Ruminations in Korea

From an awesome headline: “South Korean internet geeks trigger panic over US ‘tainted beef’ imports”

To a great opening paragraph:

Tens of thousands of young internet-obsessed South Koreans, whipped into a frenzy by alarmist television programmes, a complex scientific paper on genetics and a hyperactive online rumour-mill, have held candlelit vigils protesting against imports of American beef.

To one of the best news quotes I have ever read:

. “I just want to live and fulfill my career dreams, not die mad like an American cow,”

The following article from the Times Online is a great summation of all of the idiocy surrounding the korean anti-US beef imort firestorm”.

Tens of thousands of young internet-obsessed South Koreans, whipped into a frenzy by alarmist television programmes, a complex scientific paper on genetics and a hyperactive online rumour-mill, have held candlelit vigils protesting against imports of American beef.

Believing that the meat carries a high risk of BSE and that Koreans are genetically predisposed to contracting the linked Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the online masses have taken to the streets, cursing America and demanding that their Government should act to avert catastrophe.

Two features of the protests have caught the authorities, the Government and teachers offguard.

The first is that, unlike the mobs that have contributed to South Korea’s long history of street rallies, more than half of the demonstrators are below university age.
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Some teachers approve of the rallies, others condemn them, but all agree that their students are spending too much time in cyberspace.

The second is the virulence of the xenophobia on and offline: despite sweeping to power on a more foreigner-friendly ticket, Lee Myung Bak, South Korea’s new President, leads a country with substantial anti-American feeling.

Behind the fury and panic is the decision made last month by Mr Lee to allow US-produced beef back into the country after a five-year hiatus.

South Korea, with other Asian nations, suspended imports in 2003 after cattle in the US were found to have BSE: the protesters are convinced that the ban has been lifted too soon and with too many concessions to Washington.

On the many new BSE-related websites that have sprung-up in the last week, the language is little short of hysterical. Pseudo-science, anti-Americanism and teenage angst have produced a staggering volume of web traffic.

“Are we fated to die so young?” wailed a typical post. “I just want to live and fulfill my career dreams, not die mad like an American cow,” wrote another.

Over the past couple of days, virtually every teenager in Seoul has received the same text message on mobile phones, “Schools closed next Thursday”.

The information is bogus, but authorities are steeling themselves for street demonstrations on the grandest scale. By the weekend the protesters’ numbers are expected to rise tenfold.

The BSE scare has already made its practical effects felt. After a two month honeymoon period in power, Mr Lee has approval ratings below 30 per cent.

The healing process continues. I’m off of crutches and using a cane. My thigh bone is very nearly completely healed. Now I am working on rebuilding the muscles in my right leg. Due to four months of not using any muscles, my right leg is mush. But the muscle is coming back fairly quickly. At my last visit, the doctor hinted that I might be able to get rid of the cane after about two weeks.

Now that the the major physical worries are over, I have some time to reflect a bit on the injuries.

After I slammed into the concrete pole on 23 September 2006 and rolled along the ground for a bit, my right thigh bone looked like this:

The fact that my femur broke into four large pieces and several smaller chunks most likely saved me from a compound fracture with bones jamming through my skin, major soft tissue damage, and blood pouring everywhere.

Surgery several hours after the accident fixed the break. The doctors but in a titanium plate and 11 screws. Apparently a drill bit broke off during the surgery, which I didn’t know about until months later. The post surgery leg looked like this on 23 September 2006 (the staples running up the side of my leg are visible):

I was discharged from the hospital five weeks later. Seven days after being released from the hospital, I went for x-rays and a check up on 4 November 2006. I took the x-rays, but the doctor was not available on that day to review the x-rays. What no one knew was that the titanium plate in my leg had cracked:

Note the few stray bone fragments. They are buried deep in my muscle tissue and will remain there forever.

The next morning, 5 November 2006, I woke up, and when I moved my right leg, my thigh bowed up like an upside down “U”. I didn’t know why it did that. It didn’t hurt, so I rationalized that it was something do to with the muscle.

