Ruminations in Korea

Recently, I was standing in my doorway getting ready to go out for a ride. I looked in the mirror and saw that I had on my Harley-Davidson boots, Harley-Davidson shirt, Harley-Davidson jacket, Harley-Davidson fanny pack (with my Harley-Davidson handkerchief and Harley-Davidson wallet inside), Harley-Davidson bandanna, Harley-Davidson gloves, and Harley-Davidson helmet.

I was horrified. I had become “Harley Guy,” the type of guy that has Harley-Davidson stamped on everything he owns or wears. I hate that guy, but I had become him, the corporate sellout. I was rather disgusted with myself.

I immediately went inside the house and threw my Harley-Davidson jacket into the garbage can. Never wanted to see it again.

I started an internet search for leather motorcycle jackets. The name Fox Creek Leather kept coming up. I finally visited their site and thought that they had some beautiful products. Reading through their site, I was impressed by the thickness of their leather and the alleged care with which they are constructed.

I was very interested in purchasing one of their jackets, but was hesitant to buy anything because I would be buying it sight unseen via the internet from some place 8,000 miles away. So, I scoured the internet for personal reviews or comments on Fox Creek Leather Jackets. I visited many sites and many sources, but was unable to locate any negative comments or reviews. Not a single one.

I broke down and gave them a call. They went over specific measurements and eventually convinced me to get one size bigger than I thought I should. I bought the Classic Motorcycle Jacket II. I also bought a pair of braided chaps and some deerskin gauntlets.

The arrived in Pusan, Korea from Virginia, USA in 5 days.

As many reviews had said, the leather was very thick and weighed a ton, but was very soft. Everything fit absolutely perfectly. although it is still a bit warm here in Korea, the vents on the jacket made it very comfortable to wear.

Well. Just a few days after getting the jacket and other leather gear, I was wearing my new jacket and gloves and I slid on something, missed a corner, and slammed into a concrete telephone pole. I broke my leg and was launched off my bike. I tumbled along the ground for about 30 feet.

The leather jacket quite possible saved my life and definitely saved me from serious blood loss and significant upper-body injuries. I had one minor scrape on my right forearm, which I believe was just a bit of road burn caused by the inside zipper lining on the right sleeve. There was absolutely NO damage to the jacket. There was a bit of dust on the right sleeve and right side of the jacket, but I dusted that off in the emergency room. There is not a single scratch on that leather jacket.

Having had the opportunity to go through the ordering process, the wearing of the jacket, and the evaluation of the jacket as a protective item in the space of about two weeks, I can, without the slightest hesitation, recommend Fox Creek Leather to anyone who is looking to buy thick, heavy, beautiful, expertly crafted leather motorcycle clothing. Those people know what they are doing. They know exactly what a biker is looking for in a jacket. Their product saved me from significant pain, blood loss, and possibly death. I cannot recommend them enough.

I talk a bit more about it here:

As some of you may know. I am in the hospital. I will be in the hospital for quite a while. Here’s the story.

Saturday morning, I was riding my bike to work. At approximately 9:50 am, I was coming around a curve in the road. (Keep in mind that what follows happened in the space of about one second) For some reason, perhaps sand or gravel on the road, my back tire lost it’s grip on the road and I began to slide toward the side of the road. I saw that I was sliding toward a telephone pole. My plan was to dump the bike and let it go its way while I went mine. However, just as I started to let go of the handle bars and abandon the bike, my rear tire caught its grip on the road and high-sided me (stood my bike up) right into the concrete telephone pole.

The exact spot of the accident can be seen at 3:35 on this video (where, ironically, I am talking about the inability of harleys to corner very deeply). I hit the telephone pole that is just to the right of the center of the screen at the 3:35 mark.

As I hit the pole, I ducked my head and was looking at my gas tank and leg as my leg got sandwiched between the tank and the pole. I saw my leg break and flop around as I went spinning off the bike. I rolled about 10 meters further up the street, with my bike tumbling close behind me.

