Wow...it's been way too long!

Yikes. Almost three weeks since my last post. A personal worst. I apologize. I've been busy and lazy. It won't happen again. I promise.

So...here's what's happened to me in the past 3 weeks. My back hurts. It's not killing me, but it's sort of a constant low pain. It sucks. What sucks even more is that in Korea if you don't spend a few weeks in hospital trying to play the insurance game you might as well bend over and wait for them to kick you in the butt with steel-toed boots...insurance will pretty much laugh at anything we ask for. They even tried to get me to pay 20% of the damages to my bike...even though the driver was at 100% fault. So...while the driver has been living life as usual, Rachael and I are constantly hurting and out money for medication and our bikes and we've yet to see a dime. Ugh.

In other news, I started mountainbiking again...and it feels amazing. The scenery here is pretty nice too, and the trails are VERY challenging...steep to ride up and you really have to watch yourself on the way down...Sometimes you just have to guess where the trail is:

Sometimes it's dreamy singletrack!

And sometimes you fly like Superman over your bars and overtake your bike...

It's been a while since I crashed on a trail, and I must say it was kind of nice for one reason: I got up, dusted myself off and kept riding...it's nice to know I can still fall without breaking a hip. 'Cuz I'm old.

In other biking news, I went riding the other day, then decided to kill some time by jumping on and off concrete stuff...well, I was getting too tired and screwed the landing...oops...

But I found a way to combine my passion for bikes with my passion for photography...while the wheel is off, I wanted to put a spacer between the brake pads to make sure I don't accidentally squeeze the lever...I found the perfect spacer:

In other news, I finally took the plunge and ordered a Canon S100!!! I have been looking for a replacement for my G9 for quite some time and the S95 was almost perfect, but not quite. There were a few things I wanted out of the S95 that it didn't have...wider lens, full HD video, ND filter, better high ISO performance. Well, it looks like the S100 answers all my problems. The S100 is only available in the U.S. right now and even there you have to snipe stores, as only a few of the majors ( B&H, Adorama, amazon) have it in stock for a couple of hours before they sell out and go on back order. So, I ordered one (I've owned probably over 100 cameras, and this will be only my second brand new camera!)...it's getting delivered to Rachael's awesome sister's house and Rachael is bringing it back to Korea. BAM! Big ups to those two fine ladies.

In other news...I kinda love Busan. So, I've been going there a lot more (I'm trying to make it over there at least once or twice a month). Here's something disappointing about Korean cities, though: they don't really have downtowns. You can have a massive city like Busan (5 million people) and there isn't really a definitive downtown with busy businessmen hurrying their way to a heart attack through a maze of skyscrapers. This makes me a sad panda. On the bright side, Busan does have beaches...like Gwangalli:

I also busted out my camera for the first time in nearly a month and went shooting at Kyungnam National University in Masan, one of my favourite places to bum around...kinda fun playing around with the little 50 1.8 on manual focus...

Cool little scooter...

In other news...we had a drill at school a couple of weeks ago...I wasn't sure what it was for...Fire? Earthquake? War? The kids helped me out...

Comforting haha.

Also...the year's winding down...kids are done their exams, so they're really not motivated to learn, but I still have to teach a few chapters...so I interlace teaching with hangman (their favourite game), which really helps get through the lesson..."quiz" is one of the hardest words I've managed to come up with in hangman...which requires me to draw elaborate pictures to keep the game going.

Here's something random...I HATE these things at home, but wow was it awesome to see something other than a Kia or a Hyundai on the roads...check it... Dodge Ram crew cab duallie...on the roads in Korea...I don't think a Ferrari would have stood out more than this thing rolling down the road in my neighbourhood...

In final news. I have been cleared to re-sign for another year in Korea. The final piece of the puzzle, my medical test, fell into place. Some excellent news all around...the glasses are really helping my vision, and I have the kind of blood pressure that lets people live to 145 years old...

Also, my coteacher informed me that I tested negative for AIDS and cocaine. Big sigh of relief there! I wonder if the Korean teachers have to take a test like that every year and then have it shared with the whole school (they don't)...not that I have anything to hide, but they really do treat foreigners like a bunch of filthy criminals sometimes and not even notice it.

Okay...that's it from me for now...I promise I won't go 3 weeks without updating again! Or I'll try :)

Cheerio!
T

If the drivers won't get me, my apartment will...check out the dump I live in...

The apartments in Korea are far from perfect: Most are tiny with very little storage space, buildings are piled on top of each other, so some people's view consists of the back wall of the apartment next door, and with so many people living in close proximity, noise can be an issue.

Given the warm, humid climate of Korea, mold can also be a factor, though usually a minor one treatable with regular cleaning and some good chemicals.

Well...as luck would have it, my apartment has gone absolutely crazy with mold. I had bad mold in one corner (affecting two walls) a few months ago. The landlord graciously responded by stripping off as little of the wallpaper as possible and then re-applying wallpaper to the area. Oh yeah...in my apartment, they put wallpaper directly on the bare concrete wall. Gee, I wonder why there are mold issues. Compounding the problem, no doubt, is the fact that there are mysterious water leaks throughout the building. They've been chasing these leaks for about 6 months, and have failed every time.