The next morning, 6 November 2006, my leg was not any better. I went to the hospital to find out what was wrong. The doctor looked at X-ray taken two days earlier and exclaimed “Oh shit!” He told me the plate had broken and that my bone had re-broken. He immediately re-admitted me to the hospital and sent me down for more x-rays. My leg looked like this:

From another angle:

Well…that explained why my thigh was shaped like an upside down “U” when I moved it.

I underwent my second surgery to remove the broken plate, saw about 1cm off my thigh bone to make the ends flat, screw on a new, lager, wider, thicker plate, and to graft some bone from my thigh onto my leg. After surgery on 7 November 2006, the new plate looks like this (The broken drill bit can be seen in this picture):

I was released from the hospital on 23 December 2006 with little fanfare. Just a quick goodbye to the nurses on duty and an admonition from the doctor to be very careful and to keep stretching my leg. I went home and promptly fell asleep for 17 hours.

By the time I left the hospital I was able to bend my knee 120 degrees by force and about 110 degrees without force. It was difficult to put much weight on my broken leg. Physically I was very weak.

I quickly learned that it is much easier being in the hospital than it is to be out in the real world. In the hospital, the sofa is one step away from the bed, the TV is on the wall at the end of the bed, the refrigerator is next to the couch, and the toilet is only four steps from the bed. or two steps from the sofa. However, at home, everything is in a different room, the bed, tv, fridge, bathroom, and water cooler are all in different rooms at opposite corners of the house. Also, while the hospital is empty and free of obstacles, walking around the house requires navigating around the bed, running machine, computer, bookshelves, tables, the fridge, carpets shoes, etc. Simply navigating around the house was like running an obstacle course.

I rested up through Christmas and started working on Tuesday. I spent the week being very careful and conserving my strength as much as possible. But my condition is so weak that I would fall asleep immediately after getting home and go to work immediately after waking up. There was, and still is, a huge amount of stress worring about doing something stupid or slipping or getting hit by something that would break my leg again and send me back to the hospital for the third time.

This past Saturday, I went to the hospital for my first post-hospital check up. The doctor said that althought the progress is a bit slower than he would like, the bones appear to be growing together nicely and I should start putting more weight on my leg. He appears satisfied with the progress I have made in increasing the flexibility of my leg. He said that it is ok for me to drive a car. I will go back each saturday for check ups.

On another note, as I looked at my x-rays, i noticed a bright white twisty-looking thing in the middle of my thigh bone near my knee. I had never noticed that before. It was much brighter white than the screws or the titanium plate. I asked what it was. I was told that it is the end of a drill bit that broke off inside my bone when they were drilling screw holes. That broken drill bit will apparently be my friend for life, as taking it out would apparently mean slicing open the inside of my thigh, breaking or drilling a larger hole in my thigh bone, yanking out the broken piece, sewing me back up again and going through the entire healing process again. I think I will let it stay there.

I’m now at the five-week mark of my second hospital stay.

I was finally allowed to use my crutches to go to the bathroom by myself. But I was strictly forbidden to go outside of my room.

The doctor removed my splint and bandages after a little more than three weeks. I was able to see my new surgery scars clearly for the first time. The new scar is about two inches longer than it was originally.

With the removal of the splint came the ability to lay on my side and the ability to sit up straight. Sitting up and limited movement allowed air to flow between me and the bed. The sores on my butt and back could begin to heal.

I left the hospital at the five week mark last time. I’m clearly not ready to leave yet.

Although the splint and bandages were taken off, the muscles in my leg were in much worse condition than they were the first time I had surgery. Basically, the muscles in my right leg were frozen in place. I could not bend my knee at all.

Removing the splint, using the crutches, walking around are all signs of improvement. However, the difficult part was just beginning. I was told to hang my leg over the edge of the bed and let the weight of my leg naturally start the stretching process.

After a few days of that, I was told I would have to start bending my leg on my own. I was to bend it as much as possible as often as possible.

