Mountain Biking

As many of you may remember, I've had two bicycles stolen in Korea. One was a bicycle that I had about $800 invested in. I spent $130 to take it on the plane with me to Korea. I had it in Korea for a total of six weeks when someone took a hammer to the lock and stole it. I replaced that bike with a cheap little bike just for getting around. I had that one another six weeks before someone cut the lock. I actually laughed when that one was stolen.

So I was hesitant to buy a new bike. When I moved into the apartment I live now, one of my first thoughts was that this apartment was large enough to bring a bike inside. I had only lived here about a month before I bought a new bike. That was in March, and even though it was cold, I still made a point to get out on the bike as often as possible. I learned the placed I could bike in the city, and I even biked in a few places that I shouldn't have. I went up in the mountains a bit, but not much.

And then I found the mountain biking group.

The first time I went out with them was just a few weeks ago. I met up with the group at 10 in the morning, and we headed to a neighboring city that had some bike trails that these guys wanted to train on (for an upcoming race). There was one other foreigner in the group, and because he spoke no (and I mean no) Korean, they assumed that I didn't speak any either. One guy in the group spoke English, and he was the only one that spoke to me before we headed up the mountain.

The ride up was a lot of work. The trails were steep--so much so, in fact, that you couldn't go straight up the trails, but kind of had to weave back and forth across them. When we got about half way up the mountain, the trail turned and headed back down. Great, I though, now it will be easy.

I stayed with the front of the group for about 2 minutes. Then I hit a rut in the trail. The rut through me off balance, and as I tried to regain my balance, I hit a bolder....hard. I flew off my bike. I landed face first in what was luckily soft soil and then rolled. When everything began making sense again, I realized there was loud hissing. My tired had popped, but that appeared to be the only damage my bike had taken.

I wasn't so lucky.

The soft dirt saved my face (although I had mud caked on me an a scratch on my forehead), but I had several scratches on my arm. My arm was nothing compared to my leg though, which was all scratched up, bruised, and bleeding pretty badly. Okay, I thought, I'll just walk my bike down the hill.

But as soon as I tried to walk, my back tire locked up. I couldn't figure out why at the time, but it was because my back rim was so bent that whenever I tried to roll it, it rubbed against the brakes. What that meant was that I had to carry my bike.

Bleeding and with a broken bike on my shoulder, I waddled down the mountain. I realized exactly how wreckless I was being when it took about 5 minutes for anyone else in the group to pass me by. I was going that much faster than them (but the leaders of the group were at least that far in front of me). The first two to pass me by didn't think anything of me, I guess, but the third stopped. Still thinking I couldn't speak Korean, he tried to ask me what happened in broken English.

"Tired?" he asked.

I showed him my arm, and he grimmaced. He came down the mountain with me and showed me to a first aid tent. While he was there, they tried to patch up my front tire. When it was good to go, I tried to ride again, but the back tire still locked up. That's when they realized my back rim was bent.

That's also when the other people in the group first found out I could speak Korean, which lead to questions about my wreck, then questions about me, and then questions about the other foreigner in the group (since they couldn't ask him directly).

After a quick lunch, they went back up the mountain, and I sat around with my broken bike (which took almost 4 hours to fix back at the bike shop, by the way). I hurt myself, sure, but I had made a few friends. I got a call last weekend inviting me out with them again, but I turned them down. I think I'm healed up enough for another go this Saturday, though. I'm sticking at the back of the pack this time.

R