Full Moon / Canada Day Party

You know that bit when I said I was gonna go camping on the beach come rain, hail or hurricane.... well I was only joking about the hurricane part.

But the rain gods weren't!

(Warning, this is an epic blog with no pictures [so far])

On Saturday a few folks from the surrounding areas decided to join me for a party on Myeongsashimni beach. I've tried to organize 2 previous events there, only to be rained out, so this time I decided I was going to go even if it was raining.

Surprisingly enough, the morning started out bright and sunny. It looked like it was going to be perfect beach weather.

I had a few friends coming over from Mokpo on their motorcycles, but they seemed to be having trouble with my directions, so I went over to meet them. We got back to Wando about mid-day and I swapped Billie for Black Betty and drove over to the beach with all the camping gear and supplies.

I decided to set up a big tarp that people could rest in the shade or sleep at night under. It was massive. We had that and a number of small tents that everyone brought along, so there was plenty of room for sleeping.

I decided I wanted to play on Billie some more, so I skipped back over to Wando and picked her up. After some riding around and playing on the beach, I decided it was time for dinner. I'd previously cooked up 3 different curries for everyone to try and we cooked up a feast.

Then for some more playing on the beach and sitting around the campfire then around midnight it was off to bed. And this is when the excitement began.

The wind started picking up and I was a bit worried about the large tarp/tent, but for a while it seemed to be holding up well. It was just making a hell of a lot of noise as the wind was flapping it like a whip being cracked...

Then at about 2am, there was one almighty crack and all went silent. The wind was at super gale force by now. The kind of wind that takes roofs off houses and blows over full grown trees.

I jumped out of bed and scrambled out of my small tent, thinking the tarp had blown away. There were a couple of people sleeping under it and there was a lot of gear on the ground under it, so I was a bit worried. Thankfully though, only a couple of ropes had snapped and the tarp was now lying flat over everything... including the sleeping people. They seemed content enough and surprisingly, I think they may have been the ones who ended up having the best nights sleep.

With the help of one of my friends, we tied down the loose ends of the tarp and scrambled back to our tents.

Then someone's fly blew off their tent, so it was more scrambling around to tie it down as well.

As wet and miserable as it sounds, we were actually having fun with banter and jokes flying around in the pitch black from all around us.

Just after I got back into bed, there was loud ping and I realised one of the poles on my brand new tent had snapped. It was now being held up by a single pole and a wish and a prayer. I was too tired to do anything about it, so I just stayed snuggled in my cocoon. Unfortunately the snapped pole meant the fly over my tent was now loose and also flapping loudly. After a half an hour of trying to ignore it, I was once again back out and trying to tie it down.

An hour or so later the wind was gone and I can remember thinking, "finally I might be able to get some sleep!" Not two minutes later the rain started. And this wasn't a nice summer shower. It was torrential. It was the kind of rain that causes flash floods and turns cement dry land into a quagmire in seconds.

And then the lightening began. At first it was a fair distance and I enjoyed listening to the rain bucket down and the rolling thunder off in the distance, snug in the dry warmth of my crippled tent. But that distance was slowly diminishing. Eventually there was one that hit so close, the light and sound were simultaneous. I believe it couldn't have been any more than 500 meters away... and possibly much closer.

Finally about 5:30am, after no sleep, people started climbing out of their respective dwellings and surveyed the damage. Obviously the ground was drenched and covered in puddles. It had got so soft that one of the motorbikes's stand had sunk in the mud, causing the bike to fall over in a puddle about half a food deep (enough to half cover the engine) and break the clutch cable.

There were clothes and things blown away, tents broken, people taking shelter in the near-by public toilets and a lot of tired, wet, bedraggled looking people around.

We started the not so pleasant job of packing up wet stuff and the weather gods decided to help us by opening up the heavens again. Some of the crew decided to make a break for it and headed for the first bus out (which apparently came very late), while the rest of us did the best we could with cleaning up. Eventually when it started dumping down again, we took shelter under a wooden pagoda and after a quick survey, found we had all the makings of a nice hot cuppa under there with us.

After an hour of so sitting around joking and bantering about the weather gods and camping in a hurricane, I decided it was time to suit up and ride Billie back home to pick up Black Betty and come collect the camping equipment. It was a little scary riding Billie back to Wando. I don't mind riding in the rain, but when there is still lightning striking all round and on some parts of the road, I become the tallest thing around, it can be a little intimidating.

We finally got packed up and realised we still had the problem of a motorbike without a clutch and there fore unride-able. We decided the best course was to leave the bike in the town at the beach and the owner could take Black Betty back to Mokpo, then on Tuesday, I would go back, fix the bike and ride it back to Mokpo for her.

So we finally made it back to my appartment, dripping wet, dog tired and in good spirits. I realised that it was only 11am (I felt like it must be 5pm by this time... that's what you get when you wake up with the sun) and decided it was a great time to cook up breakfast.

I fried up a feast of sausages, bacon, eggs, toast and some lamb curry and we all happily chowed down.

In the end, it was a great adventure and even with the rain, wind and lack of sleep, I had a lot of fun.

I just hope next time the nasty weather gods will go pick on someone else!