Travis on Wheels

To say I’m impulsive is akin to saying Kim Jung-il has control issues; once I get something in my head, it usually ends up happening. That afternoon. Which is why I was only mildly surprised to find myself flying down a Korean highway on my newly purchased moped last week, attempting to read the road signs and find my way back to Busan. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

While I would generally consider myself a compassionate person, whenever I would hear about someone getting into a motorcycle accident, I couldn’t help but think, “well, who said it was a good idea to hurtle yourself in front of cars going 75 mph wearing less protection than a high school football player would wear in the locker room?” Moreover, I just couldn’t understand the appeal of motorcycles – maybe it’s because I don’t have any hair for the wind to whip through, but to me bikers had always just looked like lazy people with a strange affinity for leather and an aversion to peddling.

After four years of living in Paris and seeing half the city darting around on fun looking mopeds, this opinion was slowly chipped away at until I found myself dreaming of pulling up to school in a red Vespa, fresh from a ride along the Seine and infinitely happier because I didn’t have to take the Metro with the rest of the commoners. I’m pretty sure the only thing that stopped that daydream from becoming a reality was my student-sized bank account.  A problem I don’t have in South Korea.

The seed was planted by the Texan, whose friend had recently bought a motorcycle for next to nothing, and was now free to roam the streets of Busan and explore the surrounding mountains on a whim. The more we talked about it, the more I realized that I wanted a moped. More than that: I needed a moped. It made perfect sense; if I could find a cheap enough bike, it would cut down on my transportation expenses (because, you know, I live across the street from where I work…), provide endless hours of fun and would help me with my Korean. The last point is my default rationale for doing pretty much anything in Korea – I imagine almost every activity will somehow further my understanding of both the language and the culture. Most of the time this just results in me making a fool of myself, but I do have to note that my Korean is (slowly) moving along. Regardless, the ball was now officially rolling. And by “ball” I mean boulder, and by “rolling,” I mean down Kilimanjaro.

After spending nearly every available waking hour over the next two days monitoring the online bulletin boards on which foreigners buy and sell things in Busan, I found what I deemed the “perfect” bikes: an Australian man was selling two bikes, one motorcycle and one moped, for the amount of Won I would normally spend on a night out. The only thing (because of course there’s a catch) was that he lived in a city that’s about 45 minutes from Busan by car. And he didn’t have a digital camera or pictures to send us. And if we didn’t come Friday, there were already two other people lined up to buy what had now become in my head My Bike. I wouldn’t normally believe this last detail, except I had seen firsthand how quickly scooters and motorcycles were sold online, and considering what a good deal these bikes seemed, I was surprised he hadn’t sold them already. Clearly, this was destiny.

And so on Friday, after a noon meeting at school and before our classes started later that afternoon, I informed the Texan that we needed to get the bikes now, hailed a cab and headed off to a town we had never heard of, to meet a man we didn’t know to buy a pair of bikes we’d never seen. The entire ride there, we were glued to the windows of the cab, attempting to remember directions for the trip back. Ok, we’ll need to go left after the flagpole, but stay on the right side of the river. But before that we have to pass that farmer’s market and the construction site with the barking dog. How much farther do you think it is? Should we be writing this down? Did you bring a pen?

It only occurred to me as we were paying the taxi and climbing out that we didn’t exactly have a contingency plan in place if the bikes turned out to be less than perfect, or if only one of them ran, or if the nice sounding Australian guy on the phone turned out to be a serial killer who lures unsuspecting foreigners from Busan who were too stupid to believe someone could not have access to a digital camera in the year 2007. But after meeting him and seeing his ponytail dreadlock, curled chin hair, and four kids running around an apartment that looked no bigger than my studio, I understood the technical difficulties and was frankly surprised he managed to post anything online.

The Texan’s bike was located in his apartment complex’s garage, and the two quickly left for a spin around the block, leaving me alone in the garage and contemplating why I place such utter faith in complete strangers. This is probably how he does it. Takes one away, slices him up and then comes back for seconds. I also quickly realized that in all the commotion before they left, he had failed to point out My Bike. Standing among three or four good looking scooters, I was relieved to find that it didn’t matter which one was for sale – they all looked to be in fantastic condition and I began molding my daydream to fit the models that I was now faced with.

