Ruminations in Korea

Four months ago we planned to ride to Jeonju, but it got rained out by a very serious storm. Two months ago, we planned to ride to Jeonju, but it got rained out by the Summer monsoon rains. This month, we planned to ride to Jeonju, and woke to overcast skies.

Pony and I rode down from Seoul to Pusan the previous weekend after the Chuseok holiday. We made record time going door to door in 7.5 hours. I went back to work, and Pony took a vacation for a week in Pusan.

The Pusan contingent intended to leave around 10:00 am on Saturday morning and arrive in Jeonju around mid-afternoon. The Seoul contingent planned to leave Seoul around 8:00pm Saturday and arrive in Jeonju around 1:00 am Sunday morning. As the lines from the Robert Burns poem go,”the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”

Pony and I met up at Amby’s restaurant across from Pusan Station around 9:30 am to enjoy a delicious classic egg breakfast before hitting the road.

Although the weather reports had between 60% and 100% chance of rain, we were optimistic that the weather would hold. The weather held…for about 10 minutes. While eating breakfast, the rain started falling.

We ate our breakfast and, as we were not pressed for time, we decided to wait a while to see if it stopped raining before we hit the road. After about an hour, the rain stopped and we were able to take off.

We headed Westward out of Pusan on highway 2 through Jinhae and into Masan, where we turned at the 5-point intersection just inside the city and rode past the Homever store on the right and Masan Stadium on the left and continue on to highway 5. Unfortunately, there is nothing that can be done about that 1.5 hour stretch of road from downtown Pusan through Masan and up Highway 5 toward Changryeong. It is the fastest, most direct, and one of the very few ways out ofthe city.

We stopped at the Homever store to pick up some extra bungee cord to secure Pony’s bag. While there, our eyes caught a rack of inexpensive, clip-on drink holders. Figuring that it may be amusing to see if we could install beverage holders on our bikes in order to cut down rest stops by drinking on the fly, we picked a couple of them up.

Outside again, we bungeed Pony’s bags more securely, hooked up our drink holders and roared of into the early afternoon cloubs. As an aside, I think that the drink holder is an amazing piece of equipment for long-distance riding and will use it regularly. Pony, on the other hand, doesn’t like it and took his off even before reaching Jeonju.

We continued on highway 5 to Changryeong, where we turned onto highway 24 and headed West again until we arrived at the small town of Hapcheon.

There is a little convenience store and gas station just across the bridge into town that makes a convenient rest stop. After fueling up, stretching the legs, and grabbing a quick snack, it was time to mount up again. As another aside, if possible, use another gas station for fueling up in Hapcheon, because the woman at the convenience store / gas station is perhaps the worst gas pumper in the known universe. I have filled up there three times, and each time has resulted in gas overflowing all over my tank and flowing onto my blazing hot engine, which the woman apparently finds laugh-worthy.

We got back on our bikes and continued on highway 24 (which merges with highway 26 a short distance outside of Hapcheon). We rode the incredibly scenic route along the gorge above Hapcheon lake into Geochang.

The skies had withheld their life-giving moisture up to this point, the but skies were darkening further. We kept on highway 26, making as much time as we could through Anui, into Jangye, and continuing northwest toward Jinan.

Outside Jinan, we passed a large run down Catholic church out in the middle of nowhere. It appears broken and dilapidated, but there were some windows open. I’m not sure whether or not the church is still in use.

A little bit of online research showed that it was built in 1966 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the martyrdom of a Korean Catholic who refused to deny his faith. He was later sainted.

As we arrived in Jinan, the rain started to fall. We made a dash to the closest gas station where we sought shelter. We had almost made it to Jeonju. If the rain had held for another 20 minutes, we would have made it nice and dry.

We stayed at the gas station for about 90 minutes before the rain had stopped and the roads were dry enough to travel. The last dash for Jeonju was cut short after about 3 kilometers as the rain started again, forcing us under an overpass for shelther.

Mercifully, the rain stopped and we were able to get back out on the road after about 20 minutes. Although the roads were still a little wet,the fog and mist rolled in from the mountains. However, the sun was beginning to show through the clouds.

We passed, quite literally, over the bosom of the mountains and into the valley where Jeonju sits.

