SaTang and I were on the bike today and we stopped at a new field the city was making along the river. A large group of women were weeding the field (why buy chemicals when there’s an army of old women to do it?) and the field was nice and green.  I had the SaTang’s ball and we only threw it a couple of times when a little girl wanted to come play. This happens alot here. SaTang has gotten really adjusted to the little ones and is very gentle. I couldn’t resist snapping a few shots of this little munchkin.

She smiled at her mom first. Then she looked over and realized that I was a foreigner (or at least she realized I didn’t look like most other people) No smile.

SaTang is very gentle with the small ones. The girl threw it a couple of times and then just decided to give it to the dog, who gently took it from her.

The old women (azummas in Korean) are busy weeding the field of all but real grass. It’s a new field they just installed after adding a new bike track along the river. It’s a favorite biking spot for us. SaTang usually barks at the azumma’s hats and covered faces and they usually get a kick out of it.

Meanwhile, an army – seriously – dozens of azummas – are weeding the field as we play.

Why is it that America can’t do this and instead hire illegal aliens from Mexico?

This woman dons her wetsuit, poorly fitting as it is, and dives into the ocean to daily bring back a catch of shellfish, sea cucumbers and water wangs.  Then, still wearing her diving gear, she’ll cut it up for you to take home – or, for the brave of tongue and tummy, eat right there on the spot.

Despite the cloudy and windy weather, we went out to one of the local beaches on Sunday. We found this woman and several other diving azummas selling their catch along the boardwalk.

It was surprising how many people were at the beach given the weather. It was even sometimes sprinkling but that didn’t stop people from swimming in the cold surf.  I walked into it a bit, just to see if getting to this small island was easily accessible.

A small spit of sand stretches toward the island while the surf wraps its arms around it. Waves break on both right and left.  I walked only halfway across and came back. There’s a deep channel near the far shore and I still was carrying my camera and phone. Between the cold and potentially deep water, I gave up in favor of keeping my electronics dry.

Others, more appropriately clad than I, braved the brisk waters to get across. SaTang, meanwhile had a grand time on the beach. She’s not a fan of the water but is very friendly and loved the attention she got from all the strangers. I’d have taken a picture or two of her, but she was flitting around too fast to get a decent shot.  I settled for a picture of my lovely wife.

Korean Politics is serious business. You’d better have your martial arts skills honed if you want to accomplish anything in this land.  Check out the latest fights in the National Assembly on the Korea Times, Gawker.com and Yahoo.

I’d love to see the same kind of passion from US politicians. Instead, they calmly vote their pocket books and vote for the issue depending on who’s donated the most money to their campaign.

If this were just an isolated incident, I’d say “wow, how strange.” and then move on to more interesting things. But this is a regular occurrence here.

A Hot Dog pizza.  Typical Korean cuisine from the bakery. They like to make them fresh in the morning and then let them sit all day and let the cheese (at least I think it’s cheese) congeal. They don’t even bother cutting it up. Just throw the dog on there and bake it.  You can’t get this stuff at home, now can ya?

Yesterday I spent the day on the Taewha River at the Dragon Boat races. I wrote an article for UlsanOnline, the other website I am an editor of. Rather than rewrite it for this blog, I copied directly.

In both heats of the Dragon Boat competition, the UlsanOnline/Benchwarmers team, the “Resident Aliens” did not lose. At least we didn’t lose completely. In the first heat, we were 5th of 6 boats. The 6th team was a no-show. In the 2nd heat, we came in 5th again, shaving an impressive 4 seconds off our time but this time beating an actual 6th place team on the water. We were ecstatic that we didn’t suck as bad as they did!

Things might have turned out better had our entire team showed. We had 18 members on our practice session on July 4th, but nearly 25% of our team failed to show up for the actual races. A number of the Resident Aliens were more than a little miffed at the rudeness and complete lack of consideration of the four who failed to follow through on their commitments.

