A couple of weeks ago I felt like going for a short hike, so I took a train for about an hour and a half inland to the small town of Taebaek. The provincial park has a few peaks you can climb, so my plan was to climb up one of them and then take the ridge between them to a few more peaks before coming back down.
Unfortunately, the weather didn't cooperate and it started pouring about half way up the mountain. I met a few Koreans coming down, but nobody else was going up. I decided to continue anyways, in the hopes that the clouds might pass. They didn't.
At the top it was pouring and the visibility was only about 50 metres. I thought there might be a small shelter at the top so I could get out of the rain for a bit, but no luck. So I found this rock to hide under while I had a snack.
Because of the poor visibility and the constant rain, I decided to cancel the other peaks. I'll have to come back in the fall.
You can't see the rain in these pictures, but it's coming down hard, and it was cold, so the tank top didn't seem like such a good idea anymore.
Before I left for Japan back in 2005, my buddy Fudge and I spent about 5 months training for the Vancouver Marathon. Even though we trained very hard, the marathon did a number on us. We both managed to finally stumble across the finish line, but we were each in a tremendous amount of pain. We vowed then and there that we'd never, ever, run a marathon again.
Well somehow, back in December last year, I managed to convince Fudge that if I was in Vancouver at the beginning of May this year, we'd run the Half-Marathon together.
As May approached, it looked like I was going to be in South Korea for the marathon, so Fudge was not too consistent in his training.
Well I ended up with more time in Vancouver than expected, which was bad news for Fudge. I spent the last 3 weeks before the Half-Marathon training him like a dog, and he loved every minute of it (although he might disagree.) We went biking, rollerblading and did a ridiculous amount of running. Again, we both stumbled across the finish line in a lot of pain, but it was nothing compared to when we did the Full. However, after we finished this time, he told me he's never running with me again. We'll see.
Okay, admittedly I'm using the word "stalked" a bit loosely, but if I end up disappearing into some cult, sitting around a campfire singing "Kumbaya," never to be seen again, at least this leaves a trail.
I came home from the beach this evening, and found this "Awake" magazine stuffed into my door. It's only in English and there was no Korean version. I am definitely the only non-Korean in the area, and there weren't any in the other doors. There is also a phone number written on the cover, with a Korean's name written beside it (in English). This is the second time I've had English-only Jehovah propaganda in my door. And although I know that this is not really stalking, it does mean that there's a Korean somewhere nearby who has made converting me to the dark side their mission. All I can say is, "Good luck."
A couple of weeks ago I felt like going for a short hike, so I took a train for about an hour and a half inland to the small town of Taebaek. The provincial park has a few peaks you can climb, so my plan was to climb up one of them and then take the ridge between them to a few more peaks before coming back down.