Up to this point, my hospital stay had only been mentally exhausting. Now, the physical pain would start. On top of all of this, I had to start doing more office work from my bed.

Over the following week, I got to the point where I could bend my knee approximately 45 degrees. It is difficult to sit in a chair or on the edge of bed if you cannot bend your knee naturally. Because of this, my leg was always hurting and it was very difficult to do office work on my computer. I would work for 15 or 20 minutes and then lay exhausted on the bed for thirty minutes or so. The result of this was that things that would normally take me an hour to do ended up taking two or three hours to do.

Yesterday, it was time to take recovery to the next level. The doctor said it was now time to strap me to some equipment in the physical therapy room and have my leg muscles stretched for me.

In the physical therapy room, I lay down on a table and they strap me into the machine that I can only call “The Rack.”

The nurse pushes a button, and the The Rack contracts and forcibly bends my knee.

The pain is incredible as The Rack unbends and then bends a little further…Over and over again.. For 30 minutes. The pain doesn’t go away. I am in constant pain now. When not suffering the pain of bending my knee, which I have to continue doing even out of the physical therapy room, I am suffering from horribly painful muscle aches from the stretching and tearing that took place. Today, my leg was stretched to 80 degrees. I have to get to 120 degrees before they will release my from the hospital.

The mental exhaustion of sheer boredom, the stress from doing office work while bored and in pain, and the constant, throbbing, aching physical in my leg has made me pretty unsociable these days. Constant pain doesn’t make me happy. I don’t feel like seeing anyone. I don’t feel like talking to anyone. My temper has grown incredibly short. I’m not nearly as tolerant and easy going as I was. I feel like a wounded animal in a cave.

Apparently all of this is a sign of improvement, but I wish it was over.

Time for a bit of an update.

After about a week out of the the hospital things were going well. My physical therapy went well. Progress was made. My physical checkups went well.

On Saturday, 4 November 2006, I went in for my scheduled check up. They took x-rays. However, because the doctor’s wife was giving birth, he was out of the hospital and not able to keep the appointment. It was rescheduled for Wednesday, 8 November.

Saturday went well.. I went to work as usually, enjoyed a relaxing evening at home, and stayed up late doing work on the computer.

When I woke up Sunday morning, there was a huge bulge in the thigh muscles of my right leg muscle. It was right in the group of muscles that I had been stretching most the previous day. My leg hurt a lot. I thought it was just very sore muscles from the extra exercise I did the day before. So, I lounged in bed and took it easy for a while.

Finally, I had to get up and go to the bathroom. When I sat up, it was incredibly painful to move my right leg. I eventually got it off the end of the bed. When I went to stand up, my thigh flexed into a very high arch. That wasn’t good.

I rationalized that I would contine to lounge around in bed and if it wasn’t better, I would go to the hospital in the morning. It wasn’t better, so I went to the hospital on Monday morning.

The doctor looked at the x-rays as I went into his office. As I prepared to sit down, he said, “Shit!” in English and ordered me not to sit down. He showed me the x-ray taken saturday morning….the titanium plate in my leg and cracked and broken - and rebroken my leg in the process….that explained the big arch in my thigh.

He said that he would start the hospital re-admittance process while I went down for current x-rays. After standing there for about five minutes, I had come within a few heartbeats of fainting, so I laid me out on his table while waiting for a mobile table to take me to the x-ray room.

The new x-rays showed that my leg was indeed broken again.and that the old titanium plate would have to be removed and replaced.

I underwent surgery again on the morning of Tuesday, 7 November. They took out the broken plate and replaced it with a new, longer and bigger titanium plate, then also took a chunk of bone from my hip, crushed it up into some sort of mush, and grafted it onto the broken bits of my femur. They also cut about one centimeter of bone out of the middle of my femur where it was broken and put the flatened ends of the bone together.

So, the long and short of things are that I am in the hospital again for at least the next 6 weeks, going through exactly that same thing I just went through, but longer and more painful.

The broken plate was sent to the manufacturer for testing and investigation. I am not holding my breath that the company will make any admission that their product was faulty.

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.

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.