I don't have it that bad in comparison to a lot of other people, I admit, but I DO have some pretty crappy luck sometimes! Like this vacation for instance. I'm with some dear friends who are always great fun to visit. They let me stay at their place in Seoul for nothing and are constantly feeding me better food than I can find ANYwhere in China. So, yeah, it's been awesome in that way. But there are always a few things to complain about for me. Blog fodder I call those things.
I refer you to the previous post. It was typed a week into this visit to Korea and I had, to that point, done absolutely nothing but suffer, and when I say suffer, I mean worse than anything I can remember in adulthood. I am talking flashbacks to childhood when I was a sickly, but cute, little boy. I used to get the flu if someone just looked at me the wrong way. I missed more school than I went to. I threw up more than I kept down. I think I might have been allergic to life. Then, somewhere around middle school I'd say, I just stopped getting sick. I was healthy as a horse. I grew, played sports, ate, did healthy stuff and before long I was one of those guys who NEVER missed school or work. At least not due to sickness. (and hangovers are not included)
I get a cold now and then but they last a few days before the worst is over. I typically catch them on weekends or just before, so I usually only have one bad day at work with a cold. I've done that for years. Sick days are really not a thing in Korea, but now that I'm working in China at a place where some of my co-workers have taken sick days, I almost WANTED to get sick and stay home for a day or two. Had I been working while I caught this Chinese plague I am STILL trying to shake, I would have been off for a week or maybe two! But of course not! I time it to fit just perfectly into my vacation and have the courtesy to share it with some of my favourite folks in the whole wide world. Thank God none of them caught this ague from me! Which makes me doubly sure it is the flu because they all had their flu shots. Say what you will about flu shots, but I was sure glad of them THIS year! So to those who might mistakenly think I'm an antivaxxer because I have, on this blog, spoken out against shitstains and sheep who use that wildly inaccurate term, cash me outside, how bout dat?
Whatever the case may be, I am still coughing up a lung every time I go outside or do anything strenuous. I still blow my nose more than usual too. But roughly 20 days after catching whatever this sickness has been, I just had a full weekend of outdoor activity and am living life almost normally again. The weekend was a blast actually. Though still a little under it, I braved the cold weather and went for a ski/ice fishing weekend to Choonchun and Hwacheon with the Peet/Spiwaks. It was, as always with this bunch, reality TV gold unrecorded.
Mike supplied me with some extra gear for the ski hill and ice fishing because I hadn't brought boots, ski pants, gloves or even my trusty earflap hat. So I got some of Mike's hunting gear. It did the trick nicely and I must say, I enjoyed wearing the orange toque. I was easy to spot, it was really warm, and, dog-gone-it, I liked orange until the mere mention of it made me think of that racist, sexist, sunburnt, hairpiece, blowhard in the Whitehouse. That said, I looked pretty stylish, no?
The other members of our fateful party got all their gear organized, with no shortage of lost items, found items, re-lost items, arguing, bickering, backbiting, name calling, swearing, Shakespearian insulting, crying, complaining, pouting, sighing, clothes rending in twain and the like. And that was before the fighting. Heather was determined not to come up until moments before setting off. I thought she was going to miss out on the festivities for real! But, gluttonously craving the punishment of family outings as she does, she gave in despite being a first ballot shoe in for canonization already. All this time I was fiendishly, and silently, relishing my life choices. Or, to be a bit more honest, my lot in life. Because there was a time I was more than willing to subject myself to years and years of the sleep deprivation, fun spurning and stress eating that the child-rearing package includes. I was just lucky to be born handsome, not rich.
So because there were nine of us, (Mike, Heather, Gramma Kathy, Grampa Ken, Reilly, Roman, Iryna, Kelly and me), Mike rented a bigger van than they already have and did some careful Tetris loading of ski equipment and cold weather gear before the family methodically breakfasted, showered and readied for the adventure. We actually got on the road earlier than I had predicted. 10:45! I predicted noon. So it was a successful beginning notwithstanding the absurdly overoptimistic target time of 9 AM I had heard bandied about willy nilly.