It wasn’t until after they came back five minutes later and the Texan had confirmed that he would buy his bike that I was informed My Bike was at the shop for a “tune-up,” and the Australian had just planned to take me down there in his car and have the Texan follow us on the bike. Of course you planned this. Here it is. I just hope it’s quick. A gunshot, or maybe a clean stab. Hopefully there’s no tying up involved. Trying to mentally signal the Texan to go get help, I climbed into his car and we set off towards the town, with the Texan following behind.

Grateful to arrive at the bike shop five minutes later, he led me to a side alley that was littered with mopeds in various stages of decay surrounded by old tires and cigarette butts. Rounding the corner, he pointed to a funky looking red bike ahead of us, and I finally met My Bike. While she was nothing like the mopeds in my daydreams, she was red, had definite spunk and I instantly fell in love. Which was a good thing, considering she was the only bike in the place that seemed to have a working motor and I was miles away from Busan with no other way to get home. All in all? The perfect position one wants to be in when purchasing a vehicle.

After settling the transaction, the Australian left us on the side of the road with vague directions on how to get back to the highway that would lead us home. Realizing we were beginning to run short on time (it was now 3:15 and we were expected to be in work clothes and teaching English by 4:30), we quickly hopped on the bikes and were off. Which is about the time I noticed that while I had convinced myself that I would be returning to Busan the proud owner of a moped, I hadn’t dressed accordingly for an hour ride home in November. No gloves. No jacket. Oh, and no directions. But who’s counting?

Definitely taking multiple wrong turns, we somehow ended up finding our way back to Busan, but we had managed to enter the city clear on the other side of town from our school. At 4:15, which gave us fifteen minutes to get home, change and make it into our classrooms on time. Randomly zipping through traffic and down side streets, we soon found ourselves blocks from the building where we take Korean lessons, which we knew was directly on the other side of a pretty significant mountain from our school. Happy to have regained our bearings, we darted towards the mountain and began the ascent.

How do you say badass in Korean?

Now, when I say I bought a moped, this is kind of a stretch. She’s basically a bike with a (tiny) motor, and so when faced with a steep mountain climb, she struggled valiantly for three and a half minutes and then began rolling backwards. Now knowing there was no way we were going to make it to school on time, I had no choice but to stash my bike in the woods, attempt to remember what the surrounding trees looked like so I could come back for her, and jump on the back of the Texan’s more able motorcycle that got us up and over the mountain and back to school only fifteen minutes late. While our director was not thrilled with our tardiness, he said simply, “I glad you alive.” Me too.

As I only have one class on Fridays, three hours later I was hailing a cab to take me back over the mountain so I could grab my bike and attempt to find a route home that didn’t involve any inclines steeper than a speed bump. Trying to explain in my broken Korean to the cab driver that I only wanted to go halfway down the mountain involved an enormous amount of pantomiming and pointing at my bike helmet, and ultimately resulted in me just barking “stop!” and tumbling out of the cab in the middle of the woods. As the cab pulled away, leaving me on the side of a mountain in the pitch-black darkness, my mind again mulled over exactly how I got myself in this situation.

Clutching my bike helmet, I began my trek down the mountainside, squinting into the darkness trying to locate my bike that I was convinced by now had been stolen, towed by the police, or carried away by whatever animal was about to kill me in the night. Surprising myself, I eventually found the bike twenty cold minutes later, intact and next to a little stream that I hadn’t noticed when I hurriedly ditched it earlier that afternoon.  

Riding away, I attempted to follow signs for parts of town that I knew were in my general direction, and was introduced to driving a scooter in Busan. From what I learned on my two-hour journey back to my apartment in the freezing cold, traffic rules do not apply to vehicles with less than four wheels. I was honked at for not running red lights, encouraged to ride on the sidewalk when the road got too crowded, and generally observed an “any means necessary” style of driving.

Only partially terrified, I also began to truly enjoy biking and began to see why people argue in favor of this means of transportation. There’s something to be said for traveling outdoors, and while I quickly bought a good pair of gloves and a warm hat, even a bald guy can enjoy the wind at his face and honking Korean buses at his back. And while I have become slightly obsessed with my bike and now leave my building through the garage just to check on it, I’m still having some trouble seeing how this affection for a bike translates into a full leather outfit complete with tassels. But hey, it’s only been a week.