You Can't Fight Fate

I'm not one to put much stock in signs and omens, but I do get psyched out sometimes when someone else does.  It seemed that nothing was going right with Vladivostok no matter how much money I threw at it.  If it wasn't visa problems, it was ticket issues.  After a Friday night of fitful sleep, filled with nightmares of fire-fighter-axe-bearing Russians barrelling out of the dark woods swinging wildly at my friends, I awoke about an hour late.  Although everything was already packed and by the door, I got to the airport check-in counter 20 minutes before take-off. That's 10 minutes too late.

Disheartened, I spent some time plotting how to get to Vladivostok anyway. I had already invested a fortune in paperwork and several hours in learning Cyrillic. It was only after my work friend pointed out that maybe I wasn't supposed to go to Russia that I started to change my mind about buying the Sunday morning one-way.

It was then that I decided this weekend would not go to waste. Perhaps Vladi was not in the cards, but that didn't mean I had to spend four days with pizza, Dexter, and self-pity. So here I am: on an island off Korea's west coast.  Anmyeondo seems a popular enough summer destination, but not many are coming down in February. These beaches would be the best I've seen in Korea given the right weather conditions. The seafood is phenomenal, and right now I have it all to myself.  After arriving and checking into the ghetto palace hotel, I took a dusk beach walk and ate clam noodle soup out of a circus tent. In the morning I started to trek south along the coast. I would have photographed the sunrise if it were not too overcast to be seen.

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I wrote that on a memo pad from an abandoned house at the end of an ATV trail just beyond the paint ball field, and even then my hopes were high.  It had been my goal to reach the southern tip of the island. First the weather was so dreary that the grey of the sky could not be distinguished from the grey of the ocean. Then  overcast opened up into an all day rainstorm. I had thought it was fated that I avoid Russia this weekend. In actuality, it was ordained that my weekend just suck. You know what? That's OK sometimes. Hello pizza, Dexter, and relaxation.