Big Bend

Now I’ve wanted to go to Big Bend National Park since I moved to Texas a few years back. It’s found in the southwest of Texas, in the “Big Bend” of the Rio Grande. Big Bend is a desert, so I assembled a cadre of hearty desert-goers to attack the vast, dry, nomadic expanse. So after packing up our canteens, snake-bite kits, straw hats, burqas, and camels into our dune buggy we set out for west Texas.

When most people think of Texas, they imagine cowpoke, tumbleweeds, cacti, and single-toothed brothel employees. Actually this is west Texas. Fortunately, we brought our enlightened Austin culture with us.

You’ll note that the chess pieces had a standing mission to make a suicidal leap from the board due to the vibrations from the lonely Texas roads.

On the way we stopped at Sonora. Sonora is a lovely stop on the griddle-flat, dusty moonscape of our drive. We stopped for some local Mexican food and were alarmed to find that Sonora seems to be under a trade embargo specifically targeting green food coloring. Here you see them getting by coloring their guacamole dip with unsold cans of Ghostbusters® Ectoplasm from 1984. In all actuality, once the neon body paint had been removed from our palates, the ensuing “comida Mexicana” was a delight.

Our one weekend, two night outdoor camping trip was abruptly shortened to one night when DQ (that’s what I love about Texas*) made the call to stay in a motel due to “moist earth”. So instead of watching the big and bright stars of Texas, we watched Letterman.

The next morning we embarked on our river trip. Here are some fantastic shots of us in a Deliverance-like setting.

The cool thing about the Rio Grande is that it spans two nations, bringing them together in a river of understanding that could never be muddied by fences, legislation or mass deportation, ever.

The unmuddy waters of the Rio Grande:

Out of reverence, I sang “Ol’ Man River” repeatedly, much to the delight of my hearty companions who didn’t have the heart (or knowledge) to tell me that the song actually referred to the Mississippi, and that I wasn’t black.

The park website warned us not to approach immigrants crossing the border for our own safety. So we left this one alone.

Here we are in Mexico!

The river having been floated we shot over to the center of Big Bend: the Chisos Basin. Here we are setting up camp. I’m eating trail mix.

After setting camp we went for an evening hike to the Window. Here are beautiful shots along the way.

Here are shots from the Window, which we assume is about a 1000 foot sheer drop. A breathtaking view awaits the hiker as he nears the slick rock lined edge of the Window. I’ve gone back and edited this blog post to remove references to our 6^th hearty companion who, unfortunately, achieved a much better view out of the Window than safety dictates. The removal of references to him will hopefully console grieving relatives. This paragraph, however, will not.

Mystical, eh?

Camping allowed us to relax and bond. Here’s a picture of Mike spying on Brian during a gay magazine photo shoot. I think Mike's a pervert!

In the middle of the night I was awakened, not by Brian trying to spoon with me (he did that so slyly I never awoke), but by a fantastic display of thunder and lightning. There’s not much more of a cooler feeling in the world than sitting in a tent in the middle of a mile-wide basin hearing the thunder cracking and rolling across the moonless, star and thundercloud sprinkled sky, listening to the rain cadence down on your tent roof as a brilliant flash occasionally explodes the desertscape into midday brightness.

The next morning found us hiking up this guy.

A mere 4 miles of slight incline hiking

found us here:

Sitting on top of the world we enjoyed our last breaths of Big Bend sun, hot, dry air, and profuse ladybugs (they were there in droves for some reason, I could have started a very lucrative organic farm).

With Big Bend in our rearview mirror we successfully passed a border checkpoint in under 45 seconds. As we drove through it became apparent that these border guards didn’t have much to worry about. Look out illegal aliens, God's building our walls!

Well that's Big Bend. Pretty soon I will release a post on my fantastic Northwest trip that is only approximately 3 months late.

Cheers folks.