The weather couldn't have been better! We drove in the slightly below zero sunshiny clear air of Seoul until we got on the highway northeast toward Choonchun, a city famous for its Dalk Kalbi. On a previous adventure with the same folks, (minus Oma and Pap), we went to the Choonchun Dalk Kalbi festival during the summer. It was another dramatic day of scarred feelings and family squabbling, but we ate Dalk Kalbi when we arrived, wandered around for a few hours, ate dalk kalbi again, then left. Stomachs full of dalk kalbi turned family squabbles into love again. A successful day in MY book. Dalk kalbi is my second favourite Korean food. And love is always good. Here's a pic... of the dalk kalbi anyway:
We got to the Elysian Ski Hill in Gangchon at around 1. Not bad. We had been told about foreigner discounts, but when we checked at the ticket office, they didn't know what we were talking about. So for 4 hours of skiing and rentals of skis, boots and poles, I paid about 80 bucks. Not cheap, but I hadn't been skiing in years, so I was stoked. And after being on my arse with the China Pox for two weeks, I was up for some exercise. The organization of equipment and lockers involved some logistic gymnastics by Heather and Mike but we got that done. Then we stood in line for rentals for about an hour. By 2:30 or 3 I reckon, we were finally on the hill. I went up a ski lift with Reilly and Roman. None of us knew where we were going, we were just excited to get skiing. At the top we decided to turn left and ended up on the intermediate hill called the Dragon. I think that was a bit too much for us. And given the weekend crowd and the fact that downhill skiing turned into slaloming between our fellow skiers, we had a bit of a hard time getting our ski legs under us. None of us more than Roman. He got almost to the second curve in the run and wiped out. I actually wiped out right in front of him when my ski popped off during a quick turn. My only fall of the day I'll have you know... So as I was trying to retrieve my ski with one of my poles so I didn't have to get up and walk to it, I saw Roman lying in the middle of the run. And not getting up. Then I saw a bit of a crowd gather around him. I said, "Roman! Roman! You okay?" Roman said, "NO!" So I made my way over to him and the ski hill workers told us to move to the side of the run. Reilly joined us. Roman's wrist was sore. He figured it was broken. He couldn't grip his pole or move his fingers without pain. So we slowly skied, stopped, skied, stopped, snowplowed, stopped, skied, stopped, all the way down. Here's Pap and Iryna skiing the Dragon.
Where we ended up was NOT where we had started from. Luckily Roman had his phone. Reilly, after the initial run, was thoroughly tired of the whole skiing in crowded Asia thing too. So Roman called Mike and he met them on the road somewhere. I took a lift back up the hill and skied down to the bottom to where the others were. Or I thought they were. I waited there looking for them for half an hour but saw none of them. What I DID see was about 10 other people being carried, sledded or accompanied off the hill by ski patrol because they too were injured. So I went up to the big restaurant where Kathy, Mike and Kelly were going to wait while we all skied. They were there. And Roman and Reilly were too. Roman had his arm wrapped up. He told me that it was probably broken. The consensus was to meet with Iryna, Ken and Heather, who were at that time over on the dragon run that had slain Roman. Then we'd drive to our hotel in Choonchun, drop off most of us and our stuff, take Roman to the hospital for a check-up and play it by ear from there. While Heather, Mike and Roman were gone, I looked for two things nearby our hotel: Beer and Dalk Kalbi. BOTH were within a two minute walk from us! Hooray for Choonchun!
It turned out Roman's wrist wasn't broken after all and we all went out for a late dalk kalbi dinner. It was awesome! The dalk kalbi place around the corner from us refused us service for some reason. Perhaps the late hour. But dinner for 9 would be a fantastic way to end the day for a restauranteur, wouldn't it? Whatever, we found plenty more dalk kalbi. We were in Choonchun! The place we went featured a very nice ajjuma who gave us something I'd never tried before: a little bowl of seaweed, sesame seeds and sesame oil to mix into the plain rice we were eating with the dalk kalbi. It made a great thing even greater. Can you believe I'd never tried that before? Or maybe I have, I just can't remember. As I get older, and as I spend more time with Heather, whose brain is like a friggin' ledger, I realize that I forget an awful lot of stuff. Just another good reason to keep on bloggin'.