Upon arrival, our first moment of ignominy came in the form of our team shirts. How a printing company could jack up a JPEG image and misspell a word defies understanding.

We were not the only waygook team in the races. In fact, there were teams from faraway places who had come to Ulsan for the dragon boat races. Japan, Russia and even Hungary fielded crews for this event.

While it was comforting to know that we weren’t last, our best race time of 3:20 was a far cry from the Hungarian team’s 2:09 for the same 500m. We perhaps might practice more should we wish to compete in the masters races rather than the amateur slots we entered.

If I were Korean, I’d be 49 already and turn 50 in January. Koreans are one year old when they’re born and change age on January 1st.. Consequently, they’re at least one, sometimes almost 2 years, older than their real, chronological age. I believe I’ll keep my American style age and stay right were I am – a healthy, happy 49.

MyeongHee bought me a pair of new headphones for my iPod today. My old pair had just worn out. She got me a pair of the fancy noise cancelling Panasonic earbuds. They’re very comfortable. Now, when I ride my bike the noise of the wind doesn’t interfere with my music. The special electronics cut out wind, car and plane noise but they still allow me to hear the screams of agony of the taxi-drivers who make the mistake of endangering me with their shitty driving.

This was a good present, too – a video from Jessica and her lovely babies.

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This player is editable, so you can remix this video if you want to.  Have fun.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I went on a hunomous bike ride today. It was just a tad over 33km with the group, and another 12 for me to get to the starting point and back.

I started on the far left and went to the bike shop, just down the river 6km. This map below, if clicked, will take you to Google maps and you can zoom in and around my fair city. The Hyundai Factory is further down the mouth of the river on the right side. Zoom and see a few thousand cars portside.

First, we went up and down the Taewha river which is a mostly level paved bike path. At the last bridge before the harbor, we headed north across the bridge and towards the airport.  Still mostly level ground and we made good time.

I started on the far left and went to the bike shop, just down the river 6km. This map below, if clicked, will take you to Google maps and you can zoom in and around my fair city. The Hyundai Factory is further down the mouth of the river on the right side. Zoom in and see a few thousand cars portside.

First, we went up and down the Taewha river which is a mostly level paved bike path. At the last bridge before the harbor, we headed north across the bridge and towards the airport.  Still mostly level ground and we made good time. Then we headed west again – into the mountains. They aren’t terribly high – but they’re steep at times.  Two hours into the ride, we stopped in the mountains for “Oli gogi” or duck meat, grilled right at our table. Yum.  Then we didn’t another few ups, downs and arounds in the mountains before hitting the final descent to the bike shop along the Taewha river.

Between yesterday’s dragonboat runs and today’s ride, I’m sore all over.

I did a little boating on Saturday. Ulsan city is having a dragonboat championship this week and a groups of us foreigners entered ourselves in the race.  There was 19 of us in what is essentially a very long canoe.  17 were slaving away on either the right or left side, one was drumming a beat and the last steered the beast. We are scheduled for a 500m run, so we did 4 practice runs today. Our team name is “Resident Aliens.”

The weather held just long enough for us to finish, but it started as a beautiful sunny day.  It’s been raining almost everyday for a week or so, but there’s periods of sunny humid stuff in between.  We just barely finished our 2k and got home when it started to rain in buckets. While we were on the water it was warm and sticky and I got soaked in my own sweat. I didn’t get any pictures today, so click the link and see what kind of boat we’re paddling.

I was considering going to a foreigner beach party this evening, but the intermittent heavy rain made that a no-go. As I write this, it’s 10:30pm, its cleared off again and will likely be a sunny morning. And if it is, another bit of sport.

Tomorrow I’ve got a 30km ride scheduled. We’re going with the owner of a local bicycle shop. He is one of our sponsors on my other endeavor, UlsanOnline.com., and this is part fun, part marketing event. He’s genuinely a very nice guy, speaks English fairly well and looks exactly like Jimmy Smits.  And he runs a top shelf bike shop. I hope to have some pictures from the ride share later.