*This parenthetical reference will only make sense if you’ve heard Dairy Queen advertisements in Texas, or if you just really love my friend, Dan Quinn.

Korean Smattering

Following is a smattering of pictures and clever accompanying comments from Korea. Think of it as a photo montage, like the type they show after the Olympics, World Cup, and major natural disasters.

Korea is cold, and as we all know, trees get cold as well. These trees are bundled up for the winter. They will provide the cherry blossoms in the next Cherry Blossom Festival.



Here are a few pictures of palaces and royal shrines. After a while they all kind of run together, much like runners in the New York Marathon.




Korean food doesn't agree with everyone. Here I am comforting my little bro as he seeks comfort in a large palace urn.



Here's a picture capturing the pageantry of the changing of the guard.



Koreans drink water out of little envelopes! They’re so funny!





One of the cool places we went was Isadong, which is old town Korea. It was biting cold the first night so we dropped into a traditional Teahouse. It looked like a little hobbit hole.



On the street vendors sell little cakes filled with sweetened red beans.



They’re quite tasty and they quickly became the only thing my father would eat. He began to look for them in the strangest places.



Koreans like to put up signs. This street is well signed.



Koreans also like to exercise and you don’t see many fat Koreans. These pieces of exercise equipment are clearly the reason why:



Even though the weather was about 30 degrees F, a very common activity is to see tons of old men out playing Chinese chess or Go.
Here my brother is being taught Chinese chess by a man that does not speak English. They had to communicate through the international language, love.





Here is my new niece in law, Harang (yes, that’s an official relation). She likes to bow to you.



Here we are at a market.



This kimchi is called bachelor kimchi, not because the radishes look like penises, but because…oh wait, no that’s why.



I really didn’t make that one up.

Here we are in front of the great south gate of the wall that used to surround Seoul



Korean Ginseng is put into everything. It’s a natural aphrodisiac, like me.



We visited a couple Buddhist temples (you know how I love those). These lanterns seem to hang over the entrance to most complexes.



Here’s the whole clan headin home after a day spent walking ‘til the seouls of our feet ached.



Here we are being captured by a huge wicker dragon.



The etiquette bell is the greatest modern Korean invention. They are located in many ladies’ restrooms. It makes a sound like a flushing toilet. When a lady uses the toilet, it is considered improper to make…sounds. Thus the etiquette bell is pushed when sounds are being made. I’m thinking of making it portable and marketing it in the US, any venture capitalists reading this??



That’ll about do it for Korea. I wrote this as I was suspended somewhere over the Rocky Moutains on my way back to Austin. So it's time I hang up my keyboard 'til the next trip.

The Holidays in Korea

There’s not really much to note about a Korean Christmas. Stores are still open and many people are still working. It’s treated more like our Halloween in the US. You’ll certainly see decorations up and hear carols in the air but families don’t gather and presents aren’t really exchanged. Traveling home for Koreans is much more done over lunar new year. My family celebrated in the normal way, by wearing an equal number of red and green shirts.

New Years however was a different story. Even though by this time most of us had gotten sick, we still partied it up in downtown Seoul. By about 10PM the air was thick with smoke from the countless bottle rockets being shot into the air. Hordes of policemen stood guard (and took pictures themselves) along the main avenue

There were several traditional Korean music troupes that danced through the streets. You can see one of them at the beginning of this video clip taken about an hour before midnight:

As midnight rolled nearer we packed into the masses surrounding the Boshingak Bell Pavilion. The bell was in daily use during the Choson dynasty(1392-1910) when it was rung at the opening and closing of the city gates. Now however, it is only rung every New Years but they ring it 33 lucky times. The rest of the fam went home and the bros stuck around for this great shot.

You can see the Bell Pavilion in the background.

