First Bike Ride

Last night, the streets of old town Yangsan heard shrieks of terror and delight from a crazy waegook (foreigner) on the back of a bike.

The Female Kiwi has been promising me my very first motorcycle ride when the weather got nice ever since I got up the nerve to ask her in the dead of winter. It's been 16-18 degrees Celsius (somewhere in the 60s for you Americans...errrr yes I am American too...) all week, absolutely marvelous bike riding weather. Anyways, the Half Asian, Hooligan 1, the Female Kiwi and I were chowing down on Pakistani food when the bike thing somehow came up.  Since the Female Kiwi had her spare helmet I decided that my first ride could be a short one, just between the restaurant and the Hemingway bar (for MOVIE night people, I'm not a total lush) down the road.

Problem number 1: My hair was in a high tight bun.
Solution: Let hair down in an effort to fit into the helmet....end up with ridiculous curly hair flying everywhere.

Problem number 2: My giant handbag...full of things like A People's History of the United States 1492-Present (a 634 page book by Howard Zinn), a camera, a mini notebook, my wallet, my emergency girl kit (smaller bag filled with things like concealer, chapstick,  hand sanitizer, tissues and the like), a packet of flashcards filled with my new Korean vocabulary words, multiple pens, a box of band-aids for my many sundry accidents....you get the point. This isn't exactly the sort of handbag you can hold while riding on the back of a motorcycle.

Solution conversation:
Me: Half Asian...will you hold my handbag?
Half Asian: Oh hell no. I know how heavy that thing is.
Me: ~turning desperately to Hooligan 1~ Will you please hold my handbag? Just until we get to the bar?
....I will admit, I didn't actually wait for the Hooligan to reply, I just sort of shoved it into his hands and hobbled away as quickly as I could and got on the bike.

For the entirety of our slow descent down the back alley toward the main road it went like this:
Me: Oh. My. God. OHMYGOD OHMYGODOHMYGOD.
Female Kiwi: NOT SO TIGHT! You're killing me Alex!
Me: Sorry! ~loosens up for a second before going back to strangling my poor Female Kiwi.
Female Kiwi: ALEX!
Me: OHMYGOD. SORRY. OhMYFRICKENGOD. EEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!

However, the second we turned onto the main road and picked up some speed I relaxed and had a blast. Thus the streets of Yangsan hearing my shrieks of joy. I don't think that it's everyday they see two crazy foreign women on the back of a bike wearing ridiculous helmets (mine was white with a giant pink star on it) and yelling. Well, Female Kiwi wasn't yelling. She was laughing her ass off at me.

When we passed Hooligan and the Half Asian I saw one of the funniest sights of my life: Hooligan 1 holding the handbag as awkwardly as humanly possible sort of away from his body as if to say to the world 'really, it's not mine. In fact, it's so far from my body that you might be mistaken and think this lovely girl next to me is actually holding it.' It was hilarious.

I had such an adrenaline high when I got off. Josh, the co-owner of the Hemingway told me I hadn't really experienced motorcycle life until I had driven one myself.  I told him that was probably a terrible idea. 
Josh: Why? Are you accident prone or something?
Me: You have No Idea. I think that might be the understatement of the century.

(Further) Spaz update: I tripped walking down the bus aisle last night and while I caught myself mid stumble I managed to land hard on my bad ankle which is still all angry and throbby at me. ALEX FAIL. The Tall Lanky Potential Climbing partner despairs of ever actually getting to go climbing with me. I told him he should probably abandon all hope now. Oh well.