Despite all my efforts....generally being a clean person and regularly cleaning the place, (cleaning the bathroom religiously...that's where mold usually gets started around here), airing out the room during the day, heating it to dry it out at night, always keeping windows closed when it's raining, getting a de-humifier, etc...my apartment exploded with black mold the past couple of weeks. This morning I dragged all my furniture away from the wall and took pictures.

Along the wall where they replaced the wallpaper a few months ago...as you can tell, the worst of it is in the exact place where the problem was last time...this mold goes from wall to wall, floor to ceiling:

Up the wall...we're talking about huge patches of mold (square meters of it), not just a little here, a little there...

Along the ceiling...it spreads day by day...

Along the wall next to my bed:

Behind my headboard (can't be healthy sleeping next to that 8 hours a day)...this is about 4 feet tall...I just noticed this...it's spreading exactly where it's been patched in the past...I'm assuming while the previous tenant was living there:

Behind the headboard:

And this is really disgusting...my clothes INSIDE my dresser (never put them away wet as a precaution, in fact, I haven't worn this jacket in about 5 months) are getting moldy, as are numerous bags, etc inside drawers in cabinets...

So...today I showed the lady in administration these photos and she (as well as the rest of the office) were very concerned about the situation. They're going to try to work things out with the landlord (a waste of time, that mold is just going to come back, but I said okay, since it's proper protocol) and if it doesn't work, then they'll move me (an expensive option they're trying to avoid).

Thankfully they were so grossed out and shocked by the pictures and I'm in such good standing in my school that they're on my side and really pushing to resolve this issue ASAP...in the meantime...I'm going to try to avoid spending time at home haha...

All right, that's it out of me...have a great day, everyone!

T

I get hit by a minivan and take out Rachael in the process...

I've said this before, and I'll say it again. Drivers in Korea suck. Shoulder-checking is a pretty much unheard-of habit around here, and there's a general tendency to only watch for vehicles larger than your own, meaning that pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists are taking their lives into their hands every time they leave the house.

On Friday night, Rachael and I saddled up and set course for the big Masan/Changwon bridge...what was supposed to be a beautiful, roughly 60-km ride on a nice warm night. Well, about 6.5 km into the ride as we were just getting into the congested area of Masan, a van to my left decided to turn right. A split second before he actually hit me, I realized what was going on and tried to evade it by heading hard right, but the van ended up hitting my left leg (I had dirt from his van from my ankles up to the top of my thigh). During this I looked down and realized that his wheels were turned so sharply that they were actually attempting to climb on top of my front wheel. Thankfully he just pushed my front wheel sharply to the right (I think accounting for my injuries) and bent the brake disc, but I managed to not get fully run over by him. During this whole thing, Rachael, who was initially behind me, had nowhere to go (curb to her right, van/me to her left) and she got caught up in the melee. Rachael got the worst of it: a broken knee so far...we're waiting for CT scan results to be back to see if that's all.

Few pics...dirt on my sock from the minivan

Rachael's busted kneecap (chunk missing on top right):

My back...according to the doctor, the different shades of muscle mean that some are stretched, others compressed...I have "soft tissue damage" or a sprain...possibly more. I was fine on Friday, started to hurt a little on Saturday and started hurting a lot on Sunday (when I got the X-ray done). So far I'm looking at painkillers and physio, but (just as the doctor predicted it) it's getting slightly worse, so we'll see what happens...

Initially, for about a minute or two after the crash, the driver did nothing...sat there in his car, tinted windows (another idiotic Korean trend) up and lights on...Rachael and I were concerned that he might try to make a run for it, as many drivers here do after an accident, so I persuaded him to step out of his vehicle and deal with the situation :)

He took Rachael and our bikes to the hospital and his friend (possibly coworker?) took me to the hospital. Thankfully the doctor spoke English rather well, so we could get our point across and a huge number of our concerned friends showed up (some Korean), which meant a lot...thanks everyone!!!

The driver of the minivan was incredibly apologetic and more than a little scared and thankfully we have over a dozen witnesses (friends, nurses, doctors) who heard him admit fault both in Korean and English, which we hope will make further proceedings easier. He claimed he couldn't see us...which is a little ridiculous considering I had 8 strobing LEDs in the back and Rachael had 7. Plus, I had 5 strobing LEDs in the front and Rachael had a solid one...we weren't exactly invisible. Since then I bought some more lights/replaced the broken one...here's what the bike looks like now:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJWduZI0hhc

Rachael was admitted to the hospital and given morphine...accounting for her few hours of happiness:

I left at around 10:30 p.m. and the next day headed to the shop to replace a few things on my bike. Both discs got bent in the pile-up, one of my taillights was busted, and the grip on the side where the guy hit me was ripped. All in all, not too bad, a little under $100, pretty good considering how bad things were.

New discs...

Rachael's bike seems to have done well too, so far it's a seat and possibly a head set and maybe some paint damage from hitting my rear tire, plus whatever else we find once Rachael is out of the hospital and can give it the once-over.

The rest of the weekend was spent keeping poor Rachael company in hospital (and going to an awesome dinner party at Ross and Nicole's!!!), so not much to report other than the crash aftermath stuff.

We're supposed to talk to the guy who hit us today, but we're considering getting a lawyer...we both have injuries, damages and Rachael is missing work...and things are only getting started (the hospital runs on about quarter-steam on weekends).

So...that's our sad little story for now haha...stay tuned for updates, I'm sure there'll be more.

Stay safe, everyone!
T