At midnight the bell tolled and bottle rockets flew, ash rained down like grey snow and you couldn’t even open your eyes due to the smoke, ash, and holiday cheer. Check it out, you can open your eyes though:

Winter Wedding, Korean style

Korean weddings are efficient. Getting married is not an everyday occurrence, but wedding halls in Korea will do all they can to make you feel that way. Here’s how it worked in the hall we went to. There is a certain time allocated for your wedding, our time I believe, was 1:50. The bride arrives a few hours before to get all done up on the big day. She then goes up to the sixth floor and sits in a very small room as her guests wander in and get a picture with her. Here’s me with my sister, Laura, in the small picture room.

As the guests arrive, they are greeted by the father of the bride and groom and they sign in and pay. Yes, pay. There are no wedding presents given (same with Chinese weddings as I found out in Singapore), rather you give a certain amount of money depending on how close you are to the person. This is a rare opportunity to assign a monetary value to your friendship, and could be the reason that so many people attend these weddings. $50 is considered the least you would give if you were simply a mere acquaintance. Good friends run in the hundreds, and best friends may require pawning a non-vital major organ like the heart or skin (yes it IS an organ, didn’t you take 4^th grade science?). When you sign in, your name is written next to the amount you gave, recording your friendship rating for all posterity. At this time you receive your meal ticket (after all, it’s the second reason you came besides forced tributes). Jeong apologized on behalf of all Koreans, being that the majority of people that come to your wedding will obtain their ticket and proceed directly to the floor above to get their dinner, then leave. But don’t worry, you know they really do care as long as they gave more than a paltry $50.

Everybody who desires to see the ceremony waits outside the actual wedding chapel as the previous ceremony is finishing. As they file out, you file in (hey the seats are still warm!). Take your seat quickly because before you know it “Here’s Comes the Bride” is pumping out of the speaker system and the procession has begun! Koreans don’t use bridesmaids or groomsmen so they were entirely without a clue as to what to do with these six extra people standing at the altar. The ceremony proceeds pretty similarly to its western counterpart except the fact that the Koreans gave a pleased gasp of surprise as they kissed at the end (a normally absent bit that Laura insisted upon (my family are real kissers)). The new couple then bows to both sets of parents, which have special seats of honor up front, the groom gets down on his knees and plants his forehead to the ground in front of them. Respek.

As the guests who actually came into the chapel now file off to the mess hall, the picture taking begins. Jeong and Laura changed into traditional Korean wedding get-ups (hanboks) and then went through the Korean portion of the wedding. They serve tea to both sets of parents, then each set of parents throws fruit at the bride as the groom pulls out her apron to catch the fruit.

You’ll have as many children as the fruit you catch. The Na’s (the new couple) caught 9. They now have no choice but to have 9 children, it’s tradition and it’s never wrong.

Finally we went to the mess hall once everybody had already eaten and left (no, I’m serious). It seems that you can really have any type of event you would like at these event halls, check out the banner.

Laura is wearing a traditional bride’s hambok, characterized by the rainbow sleeves. This is not to be confused with the rainbow affiliated with gays, since they actually can’t get married. This is a serious conflict, which accounts for the sparseness of gays in Korea. I drew that last conclusion myself.

An interesting sidenote (and much more serious than my gay comment above) is how uncommon it is to see a mixed couple in Korea. Koreans have a peninsular mindset. Being that a peninsula is an avenue to the mainland from offshore islands they have a long tradition of being in the path of marauding Chinese, Japanese, or Mongol armies as they attack each other. As a result, Koreans are fiercely protective of their people and their heritage, historically going to great pains to not intermingle with other races that travel through. Upwards of 90% of Koreans that live in the peninsula are just that: pure Koreans with a painstakingly detailed genealogy that chronicles their bloodline. Seeing foreigners is not really all that common in Korea, but it’s much less common to see someone who is a Korean mix and they are unfortunately more likely to be the result of some prejudice. My brother in law has noticed the stares and the occasional comment that accompanies his decision to go against the national paradigm. Clearly the benefits of marrying into the family offsets this downside. As I said, we’re good kissers.