Home, Santa, and don’t spare the reindeer.

Snow came yesterday. Snow came down hard yesterday.  At least, for Korea it was a lot of snow. Looking at cars I estimate that there was about 10cm (3in) of snow in just a few hours. Korea is not set up for show like this. There is little along the lines of equipment to clean the roads and cars do not have special tires to get better traction. My scooter too, does not have special tires.

The initial scenes at school after about two hours of snow.

The snow started falling mid-afternoon and this prompted many schools to send students home early. Our school cancelled the last class of the day and gone were the students. Interestingly enough, the teachers were not sent home.

With the snow still falling I was getting worried about getting my scooter home. I didn’t want to leave it at school and take the bus, so I asked my vice principal who agreed to let me go early.

From the moment I left the indoor warmth things were not looking up for me. Snow was thick on the frozen water from the previous day and just getting my scooter into a moving state was an effort. When I did get moving it as only for about 100m, because that was about the only flat piece of road I had before hitting the first hill. This is Korea, after all.

I had just started the hill when I realised I did not have the weight to keep my tyres on the road for proper traction, so I got off and started pushing. Next I realised that, despite the lack of traffic, I could not keep pushing in the road itself, so I moved over to the walkway. My brain was working slowly, but it was working. Once on the sidewalk I restarted the bike and kept the throttle open just a tad to help me push. Without the assistance of the bike itself I found myself spinning in place like a cartoon character more often than was proper. In this way I was making steady progress up the hill, but things were going too well for Ullr’s liking

Half way up the hill and cars were passing, slowly.

I knew I needed to get some petrol in the bike, but did not know I needed it so soon. It’s not normally a problem because I flatten out often enough to  ride with very little petrol, but I didn’t consider that I would be on an incline for minutes at a time instead of mere seconds. This let all the petrol flowing to the back of the tank and away from the feeder hole. Scooter went BRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrr……. (silence)

There I was, stuck a third of the way up the hill with a decision to make. Would I take the scooter back to the school and get a bus or tough it out and start pushing? I decided to push.

What was I thinking? Between me cartoonishly spinning I place and the bike going sideways because of the direction of pressure on it, things were going painfully slow.

When I finally reached the top I was able to free downhill, but with idiot high school students who see you and then somehow things you disappear when they look down, I was almost in two crashes, both of which would have turned out worse for the morons.

The process of going up and down was repeated twice more. At one point I had to back up and get a run going to get myself up a small incline onto a walkway. Oh, the fun. If the whole situation was not as ridiculously funny as it was I would have been swearing like a pirate.

All turned out well though. I managed to get petrol about two thirds of the way home, but still ended up walking into the apartment sweat soaked and exhausted. Needless to say I did not go to the gym last night.

Photo I shot on the way home

On a happier note, our guild killed not just the first boss, but the second raid boss of the expansion. We are finally a raiding guild again, with our names on the scoreboard.