Beacons of hope: Lessons from riding through a monsoon

I looked out over a brooding ocean towards the wall of rain crawling its way towards me. If there had been anyone else pulled over on the gravel shoulder of that highway, they would have heard a stream of curses flow from the bottom of my high-vis helmet. Not 10 minutes before, I had been debating whether I should keep my rain gear on or, given the break in the clouds and the momentary lull, I should strap them to the back of my bike, and enjoy a much needed break from the day's suffocating heat. Now, as the rain began to come down in earnest, I cursed the comfort-biased decision and, after a few comically frustrating minutes of zipping, buckling, and strapping, I was as ready as I could be for the deluge that was now starting to bucket down over the rice paddies and low hills sloping gently towards South Korea's East Sea. Four hours to go.

I had taken this trip a few times before, and as I knew it would likely be the last overnight I would be taking before my son was born, my expectations were somewhat high. The plan was to head south, down South Korea's east coast, until I reached the port city of Pohang, a roughly 300-kilometer (186-mile) trip. As the trip started to take shape, thoughts of the coming parental responsibilities loomed in the back of my mind. Days without sleep, clothes covered in any number of excretions, rollercoaster rides of differing emotions. I really wanted to make this last trip count.

As my departure grew closer, the weather forecast went from ideal to promising to downright questionable. While riding in the rain has never really bothered me, I began to grow anxious at the thought of a long trip — nearly seven hours, if I wanted to visit everything on my checklist — spent huddled over the handlebar in crummy weather and increasingly sweaty rain gear, even in late June, before the true start of the sweltering rainy season. The night before I set out, I tentatively checked my weather app: 60% chance of rain, up and down the coast, with some breaks mid-day. I conferred with my wife, who, while worried, thought it would be best to try to make a go of it, given that chances like this likely wouldn't come around very often in the next few years.

The next morning, donning my best waterproof gear, I set out in a light drizzle.

Fast-forward to a few hours later, and following the battle of pulling on my damp rain gear, hands clutching the handlebar and heart pounding in my chest, I rode for 45 minutes as heavy raindrops battered my body. My visor, a foggy mess, refused to clear, making even the most basic road (swamp?) navigation tricky at best, and downright dangerous at worst. I pulled into the shelter of an abandoned gas station, questioning whether I should have set out on this trip at all.

Cars whizzed by, sending tidal waves of spray across the road as I sat under the protection of the gas station awning. The hard realization that the first day of my trip was utterly ruined, finally began to wash over me. Sulking, I mentally crossed sightseeing plans off my list, pushed away thoughts of my pregnant wife at home, and set my new goal as "Just get there, dude."

I arrived in Pohang City nearly three hours later. The initial frustration at having to sit in suburban traffic in increasingly soupy raingear unraveled into rage, then acceptance, and finally into complete numbness. After all, what was I going to do, call a taxi? As I began to leave the newer, larger roads of the outer city behind, the rain began to slow, and eventually stop. I weaved through the tight, industrial streets of the inner city until finally, there, at the end of a narrow alleyway, looking as damp and as rundown as I felt, was the OdaGada guesthouse — my stay for the night.

My bike squealed and sagged to a stop in front of the faux-mahogany front door just as the inn's owner was coming outside. A bag with a bright yellow smiley face on it was slung over her shoulder and she carried a purple polka dot umbrella under her arm. Her pixie-like features beamed at me from under an oversized Boston Red Sox hat.

"Graham, right?" she bounced to a stop beside me. "You’re pretty early, aren't you? How was the… oh."

Her face slouched in concern. "Are you OK?"

"Yeah," was all I could muster, exhausted from the ride. A brief silence followed.

She cracked a commiserating smile. The room was ready, she told me, despite my early arrival — towels on the bed, extra hangers for my gear, and the hot water boiler was ready. I trudged into the dimly lit entrance of the guesthouse, carefully removed my rain gear, and entered my small, dark room without a sound, locking the door behind me.

That night, after a long shower, a hot bowl of ramen, and a short conversation with the proprietor, I couldn't help but think that the day's ride had been a total disaster. Was it right for me to take such a risk in the first place, knowing that a long, rainy ride probably isn't the best decision by a soon-to-be parent? I tried to toss the thought aside.

After checking my phone for the dozenth time, and being once again assured that tomorrow's weather would be "mixed," I resigned myself to the idea that I should probably mentally prepare myself for another day like today. And yet, a sliver of optimism dug itself into my mind, reminding me that hoping for a brighter day tomorrow was more useful than sulking over a crummy experience.

As the gray sky turned darker still, it began to rain once again. Putting my book down and turning out the lights, all I could do was hope for a more successful day tomorrow.

A brighter dawn

I was startled awake around 5:30 the next morning. Cutting through the thin cotton curtains just above my bed, a single ray of clear morning light lay resting directly below my right eye. As my face reflexively scrunched at the annoyance of being jolted awake, what felt like a laser beam of white light rocketed across my vision, rendering me momentarily blind. I swore, then groaned, and rolled over to check the time. I had slept for nearly nine and a half dreamless hours.

I got out of bed and made my way to the door leading out to the rest of the guesthouse. Sidestepping past and ducking under the yard sale of damp rain gear strewn across the floor and hung on the walls of my tiny room, I tentatively opened the door and peered out. The front hallway, which had been shrouded in a dark gloom the day before, was now awash in golden morning sunlight, its white and indigo walls beaming.

I dressed and made my way past the shoe-littered hallway, up an old set of wooden stairs, and towards the roof. As I opened the door, a cool morning breeze washed over my entire body and a smile began to spread across my face. Memories of yesterday's miserable ride shrunk back into the recesses of my mind — shadows banished by the light — and as I stood there, in my ill-fitting boxers and slightly sweaty Cowboy Bebop T-shirt, I could feel the hope that I had been clinging to the night before, now beginning to blossom.