I came to a rest on my left side. My right glove was off (I still don’t know how or why) and I was bleeding slightly from my middle knuckle. My right leg was numb and bent inward at the thigh at a particularly odd angle. The toes on my right foot hurt. I was staring at my bike…and the bits and pieces of it laying around the road.

I yelled at the top of my voice. Not so much out of pain as out of helplessness and the need to get to a hospital. I yelled for help. No one responded for several long seconds, during which I saw several cars drive past me. I did see one person in a truck looking at me and talking on their mobile phone. I could feel people standing and looking at me from the bus stop behind me.

I yelled again for someone to help me and for someone to call 119, the emergency services number. I would guess that I laid there a full minute before someone actually came to me. It was some old woman telling me that 119 had been called and were coming. A few seconds later, two Mormon Church missionaries came and started to talk to me. They said that they had heard the accident from their apartment and had run down to help. They helped me get my helmet off and to get my bike off the road.

The police arrived a couple of minutes later. They were asking my name, what happened, was I OK, things like that. They asked what I planned to do with the motorcycle and whether someone would come to pick it up. I thought that was a stupid question to ask at that point in time and I told them so. They started to lecture me about how I just couldn’t leave it there on the side of the road. To shut them up, I told them that I would have someone come and pick it up AFTER I got to the hospital.

While waiting for the ambulance to get there, I made a few phone calls on my mobile phone to let people know what happened.

The ambulance arrived about 15 minutes after the accident. Several guys rolled me over onto the gurney and wheeled me over to the ambulance van. After stuffing me inside, they asked what hospital I wanted to go to. I told them I didn’t care and that they should just get me to a good, close one. They said that I had to decide, so I told them to take me to one of the bigger hospitals near the accident site.

After a bumpy ride with lots of corners, we arrived at the hospital. They wheeled me in to the emergency room where I waited for an hour or so. Eventually, they took me for some x-rays. In the x-ray room, they cut my pants off and had to remove my boots. As they pulled the boot off of my swollen right foot, my toes felt really bad. I could feel the blood sticking my socks to my toes and to the top of my boot. Eventually, they got the boot off and everyone in the room had very unpleasant looks on their faces as they looked at my toes. I asked what was going on? One of the missionaries that had come with me said, “Dude, your toes are shredded.” There was too much blood for them to say more than that. I had to move on and off the x-ray table to take the x-rays. That was unpleasant.

The doctor decided that I would have to have surgery to repair my leg. He explained that usually, they would usually delay surgery for a couple to put me in traction and stretch out the leg before going in to work on the bone. However, because the damage to my toes required immediate surgery, they would do my leg surgery at that time. They scheduled surgery for 2:00 pm that day.

As I awaited surgery, my Harley Davidson repairman friend came from Changwon (about an hour from me) to pick up the bike and take it back to his shop for repairs.

At the scheduled time, I went into surgery. Just as they gassed me into unconsciousness, I heard the doctors grumbling about how difficult it was going to be to operate on my leg.

I woke up in my darkened room around 8:00 pm. I was told that the surgery had taken about three hours. The doctor told me that everything went well, but it had taken four large nurses to pull my leg far enough and straight enough to set it properly. The doctor told me that everything was clean and should heal very nicely. When asked about my toes, he told me that there has been some damage to the bottom of the second toe on my right foot and extensive damage to the third toe. He explained that they cut off “the end” of my third toe (i’m still not sure what that mean… it just looks like a bandaged mess right now) and used the skin to repair my second toe.

They told me to sleep and they would talk more in the morning. I quickly complied.

After waking up Sunday morning, I noticed that I had a urinary catheter tube, which was extremely uncomfortable…and EXTREMELY painful when in came out Tuesday afternoon.

My brother came down from Seoul to help me out for a couple of weeks.