Pony was happy to be in Jeonju where he had lived and worked before. Following his lead, we rode through town toward Jeonbuk University. We found some excellent rooms in a love motel for 50,000 won (about $50). We managed to talk the owners down from 60,000 won a night.

After showering, we climbed aboard the bikes and headed back up the road to the university. We found a great restaurant that served spicy chicken stir fry.

After dinner, it was getting close to the time when the Seoul group was supposed to be leaving for their ride to Jeonju. Heretic was supposed to ride down with Achilles, but Achilles was still drinking from the day before and was in no condition to make the ride. As it was dark, still threatening rain, and as Heretic would have had to make the ride alone, we decided to err on the side of caution by telling Heretic that it simply wasn’t worth risking his life to come down alone. We told him to sit this one out.

Pony and I spent the rest of the evening hanging around and enjoying the quiet nightlife that Jeonju has to offer. Pony seemed to enjoy himself back in his old stomping grounds.

I had to get back to Pusan early on Sunday morning, so I woke up early and made a dash to Pusan. I arrived safely home 4.5 hours after leaving the hotel.

Pony, on the other hand, was a little slower waking up. He stayed all day in Jeonju, visiting some of the places he used to work and roam before making the 3 1/2 trip to from Jeonju to Seoul.

20 September 2008 - Jeonju Run

For more pictures of the ride to Jeonju, click here.

I had a very nice ride from Pusan to Donghae with my Club (Rotten Dead MC) and some new friends last weekend.  The trip is about 7 hours one way from Pusan at a leisurely pace.  The first day and a half of the ride were great.  It was the last couple of hours that sucked.

As we were coming back from Donghae along Highway 7, we were only a few kilometers north of Pohang when my bike suddenly died. It just died. It stopped working.  The engine would turn over, but it wouldn’t start.  Nothing I could do on site could change that.

I had to call my bike shop and have them drive two hours to come and pick me up and bring me back to Pusan.  As it was beginning to rain a little, I sent the other guys on home ahead of me.  No sense in getting everyone else miserable and wet.

I eventually got back to Pusan at around midnight on Sunday night.  They began working on my bike first thing Monday morning.

If your motorcycle ever looks like this, chances are that there are big, BIG problems. This is the guts of my bike as people desperately try to get to the bottom of the problems.

They folks at the shop searched for the problem for three days.  They checked everything including oil, bad gas, fuel injection sensor, the entire electrical system, the heads, the valves, the cylinders, and just about everything else they could think of, but nothing seemed to be wrong.  So, half out of desparation and half out of nothing else to look at, they opened the cam cover.  That’s when they noticed a problem.

A healthy cam will have two dots in perfect alignment, on the gear and one on the shaft. Look at this cam here. Nice and pretty, with those dots so nicely aligned. Couldn’t be prettier.

On the other hand, a cam should never, EVER look like this. Notice the two dots out of alignment and about 90 degrees apart.

This should so never happen that I had no idea that it was even possible to look like this.  I thought the gear and the shaft were a single piece of steel.  Not only have I never heard of this happening, I have never heard of anyone who has heard of this happening.  Even the Harley-Davidson Korea parts manager did not believe that this could happen.

This little 90 degree turn is bad.  It does bad things to to your cam chain operation, which does bad things to the pressure in the cylinders, which does bad things to valves, which does bad things to cylinders, which does bad things to heat sensors, which causes a LOT of money to be spent fixing the aforementioned problems.

The guys at the shop re-aligned the gear and shaft and immobilized them with a pin so that they can never again rotate like that.  They spent the next two days putting my bike back together.

I got my bike back late Friday night, with a bill for a fixed cam, replaced heat sensor, oil change, all new fluids, a new tank of gas, pickup costs, and labor for five full days. The total bill was KRW 1,100,000 (approximately USD 1,000).

I rode home, parked it and began packing for another ride tomorrow.

Epilogue:  I think the Donghae ride is cursed.  Almost one year ago to the day, we were riding back from Donghae when my belt drive snapped, leaving my bike dead and me stranded…Belts are not SUPPOSED to break.  It is extremely difficult to break a drive belt.  The belt snapped only a few kilometers from where my cam gave out this year.  We had to wait for the truck in the dark and rain.  The circumstances were so similar that I have cancelled the Donghae rides forever and ever.  I’m never riding there again.