Thirty minutes later, I opened the door to my room, ready to embark, and was stopped short, staring at what lay on the floor in front of me. In front of each guest's room was a small, clear plastic box, containing two slider-like sandwiches, a juice box, and a packet of fruit. Attached to mine was a hand painted picture of a small boat; on the back, a note.

"Hi Graham," it read. "I'm sorry that your trip here was so miserable. The weather forecast for today is clear, all the way up the coast, so I hope you're able to have a nice ride. It was really nice to see you, even though for the most part, you looked terrible. Best of luck with baby Aaron, and I hope to see you back here again someday. (smiley face)"

The previous night, we had spent some time talking about the coming birth of my son, Aaron, the incredible rain storm, her previous career as a marine biologist, and the guesthouse itself. As I read the last line of her note, I could feel thick tears beginning to rim the bottoms of my eyelids. Her kindness shone like a beacon.

I tucked the note into my pocket, popped a slider in my mouth, and headed outside to strap down the last of my soggy luggage.

As I puttered my bike past the throngs of early-morning tourists, bright white morning light winked at me from the waves just beyond the rocky shore of Sunrise Park. Behind me, the sounds of tourists talking and laughing and the aroma of roasted chestnuts mixed with the salty smell of the East Sea, and beside me, the whitewashed cylinder of Homigot lighthouse tapered up towards the sky, the tallest of the surrounding buildings by far, like a lone bishop placed at the edge of a chess board. After taking a second to savor the moment, I took the phone from my jacket pocket and called my wife.

"Is the weather any better than yesterday, at least?" she asked tentatively.

"Baby, I feel like I'm in a dream," I responded, the heels of my riding boots clicking on the interlock stone leading towards the entrance of the adjoining museum. "How're you doing?"

"Yeah, I'm OK, I guess," she said with a sigh.

"Morning sickness is still pretty bad, eh?"

"It's… not great," she continued. "Reflux is still pretty rough. I had to take four pills for it yesterday."

I bit my lip. Four pills was the maximum daily dosage our doctor had recommended for my wife's nausea. As I entered the cool front foyer of the museum, I was struck by a wave of guilt. What was I doing here? Why was I riding through a literal monsoon while my six-month-pregnant wife was laid out for most of the day in bed? And on the flip side, here I was today, riding up the shimmering coast talking about my plans of stopping here, having a bite to eat there, all while the same dreadful creep of morning sickness was likely just starting to dig its nails into her a little over 300 kilometers away.

"That really sucks," I blurted out, the obviousness and stupidness of the statement punctuated by its loud echo in the museum's large foyer. The attendant looked up from her desk, yawned, and looked back down to her phone. Awkwardly, I lumbered on.

"I'll just come back home then, eh? I can be back in, like, four hours or so if I really hoof it."

"You're not going to be hoofing anything!" she snapped, the sharpness of her words catching me by surprise. "Whether you're here or not, I'm gonna feel like crap, so, you might as well take your time, enjoy a safe ride, and see the things you want to see." She didn't have to add "because it's the last tour you're going to be taking for a long while."

I thanked her, told her that I loved her, mumbled that I'd do my best to stay safe, and that I'd check in with her at my next stop, a little over two hours away.

After a quick, and slightly dazed tour of the museum, I returned to the lighthouse, still dazzling in the morning sun, where my little SV650 was, as always, patiently awaiting my return. Sitting down hard on a stone bench overlooking the water, my thoughts swirled between guilt and concern and yesterday's lingering feeling that I was doing something I shouldn't be doing.

She was right, however. At this point in the trip, those thoughts were a waste of time, especially when the day of riding ahead of me was one that most motorcyclists would kill for. All I could do now was look towards the horizon, enjoy the ride, and get home in one piece.

Thrumming my bike to life, I took one last look at the gleaming lighthouse and set off.

The road curved and undulated past the ocean and pine forests in a way that, with each bend and drop, the grin on my face only continued to grow as I relished my surroundings. The small villages, strewn with fish drying in the warm salty air. The pine forests, rich with the sweet musk of the previous day's evaporating rain. Even the long stretches of highway, which ebbed and flowed their way over rocky cliffs and down towards sandy harbors, offered a nice break from the technical twists and turns of the smaller sea-hugging roads. Yesterday's hours of rainy riding and the exhausted sleep at the end of it all slunk back into the shadows of my mind, laid to rest by the current day's brilliance.

Several blissful hours of riding later, with the sun set firmly three-quarters of the way through the sky, I pulled my little SV into the final stop of the day.

Unlike Homigot lighthouse, Jukbyoen's imposing, medieval-looking structure stood alone, backed by pine trees and bamboo at the top of a rise overlooking the East Sea. When I'd stopped here briefly yesterday, the ivory lighthouse was backed by dark, roiling storm clouds. A thin wind whistled through the bamboo grove, swirling around me as if whispering dark secrets into my ear, heightening my feeling of dread. Looking back now, it seemed like part of me must have sensed that the coming hours would be difficult ones.

But here, today, gleaming in the orange light of the afternoon sun, a warm breeze rustling through the trees, I felt as though the haunted house had been stripped of its power. The ghosts of disappointment, guilt, and uncertainty had been driven back underground, all thanks simply to the idea that things could turn out differently.

I couldn't help but laugh out loud at how yesterday's failure had turned into one of the most joyous experiences on two wheels I have ever had. Of course I had no idea that the day would turn out like this, but, after all, hoping that the next day will be a brighter one is sometimes all we can do.