The doctor came in Sunday afternoon to explain the situation. He showed me the x-ray. It was NOT a clean break. My thigh bone had shattered into several pieces and they had spent a lot of time picking bone fragments out of my thigh muscles. They installed a titanium rod running from my hip to my knee and secured it to the bone with eleven large screws. The also used a steel band around the bone to hold all of the bone fragments in place.

He explained that I could probably use crutches after one week. I would have to stay in the hospital for three to four weeks. It would be at least five weeks before I could put any weight on my leg. I would use a walker for three to four weeks. The splint would stay on for about 8 weeks. And I would be able to walk freely after about three months. Motorcycle riding would take about four months.

As for the bike… I don’t have all of the details yet. But the latest repair quote was about $6,700.

We’ve all see them. The little white right angles painted all over the streets. Some intersections are full of them. These lines identify the locations of accidents.

I remember when I bought my first car in Korea. My insurance agent brought me the proof of insurance, some information, and a free gift. The gift was a small can of paint. The paint was to keep in the car in case it was needed to mark the location of an accident. Korea has one of the highest car accident ratios of any country in the world.

According to a Harvard University paper written by two Koreans, traffic-related injures are the 4th leading cause of death in Korea, after cancer, stroke, and heart disease (I thought kimchi and green tea were supposed to prevent all of those). When broken down, as of the year 2000, traffic accidents were the number one cause of death among people aged 0 - 29, the number two cause of death to people in their 30s, and the third leading cause of death for people in their 40s. In the year 2000, there were 10,236 traffic-related deaths and 426,984 traffic-related injury. Assuming a population of 40,000,000 people, this breaks down to 1 out of every 93 people was injured in a traffic accident in the year 2000. Broken down even futher, that means that someone is injured in a car accident approximately every 70 seconds.

Traffic accident happen a lot. When people get in car accident, after the shouting and/or shoving has stopped, the drivers will break out their little cans of paint and mark off the position of each corner of the car on the road, the direction the car was traveling and sometimes the license plate numbers of the cars. Then, the will move the cars off the road to allow traffic to continue to flow.

Occasionally, you will see a stick figure of a person or the outline of a body, which usually means that is where the dead body was laying after the accident.

In the following video, I talk about the outlines, I almost get hit by a car that ran a red light, and I find the outlines of a fatal scooter accident.

My brother, Adam, just sent me a message on MSN. Apparently, he was looking for the Chinese characters for 광고 (”advertising”) He plugged 광고 into the Korean Naver online encyclopedia. The results were surprising to say the least.

Apparently THIS is the only example of “advertising” that the unbelievably racist ignorant idiots at Naver could find to put on their site:

Wow…..

I live on Youngdo Island in Pusan Harbor. It’s connected to mainland Pusan by two bridges. One of the bridges is conveniently located across the street from my office.

Inspired by YouTube videographer Mordeth13, I decided to record a part of one of the roads I can take to get off the island. The road runs along the top of the cliffs on the south side of the island overlooking the outer ship anchorage.

I’m still messing around with video quality so it’s not that good. Also, my motorcycle is so loud that it overloads the microphone on the camera, as does the wind when I turn my head. I’m working on these things. I expect things to improve soon.

I go everywhere and do everything on my montorcycle.  I commute by bike. 

I usually wear motorcycle boots or, at least, Dr. Marten boots.  However, given the nature of my work, it’s not always possible for me to wear boots to work.  I didn’t wear boots to work the other day.  Unfortunately, that decision resulted in the loss of blood.

Boots are an important, but often overlooked part of motorcycle safety gear. 

I don’t know why bikers choose not to wear boots.  Too bulky?  Too burdensome? Boots don’t provide much protection? There may be some truth to these points.  However, regardless of the validity of those concerns, boots to prevent muffler burns and cuts, scratches, and scrapes to the foot and lower leg.

