clutch instead of the brake (after decades of riding mountain bikes, I'm used to the left lever being the front brake, not the clutch), but soon I got the hang of it and hit the road...at first to Samgye and back, then a little farther, and then off to Cheongyeong I went...the secondary highways are a beautifully peaceful thing in Korea at night! I even met some other riders (Korean) in Cheongyeong, who chatted me up...it was pretty cool. I stopped a few times on the way back just to admire the countryside at night and have a pop (one thing that sucks about a cruiser...zero storage unless you put on saddle bags or a tail storage unit...both are cheap, thankfully...or just wear a backpack).
All in all, I'm extremely pleased with the bike and I seem to have the basic mechanics of riding down (within 6 hours of first sitting on a motorbike, I had covered 120km and been all over the place...pretty proud of it)...however, I have to admit, I still have a bit of fear as to how vulnerable one is on a bike. I'm going to buy some used riding pants and jacket and I already have a full-face helmet, so it's a start and it was certainly a lot more safe riding on a motorbike than it was on the scooter, but I think if I save up enough money and find a good enough deal I may get a car soon and sell the bike...
That's it for now...hope your weekend was half as good as mine! :)
T
By about 1 or 2 a.m., most people had made the treacherous trek back to civilization, but 4 of us (Ryan, Allison, Conrad and I) decided to make the pagoda our home for the night and chatted for an hour or two then went to sleep.
On Sunday we woke up to this:
Not too bad at all...after cleaning up, we hiked out of the forest and parted ways. I took a quick 3-4 hour nap and headed back into town to meet up with Ryan to look at a motorbike.
When the guy pulled up I was instantly impressed then quickly disappointed. I was impressed because the bike sounded great...disappointed because I realized that whoever owned it previously went to the Sticker Store, bought up their entire stock and applied it to every square inch of this poor bike. It has stickers from all sorts of manufacturers the bike has not, does not and will not ever have parts on it from. (For one thing, the bike is a Hyosung, but it had Suzuki, Honda, Yamaha and Mitsubishi stickers on it...and that's just the bike manufacturers...the rest ranged from NOS to four different types of tire makers...close to 40 in total...yikes).
Anyhoo...the bike is a 2000 or 2001 (or thereabouts) Hyosung Mirage. I've always wanted a small-displacement cruiser and one day retrace Che's ride through South America. What I love about this bike is that, unlike most 125cc bikes, it's a 2-cylinder V-Twin, rather than the much more common single cylinder. This makes the bike much, much smoother and it sounds like a real bike and not a lawnmower.
It's a 4-stroke oil cooled engine mated to a 5 speed manual transmission...it even has a dual caliper disc brake in the front, which is a nice touch.
Now...onto the bad: cosmetically, she ain't no beauty queen. The seat is ripped, the paint is scratched here and there and there are random imperfections from pretty much nose to tail...but nothing above and beyond what one would expect of an older, basic bike.
Mechanically, on the other hand, the bike is an all-out winner. It starts on first try every single time, it runs and idles like a dream, sounds great, the transmission is tight, shifting is accurate and the brakes are top-notch. A few hours before selling the bike, the previous owner put on a brand new rear tire, brand new rear shock, new ignition lock and gas tank cap/lock, new lights (including LED turn signals), new spark plugs and a fresh oil change! After de-stickering the poor guy...here's a horrible picture of it in my carport...not bad considering I paid about as much for it as a friend of mine spent this weekend on ONE night in a fancy hotel in downtown Seoul...and she wasn't as impressed as I am with the bike.
I put about 120km on it the first night of owning it and the thing runs perfectly...but there is a LOT to do on a bike...for those of you who don't ride...check this: left hand does clutch, left foot shifts up and down, right hand does throttle and front brake, right foot does rear brake. In addition, your left thumb does the horn, turn signals and high/low beams, your right thumb is responsible for engine kill, engine start and turning on/off the lights...at first it was a little overwhelming, so I just practiced on my street and did silly things like hit the clutch instead of the brake (after decades of riding mountain bikes, I'm used to the left lever being the front brake, not the clutch), but soon I got the hang of it and hit the road...at first to Samgye and back, then a little farther, and then off to Cheongyeong I went...the secondary highways are a beautifully peaceful thing in Korea at night! I even met some other riders (Korean) in Cheongyeong, who chatted me up...it was pretty cool. I stopped a few times on the way back just to admire the countryside at night and have a pop (one thing that sucks about a cruiser...zero storage unless you put on saddle bags or a tail storage unit...both are cheap, thankfully...or just wear a backpack).
All in all, I'm extremely pleased with the bike and I seem to have the basic mechanics of riding down (within 6 hours of first sitting on a motorbike, I had covered 120km and been all over the place...pretty proud of it)...however, I have to admit, I still have a bit of fear as to how vulnerable one is on a bike. I'm going to buy some used riding pants and jacket and I already have a full-face helmet, so it's a start and it was certainly a lot more safe riding on a motorbike than it was on the scooter, but I think if I save up enough money and find a good enough deal I may get a car soon and sell the bike...
That's it for now...hope your weekend was half as good as mine! :)
T
Awww <3 you Tamas !! If I can help it, we will add more and more Koreans to our collection !! HAHA I swear I could totally not meet another person and I would be absolutely in love with our lil group of friends....but I will keep an open mind and hopefully in time, we will be speaking like the natives HAHA yeh right !! Sounds like you had a wonderful time at the lake and I of course, enjoyed my AC in my apt haha. I mean it got soooo hot this weekend, what like it had to have been at least 32 ?? HAH :oP
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