So we all went to bed full of dalk kalbi and love. The nice ajjuma even packed up some leftovers for us to cook up for breakfast. Mike did an admirable job of that. I have to say that with only one bathroom between the 9 of us, we loaded up and hit the road with a minimum of problems. It had to have been the dalk kalbi! It's magic, folks! So on we rolled, like the Griswalds in the Family Truckster, toward Hwacheon and the winter festival. Ice fishing or bust! We had another absolutely gorgeous day for it too!
I think we got onto the ice and over our holes by noonish. A few nice pan fried trout would make for a mighty tasty lunch, we thought. And before too long Mike hauled one in. I'd say every 10 minutes or so, one of our party pulled up a fish. Pap caught 5, Heather 2 including the big one, (which I think was a coho salmon and probably the only fish that wasn't artificially grown, then poured into this lake), Reilly got 2, Kathy got two including a pretty big trout, and Mike got one, the first one. There was one more fish caught on the day. Was it caught by Iryna, Roman, Kelly or me? Given the facts that Iryna fished half the day with a hook that had hook protectors on it, Roman was fishing with one arm, and not all that into it, and Kelly was monitoring the entire party going hole to hole to see if we were having any luck, the odds were in my favour. I, unlike Kelly, was deep in concentration, trying to make sure I wasn't skunked. After catching one, I'd be more of a team player, but I had to get at least ONE. I wasn't really socializing with others, and it was a foreigner fishing area so I'm sure there were people from many countries and it would have been very interesting to do a little hobnobbing. I was single-minded of purpose. Can you tell from that pic?
Then, FINALLY, at around the two hour mark, I snagged one by the lip. It got off the hook just as it exited the hole but, SHIMBATDAH, I got me one!
We caught, I think, 13 fish altogether. Poor Roman was disabled and Iryna's tackle was disabled. Kelly had a blast without catching one. So now it was time to eat these babies! They have a really interesting way of cooking them too. I blogged years ago about my dream job in Korea being a goguma man. That is a guy who cooks goguma, sweet potatoes, in a barrel oven, wears an earflap hat and listens to bong jjak music all day long. It's seasonal so I'd have summers off and bong jjak, sometimes called trot, music just makes me happy. It's impossible to get depressed with that music playing. Well, now I'm reconsidering. I might enjoy cooking the fish at the Hwacheon Winter Festival too. And that's only two weeks a year so I'd like that work schedule! It's a similar kind of drawer in a big metal barrel over a fire kind of cooking. I can't explain it as well as a pic.
That's the fish covered in butter and wrapped in tinfoil. It is goooo - ooood! Everybody liked it. And there was sushi, fish rolls, baddered, and a few other styles as well. We all ate our fills then set out to do some of the other activities at the festival. There was ice soccer, curling, hockey, skating, tubing, ziplining, ice sledding, ice car racing, ice tops, and the one I wanted to try most, but didn't, ice tubing in a tube. You tube down a long, slippery tube from the top of the hill and come shooting out at great speed onto the ice where you smash into inflated air bags to stop you. Next year me and Mike are going double and we'll see if we can't puncture those airbags. Heh heh heh. Here are some more pics.
And as the sun set on a full day of fun, I decided my new second favourite thing to do in Korea is going to the Hwacheon Winter Festival. Number one is Korean baseball, of course, but this was almost as much fun. I have to thank Mike and Heather for giving me a good winter vacation. I faced a little adversity at the beginning, but we were all working toward the same goal. We pulled together as a team and got it done. Roman's unsportsmanlike conduct at the ski hill landed him on the 15-day disabled list with an upper body injury. That might have demoralized a lesser team but we powered through that like champions. There was some taunting, excessive celebration and quite a bit of delay of game, but our execution remained solid and our conditioning helped us pull out the victory. No question our backs were against the wall but, you know, I'd like to thank God for the win and for keeping us safe out there. Even with the remnants of a bout of food poisoning from two days before, Pap played like the seasoned veteran he is and pulled 5 fish out of that lake. Couldn't have done it without him. And Reilly's performance on the tubing hill was an inspiration to the whole team. Heather was a game time decision but she proved an invaluable part of this victory. And our captain, Mike, showed the leadership he's known for. We all played our roles and got the job done. And we're not done yet. As long as nobody is traded in the off season, there's no reason to think we won't be back here again next year with another year of experience under our belts. Thank you.
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