Seoul Power

At long last, the bright and sunny Saturday came when we made it back to Seoul.  Right on schedule, as it happens, and even if our schedule for the last few days wasn't the most ambitious one, it sure felt nice to arrive somewhere when we meant to.  It was also encouraging to know that we could go farther each day than we were going, but we just didn't want to.  And we even meant it this time!

We had a guesthouse reserved somewhere on the south side of the river, though not until Sunday; every guesthouse, hostel, motel and yurt in the city seemed to be fully booked for the weekend.  Indeed, from Friday the bike path was obscenely crowded.  Moms in high heels, kids on training wheels far too small, shaky young ladies letting their boyfriends do all the pedaling on their shiny rental tandem bikes.  Day trippers, in short.  Tourists who were as unfamiliar with the rules of the bike path as they were with the basic physics of riding a bicycle.  The racing cyclists, with whom we usually have a steady relationship of mutual distaste, were as peeved as we were: our usual calm, lonely ride on the path became an exercise in sudden braking, passing on the left, and ringing our bells to absolutely no effect.

As we were stuck in traffic for most of the day, it gave our fellow cyclists plenty of time to stare at our back bumpers.  A dozen or more lycra-clad bikers pulled up behind or next to us and chatted about our mission and about how we liked Korea.  Dozens more shouted vague words of encouragement: "Fighting!" "Good travel!" "Cheer up!"

We stopped for a brief lie-down under a highway overpass, and there we were greeted by a middle-aged dude who wanted to compliment our bikes.  We ran through our usual Q&A with him: where we came from, what country we're from, how amazing our trip is, etc..  When our typical conversation topics ran out, though, things took an unexpected turn when he asked us, "Do you like makgeolli?  Let's go drink makgeolli."

As it happens, yes, we do like makgeolli.  For the uninitiated, makgeolli (prn. MAHK-ko-lee) is a traditional Korean beverage made of fermented rice and also broken dreams.  Less dangerous than soju, more powerful than beer, and it goes extremely well with pajeon.  It's a milky white substance resembling watery sunscreen, though slightly tastier and with a worse hangover the next day.  We'd had many extensive experiences with makgeolli, some of them so amazingly pleasant that we were unable to remember them.

Our new friend led us down the bike path, conveniently in the direction we were already headed.  As we got further into the city center, the path grew increasingly crowded with families hauling camp chairs and coolers.  Before long it was so crowded that we had to dismount and push through the crowd.

"There's a million people here to see the fireworks," our friend told us.  Sure enough, this looked like every other festival we'd seen in Seoul: an impossibly thick crowd pushing past fried chicken stalls or browsing their smartphones on blankets.  There were a dozen vendors selling beondegi and, even more horrifying, a dozen more selling selfie sticks (which, if you haven't had the pleasure, are telescoping rods you use to take a selfie from a greater distance).

"Do you want to stop here and watch the fireworks?" he asked over the din.  We looked at the crowd, then back at our ludicrously loaded bikes.  "Or should we maybe go a little further?"  We agreed to sacrifice a better seat for the fireworks in order to get a few more cubic inches of breathing space.

 At last, we arrived at a 7-11 located at the far end of the river island, Yeouido.  Our friend disappeared into the store while we improbably leaned our bikes against each other, and he came back out with three bottles of makgeoli.

Over the course of the conversation, we learned many things about our friend, Beom Jin (including, eventually, his name).  Sixty-one years old and embarrassed to be so, retired and not terribly happy about it, he lives in Seoul with his wife and three adult daughters.  His real passion, besides biking, was America.  Over and over again he told us about how wonderful America is, how America has the most generous hearts and wisest political minds in the world.  Being the pusillanimous bleeding-heart that I am, I expressed some surprise at hearing this opinion; generally, whenever I learn something about 20th-century American history, it doesn't leave me feeling that USA = #1.  But no, Beom Jin assured us, he knows how great America is: when he was a child in the '50s, he told us, and his family and friends had nothing, it was America and no other country that gave them food and clothing.  It took me awhile to settle down and keep my mouth shut -- I got some opinions about America -- but in the end, I learned something about Korea that I'd always half-known.  Regardless of the US's motivations for intervening in Korea, regardless of some of the nasty stuff that went down in the name of fighting Communism, to Koreans of a certain age, America is the veritable cat's PJs.

Of course, this newfound knowledge didn't last very long before disappearing in a milky white cloud.

 "Hey, it's 7:00, the fireworks should be starting," Beom Jin said.  We craned our heads back the way we came, and sure enough, if you squinted hard enough, you could see distant flashes of red and green flickering through the trees.  A little disappointed by our poor view of the show, we turned back to our conversation.  By 7:10, the fireworks were over.  It was good to know that, of the million people in Yeouido that night, we almost definitely had the best time that night.  Though probably the worst time the following morning.

And then Jenn fell asleep on the sidewalk while we looked for a motel.  But that is a story for another day.