As I'm typing this, the sun is shining outside, people are going to Seoraksan in droves, and they are probably having a really good time. The birds are probably also singing and spring is in the air. Just my luck.



It's such a difference from yesterday, when the day started gloomy and ended dismal. After reaching the main park office, I dismissed all thoughts of doing the four-hour trek from Oseak, simply because I was wet and cold and feeling rather crummy. The mountain trails I had climbed going up had turned into rivers on my way down.

(I would call them "brooks", but I think of brooks as happy, burbling things, and the stuff I was splashing through was neither happy nor burbling. They were more like foot-soaking, stone-greasing riverlets.)

I even cancelled all plans to hunt for fresh sushi in Sokchon because the weather was so bad. Instead I put on MTV and fell asleep in the afternoon. It really was not a good day at all.

I was worried that there was something wrong with my camera. All the pictures it was taking were fuzzy and underlighted, but the problem seemed to clear up after a while. Well, I was going to use it as an excuse to buy something from Yongsan Electronics market.

All things considered, if I knew the weather was going to be what it was, and the trail was going to be as difficult as it was, I would have not evven bothered getting out of bed yesterday. But, when you try to get in touch with mother nature, she does sometimes give you a tight slap, just to remind you that she's not just a pretty face.

I wish now that I hadn't bought my bus ticket so early. I thought there would be a ton of people going to Seoul today, it being a holiday and all, but the buses seem half-empty. If I had not bought my ticket in advance, I would have had the option of going into the park this morning and then going back to Seoul in the afternoon. Heck, if I'd bought the ticket for the afternoon bus, I could have done the park on a nice morning and had my sushi lunch as well.

Lesson learnt: Always assume you need more time than you think to do things.

Labels: big trip