The trip home from Korea was uneventful, if not a bit disappointing: I returned home on Saturday September 6th, slept most of the day Sunday, went into work on Monday, applied for unemployment on Tuesday, started my resume on Wednesday... well, you get the idea. Actually I didn't seriously look for work for about a month, I took the time to reflect on life and get a bunch of overdue chores done, recuperate from two years of frantic prototype development, and basically re-tune myself into living in America again.
When I was in Korea I kept thinking about what I would miss when I return home, and it would have to the friends I made during my stay in Korea, the friends that helped me hang onto the slippery bit of sanity I have left: Jason, Roger, JR, Gina, Will, and the others I don't recall off the top of my head. Curiously enough, it's the huge circle of friends I have here at home that I missed the most while I was in Korea, and frequent Skype phone calls helped me maintain the ties to my friends. There were a couple of times in Korea that my phone, er, my computer would ring in the evening and it was a friend calling from San Jose, unable to sleep at 3:00am and just wanting to talk.
I haven't updated my blog since I returned home because I didn't feel that I had anything significant to blog about. Because everything seems so ordinary here at home I keep thinking there's nothing worth posting on my blog, even though the state of California is three times the size of the Republic of Korea! Looking back through my pictures, there were a few journeys I've had after my return so I've got six months of catching up to do.
While in Korea I signed up for a retreat at the St. Francis retreat center in San Juan Bautista. My original return date was about a week prior to the retreat and I mailed my registration form from Korea - I can only image what the retreat coordinator thought when he got a retreatant registering from 6,500 miles away. The retreat was a relaxing time to reconnect with friends.
Of course, my transportation of choice for the weekend was my motorcycle. Somehow I always find another vehicle to camouflage the bike in parking lots - the picture does look like it needs a caption, though.One Saturday morning in October I commented to my roommate that it's been months since I've had a road trip on the motorcycle - he had only one word for me: GO! I quickly packed up the bags, reserved a bed at the Yosemite Bug hostel and headed out for a quick weekend in Yosemite. There's something about being on the road on motorcycle that's indescribably wonderful, and really can't be explained - you have to experience it for yourself.
Saturday afternoon I wandered around the town of Maraposa playing tourist and taking pictures. The atmosphere of Maraposa is somewhere between folksy, kitschy, and historical - it feels like a town that's in the midst of redefining itself while holding on to it's historical past. The downtown business district looks like a wild west movie set with the crew still there, either setting up before or cleaning up after a shoot.There's a neat little curio shop in downtown Midpines that had one object that caught my eye amongst the totem poles and jade jewelry: a piece of antler with bats carved into it. It's an odd piece that looks like the outer skin of the antler was peeled back revealing a colony of bats living inside.
Dinner on Saturday was Pizza from Pizza+ on the edge of town and it was okay, nothing really to write home about, then off to the hostel. I stayed at the aforementioned Yosemite Bug hostile just outside of Midpines and got a bunk in one of their dorm rooms. The facilities are clean and comfortable and they have a good cafe with a couple of computers available for checking email and such. I arrived too late for dinner on Saturday, but breakfast on Sunday was terrific - eggs, ham, toast and lots of coffee. The only interesting picture I took at the hostel is the dog enjoying the cool morning on the redwood deck.Riding through Yosemite is always an amazing experience, and when I was there it was the last weekend before the park closed for the winter. Many of the campgrounds had already been shut down - the picnic tables packed up and the outhouses locked for the winter - which meant the
crowds weren't there, either. Traffic was especially light, and the people I talked with seemed to appreciate the park more than the regular tour-bus tourists. I entered the park through the West entrance on highway 140 with the goal of making it to the East entrance (Tioga pass) before turning around for home. The motorcyclists in the picture were arriving as I was walking around the Tioga Pass entrance station taking pictures.
While riding out of the park I spotted a gathering of people gawking skyward, so I stopped to investigate. They were watching the climbers on El Capitan, and from the valley floor I couldn't spot them without binoculars. If you look closely at the picture on the right (click on it to see the larger version) you can spot the climber dangling from his rope near the bottom-center of the picture. This guy was probably half way up, so he still had some serious work to do.
It was amusing watching a couple of other climbers taking a break, perched on a tiny ledge eating lunch. They weren't very far up the face, thus the tree branches in the picture.I returned home on Sunday in time to meet friends for a late dinner over stories of the weekend.
Enough for today, I'll continue again soon...
Jerry, the hometown tourist.