Case on point:  I hopped on my bike and rode to lunch.  On the way back to the office, I found myself in a situation where I had to move a bit to the right, toward the edge of the road to avoid a pedestrian.  As bad luck and fate would have it, there was a bicycle leaning up against a hedge at the side of the road at exactly that spot.  Because the bicycle was propped against  the hedge, it was partially obscured by the hedge.

I moved to the right to pass between the pedestrian and the hedge.  As I did so, the bicycle pedal hit my bike’s engine guard then something, presumably the pedal, slammed into the top of my foot.  The bicycle hit a few millimeters above where the tongue of my shoe ends and my sock begins.

It felt like someone dropped a very large rock onto my foot and ankle.  After the first wave of  immediate, searing pain passed, I felt the warm stickiness of blood start to soak my sock.

I rode the remaining few minutes back to the office and checked for damage to my bike. There was no damage.  I then limped up to my office and check the damage to me.  There was  deep cut on the top of my foot and my ankle was terribly swollen.  A little ice and a lot of direct pressure stopped the blood.

Twelve hours later, the cut foot and very swollen ankle looked like this:

Had I been wearing boots, my ankle would still be swollen, but I wouldn’t have lost blood.  Boots:  You need them when you need them.

The defining moment of my parents’ generation was the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Everyone seems to know exactly where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news that JFK had been killed. That always amazed me. How big would an event have to be in order for literally everyone in the United States and a very large portion of the rest of the world to remember exactly what was going on at the moment it happened? I had speculated many times as to what the defining moment of my generation would be.

Was it the murder of John Lennon in late 1980? No. That was still an event in my parents’ generation. I was only 11. I know who he was, but it wasn’t a defining moment in my life.

Was it the shooting of President Reagan in the Spring of 1981? I was in my sixth grade classroom when they made the announcement over the Providence Elementary School PA system and wheeled the television in to show the news reports. It was a big event, but the President lived and was joking about his shooting only moments after it happened.

Was it the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in January of 1986? That was a significant event in my life. I remember televisions being wheeled into my high school cafeteria during lunch hour and showing news reports of the shuttle disaster a couple of hours after it happened. Although it was a significant event at the time, the overall shock and impact of that event did not seem to be a “defining moment of a generation.”

Was it the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City on the morning of 19 April 1995? I was in my car driving the 10 minutes it took to get from my house to the law school. During the 8:00 am news, they had said that they had just received word that there had been an explosion at the federal building in Oklahoma City. I didn’t think much of it until I got home a few hours later and saw the television reports. Eventually, the final count was 168 men, women, and children dead. I thought that this incident had a very good possibility of being the big event to define a generation…a terrorist attack on US soil by a US citizen resulting in massive loss of life.

Little did I or anyone else know that in just six and a half years later, there would be an event of such catastrophic proportions that the Oklahoma City bombing would become a footnote in history to most and forgotten by many.

On the night of September 11, 2001 (Korea time) I was at the house of my friend, Trent Thornock. We were talking and have a generally good time. It was getting a bit late, so I decided to head for home so I could get up for work the next morning. As usual, I was listening to the Armed Forces Network on the radio. The problem with AFN in Pusan is that the AM radio signal from the Camp Hialeah in the heart of Pusan was so weak that was always fading in and out in the daytime and at night it was often impossible to pick up.

The AFN reception on the night of September 11 2001 was very spotty. I was about five minutes away from Trent’s house when I was finally able to pick up a weak AFN signal. Expecting to hear their regular evening programming, I was surprised that there was a news cast on the air. Due to the poor reception, I couldn’t quite make out the details of the story. I heard something about the Pentagon, a fire or bomb, evacuations.

I picked up my cell phone and called Trent and asked if he was watching TV. He said that he wasn’t. I told him what I had heard and asked him to tell me what was on CNN. As I am waiting for him to do that I hear on the radio that all US air traffic has been ordered to land as soon as possible. I was still trying to make sense of what was going on.

