Bikes

I want to get a bike. Yes, I am still afraid to go down anything steep. Yes, I am afraid that my lack of motor skills/coordination will cause me to run over small children, old people and/or animals and/or fall over. But I still want one. The Nam river runs in through Jinju.

River to the right, walking trail in front of the bench, bike path next to the flowers

They have built a lake (via dam) at one end and a big university at the other end. The entire river has a walking path and a seperate bike path. There are also paths all over Jinju for bikes. Plus, they have really cool 12 year old girl bikes - with bells and baskets and bright colors!

On Sunday, Brandon told me about a good bike place to try. Liezle and I went on Monday. Unfortunetly, I totally missed the stop and we ended up walking over a mile back to where it was. Luckily we a- didn't get lost (technically I knew where we were when the bus stopped, I just didn't know exactly how far away the shop was), b- it was a nice day and c- we found the musical fountain (although it is currently without water)(although we later found out that what we found wasn't really the musical fountain).

Charm Jinju sign on the way into the city

Wide view

The shop didn't really have any good used bikes in the cheap price range. So we went back home and met up with Ally (and randomly Tom who just sat with us but didn't eat) and had lunch. I had bibimbap again. This variety also had lettuce. The best part of the meal was a side of kidney beans with some kind of sweet sesame sauce.

I asked my boss about it and he told me to go online and that he would help me find one, but I didn't really want to wait. So we set out again on Tuesday to check out 3 other bike places - 2 near my house and 1 near the city bus terminal. We looked at two places near me, but one place was super expensive and the other had people who weren't really interested in helping us. Then we met a foreigner on the side of the road. She had just parked her bike and we asked her where she got it. She told us there was a warehouse near the bus terminal. So we went that way and again walked around for a pretty long time. Then Liezle called her co-worker, who gave us some better directions and we found the place. We didn't buy anything at that point, but he had a decent selection of both old and new bikes. We walked around for like an hour trying to find a good place for lunch, but finally ended up at the same place we had lunch the day before. We split bibimbap and a noodle dish that was ok, except that half of the noodles were really this fish paste noodle stuff which I couldn't eat (eww).

We set again again super early on Wednesday morning to meet a girl named Cindy (who also wanted a used bike) and Liezle's co-worker Keung He at the bike warehouse. I'm glad she came along because we were able to get cheap bikes, plus locks and a bungee cord, and get delivery to my apartment. My bike ended up being around $40. The funniest part was that Keung Hi, Liezle and I all got into this big delivery drunk cab with the driver to try and get to my house. So Liezle was actually part way on my lap and I was leaning up towards the windshield. We got the bikes down and tested them out in the garage. The I found the best/worst part. My bike horn sounds like a little kid bike. Liezle and I started laughing when I hit it and Keung Hi couldn't figure out why we thought it was so funny. You decide:

Cindy, Liezle and I talked about how we were going to start a bike gang, which led to some interesting comments on facebook, including a new member named Sarah. Cindy came to get her bike while I was at work and crashed it into a tree on the way home. She's ok, but she cut her knee. That's when I found out she had never ridden a bike before. I guess you might as well learn in Korea on a cheap beater bike as any other place! I'll take a better picture someday, but here's a shot of my "new" bike: