Morning Call

If you read my last post, you learned that I bought a motorcycle.

If you read this post, you'll learn that I crashed that motorcycle.

Sunday I went out for a ride.  It was a gorgeous day, so I stocked up on some food, packed it in a backpack, and hit the tarmac.

On the trip to "That Moses Thing", we drove past a small fishing village where I caught a quick glimpse of the only sailboat I've seen in Korea.  I happened to pass it again Sunday, so I parked the bike and sat on the pier by the sailboat eating lunch, fantasizing about making an offer to the owner who never showed up.  My mind was tacking around secluded Korean islands, my body was sitting on a dirty concrete pier eating sandwiches and making vitamin D.

Eventually I moved on down some smaller country roads till I was out of the bay, and out on the sea.  There was nobody else on the road, so I could afford to go slow, savor the breeze, and stare at the sea off to my left.  It was beautiful.

It was on my way back into town that I had my first close encounter of the third kind with anAjumma's car.  Contact.

I watched, confused, as I rode down a 4 lane road and saw a woman pull her car out from my left and stop in front of oncoming traffic.  I slowed down.  When cars started coming from that direction, she pulled in front of my lane.  And stopped.  My right foot, right and left hands reacted simultaneously, kicking the rear brake, squeezing the front brakes, and jabbing at the horn, but it wasn't enough.  

The velocity of my bike could be seen as being undifferentiable at the moment of impact as it made a piecewise jump from ~8 to ~-1 kph before bouncing backwards and skidding to 0.  I on the other hand retained most of my momentum as I tumbled over the trunk and inexplicably found myself sitting behind the car, having transformed some of my kinetic energy to noise, and the rest to friction in the form of scratches on my helmet and biking jacket.  Somehow my skin was left perfectly intact.

To her credit she bounded out of the car to make sure I was O.K.  Driving away as fast as possible would have been more consistant with her actions.  When I took off my helmet and therefore advertized my skin color, she learned what I already knew; this was going to be a lot trickier to sort out than your average Korean-on-Korean accident.

My face adopted the confused look that one can only put on after an attempted murder by a complete stranger.  My face said, "Why are you trying to kill me?" as it shook back and forth.  

Her face said, "I swear I wasn't trying to kill you, I just don't know how to drive this weapon properly."

An interesting study would be the effect of adrenaline on memory and language skills.  In my case, I found that as I stood there with Superman Juice pumping through my veins, I was having one of the most coherent conversations I've had since I've been here.  

A man from a nearby shop showed up and was able to help the conversation along.  Not because he spoke simpler Korean, but because he would get an A+ in charades class, and was able to mime any vocabulary I hadn't learned.

No cops were called, but we did trade information in case one of us wanted to make a claim about our vehicle's damage.  She didn't have much to complain about, the elastic collision from the bike just left a black smudge from my tire on her otherwise white car.  I on the other hand stood up the bike to find that with the handlebars pointed forwards, the front wheel tilted off at a 35 degree angle.  

I was close enough to home that I was able to ride the bike back slowly, pretending that I was in the middle of a massive turn the entire way.

The next day, after work, I was planning on taking the bike to the shop, but instead sat and stared at it for a good half hour, contemplating the dangers this hunk of metal could bring to my otherwise peaceful life.  

I realized two things at the same time:

First, I realized that while it may increase risk in my life, it by no means guarantees further troubles.  I've been driving as I would back in the states, assuming other drivers actually know what they're doing.  I consider this a wake up call, or as they say in Konglish, a "morning call".  I have to assume every driver is trying to kill me.  Next time, I won't slow down at the first sign of sketchiness, I'll stop.

The second thing I realized was"Oh... that's what's wrong with it."

And so I got my wrench set from inside, loosened the shock supports, aligned the tire, tightened it all back up again and went for a test drive.