Trent came back on the line and he said, “Everything is on fire.” Just as I was asking, “what,” the radio signal cleared and I heard the CNN radio announcer say that the South Tower had collapsed. Trent breathed an expletive. He explained that the South Tower of the World Trade Center had just collapsed.

Trent spent the next few minutes piecing the story together and relaying it to me. Two planes had crashed into the towers. One had crashed into the pentagon. A fourth plane was reportedly head toward the White House and fighters were in the air to protect the white house. I told Trent I was heading home to watch the news myself.

I switched over to Korean radio to hear what they were saying. Most were broadcasting the CNN feed with sound and giving a simultaneous translation over the CNN audio. It was easier to hear than the AFN broadcast.

I listened as all flights were ordered to land at the nearest airport and that any flights not landing immediately would be considered hostile and, if necessary, shot down. The next several minutes were fulled with confusion as unconfirmed report after unconfirmed report of collapses and highjackings and bombs hit the airwaves. Suddenly, CNN reported that the South Tower had collapsed. The World Trade Center towers no longer existed.

I was utterly stunned. I had no idea how to react or what to do. The only thing I could think to do was to call my friend Jeff, who grew up in the Bronx and ask if he knew. I called him. He was in a bar on Texas Street having a drink. I asked if he had heard the news. He said what news. I told him that he needed to get to a television immediately because America was under attack and the twin towers had just collapsed. Of course he didn’t believe me. I told him to just shut up and go to a TV.

I got home and was awed by the video images being shown over and over and over again and the complete confusion as to what was going on.

Shortly thereafter, word came that a Korean Air passenger plane from Seoul to New York had been hijacked and that fighters had been scrambled to check it out and, if necessary to blow it out of the sky. Thankfully, it turned out that, for some reason, the pilot had mistakenly broadcast a hijacking code.

I well never forget where I was or what I was doing on that day. I will never forget what was done to my country and it’s citizens.

Last night as I was riding through town and trying various options for making videos, I very nearly filmed my own death.

The most common motorcycle accident is someone turning left, legally or illegally, across the path of the motorcycle. That is exactly what happened to me last night.

Here are a few screen captures from my video:

I was moving along at a pretty fast speed when suddenly a car began making an illegal U-turn directly in front of me. Notice he is starting to cross the center lineonly a few yards in front of me.

As he continues to intrude into my line, I react by moving right as quickly as possible.

He paused just long enough for me to manage to move far enough to the right to scream past him as he continued to make his illegal turn.

This guy definitely would have gotten a golf ball in his windshield if I had not left it in my office.

Korean Near Death Experience
Last night I was hanging out at my usual restaurant on Texas Street, sitting in my usual spot at the usual outdoor table, eating one of my usual meals…fried sausage, salad, and water. My bike was parked in its usual location about 5 meters behind me.
I was sitting there minding my own business, doing my own thing when something very unusual happened. For some reason my spider sense activated and I just happened to glance over at my bike. I am used to people stopping and staring at my bike. So, I initially didn’t think too much about the 40-something guy standing behind my bike and staring at it. I understand. My bike is very nice. I like to stare at it too.

Then I noticed that the guy had put a black plastic bag full of something on my rear fender, not the seat, but actually on the fender…on my paint. Fully intending to give the guy, who was about a foot shorter than me and maybe half my weight, a very serious tongue lashing about being so incredibly stupid as to touch my bike, I turned my body to stand up and walk over to him.

I was mometarily stunned by what I saw next. It suddenly registered in my mind that this druken, obviously suicidal, idiot had undone his belt, unzipped his pants, and was in the process of preparing to urinate on the rear tire of my Harley-Davidson like a common feral dog.

After my initial shock and horror, I lept up from my chair, charged the few steps to my bike, grabbed the moron by his shoulders and shoved him halfway across the narrow street before he could egest his amber fluid onto my bike. His body was followed across the street very quickly by the bag of what turned out to be some sort of weedy-looking green vegetable that I snatched off the back of my bike and hurled at him.

His drunkenness mitigated the situation and probably saved him from grievous bodily harm. Had he been sober and coherent, it would likley have gone much worse for him.

After standing motionless in the middle of the street and holding up traffic for a few minutes, he eventually set his body in motion and staggered over toward me again and demanded that I compensate him for the weeds I chucked at him. I told him that he was lucky to be alive and had best leave before he really got hurt. He stopped bothering me and started bothering other people,including the waitresses. The burly Norwegian owner of the restaurant came out, smacked him around a few times and shoved him off down the road.

Unfortunately, I don’t think any lessons were learned by the drunken Korean man, as I am sure that he was too drunk to remember his near death experience.

Other Biker Bits

The wash/rain phenomenon of cars is also applicable to motorcycle apparently. Ever since early this past Spring, every time I have washed my bike, it has rained within two days.

On a related note, I sometimes get asked what my favorite/best/most useful piece of biker paraphernalia is. My answer used to vary according to my mood or whim of the day. However, ever since I bought this particular item earlier this Spring, my answer has always been the same…my rain gear.

When I was younger, in my late teens and early 20s, I used to love riding my bike in the rain and getting absolutely soaked. Nothing was more fun that that. I once made a good friend while riding in a downpour. I was roaring up I-15 from Salt Lake City to Logan, Utah after an afternoon of fun, when suddenly the skies opened and it started raining so hard that visibility dropped to a few hundred feet. It was awesome riding in that rain storm. It stopped being awesome the moment the cherry-sized hail started. Being on a bike in a big hail storm is never fun.

Maybe it’s a sign of aging, but while riding in the rain is still enjoyable, getting wet while riding isn’t fun anymore. I had to make a run to Taegu on particuarly day this past April for a scheduled 6-hour maintenance checkup on my bike. I had no rain gear at the time, just my trusty leather jacket, jeans, boots, gloves and helmet. That was all I had ever needed before.

I was soaked before I left my parking lot. It poured rain the entire three hour ride to the Harley shop in Taegu. It stopped raining within minutes of my arrival at the shop. I sat, totally wet for six hours while they checked my bike and pronounced he healthy. It began raining literally the minute I paid my bill and began putting my helmet on. I slid on my wet boots, and my wet jacket and rode three hours back to Pusan in the pouring rain.

Somewhere along the way, I decided that I was really sick and tired of being wet, and that rain gear was going to be ordered the minute I got home. And so it was.

Tonight, as I rode around town in the rain after work doing a few errands I had time to reflect again on how enjoyable it is to ride in the rain, and how much more enjoyable it is to ride in the rain and be dry. I reveled in the feeling of arriving home, taking off my helmet, taking off my gloves, taking off my rain coat, taking off my rain pants, taking off my rain boots and being warm and totally, stone dry.

Recently, I have been getting a number of hits from google and other search engines from people searching for “korean guitarist,” “Impressive Korean Guitarist”, and similar terms.

I think they are searching for Jeong-Hyun Lim, a Korean guitarist who was written up in the New York Times. I first became aware of him in an article on Marmot’s Hole posted by R. Elgin.

It seems that Lim has become an internet sensation because of this video of him playing a rock arrangement of Pachelbel’s Canon:

As a guitarist, I offer my assessment of him: Not a bad kid. He has memorized a difficult piece. However, to me, his playing is robotic and emotionless, very much like Yingwie Malmsteen. As a guitar-playing, robotic parrot, he’s good. As an emotive musician with a wide range of dynamics and feeling, he’s not very good.

There are better Korean guitarists out there. People coming to my site end up at an earlier post I wrote about a very good, impressive Korean guitarist named Zack Kim, who is also self taught.

Here’s Zack playing the same piece, at its intended speed and with much more feeling….oh yeah. Before I forget, he is playing it on two guitars at the same time.

Watch Zack play Mozart’s Piano Sonata in C major here…on two guitars at the same time.