Category: Travel

Posted on

Roughing it at Pedernales Falls State Park

One of my church friends, Chung, organized a camping trip opportunity so I hopped on.  So six guys set out to rough it out.  Our destination: Pedernales Falls State Park.  It’s a state park about half hour west of Austin.  Here’s the who:

That’s Yong on the left, Mike in the center, and Ken on the right.

Chung was the driver, I sat in the forward middle (which sucked!) and Walter on the passenger side.

The drive was just shy of four hours from the west side of Houston.  Here’s the group shot.

We camped at the primitive site, which meant no running water or electricity.  And this required about a two-mile hike into the site from the parking lot. Here’s some pictures of the hike into the site.

Chung is hard-core when it comes to nature and roughing it.  He’s from Canada after all!!  :p  But it was Mike’s first time and I hadn’t camped in over 10 years!  Last time was at Grand Canyon back in ’96!  Yikes… That’s Walter in the back and as a seasoned hiker, he hiked slowly and eventually I realized he was doing it deliberately to cover the rear and leaving no one left behind, mainly me.  So I really appreciated that.

Here’s a shot of Mike after his very first tent put up!

And Chung & Walter brought burners (since there was a burn ban in place) for cooking.  Leave it to Chung to bring steak to “rough” it!!  LOL.

Yong had brought cup ramen for dinner!  But one of the best had to be Ken’s choice from REI.  They evidently sell these meals in packets where you just pour hot water in the pouch, shake and then eat!  Awesome idea!  The only downside is the rather high sodium content!!  >.<

Here are some night shots…

Mike with his “head lamp”. And at night, the moon was almost full so we could actually see our path in the dark!

And because we didn’t realize they had no water at the site, after dinner, we hiked back to the parking lot to get more water!  So the first night, we had already hiked about 2 and 1/2 hours!  >.<

Day 2, we decided to hike to the top of Wolf “Mountain”.  Why did I put it in quotes?!  That’s because the top really wasn’t a mountain!

Above picture is a site where someone USED to live in!  Wow… now, THAT’s roughing it!!  After we had snack lunch at the “top”, we hiked back down and set out.  However, we did stop by the falls…

And to finish the day, we stopped by the good ol’ BBQ at the Salt Lick BBQ for late lunch/early dinner!  If you are ever near the area, you should definitely check it out!!

All in all, as sore as I am, I really enjoyed the time.  I had needed to get away from work and the busy craziness of life to get released from it all.  Additionally, I had great time getting to know Walter, catch up with Yong, and just chuckle at Chung and Mike.  I wish Ken would walk slower and get to know us but he was all about getting through the hike.  It definitely was a great bonding experience overall.  I am just scared to go again with Chung next time though… since he keeps on saying that he won’t be as “lenient” next time.

Posted on

Flight Scare with Anna

So we got on the flight to DFW (Dallas Fort Worth) and half hour into the flight, Anna comlained of sharp pain in her side.  It was bad enough that she started to cry.  Soojin got scared… her mom had appendicitis and the symptoms seemed to be similar…. pain coming and going.

When we landed, Soojin asked ME what we should do.  Let me just say, it’s freakin’ huge responsibility to be responsible for one life, let alone three!  I wasn’t sure of what to do… but with a child traveling and less than an hour to our connecting flight, I figured it’s better safe than sorry.

So I asked for the paramedics.  They came and started to look at Anna.  She was still complaining of pain.  They didn’t think it was appendicitis and when they had asked me if we wanted Anna taken to hospital, I decided that we’d try to wait it out as our flight now was gone and had to get on a different flight.

At that point, I had missed a call from Paul Minifee.  When I had called back, his father Dr. Paul Minifee, was next to him.  You see, he’s a senior doctor at Children’s Hospital in Houston!  So with such awesome knowledge available, I laid the concerns to him.  He then asked if Anna’s appetite was gone.  She said she was hungry.  He then asked if Anna could touch her toes quickly without bending her knees.  And she could.  Dr. Minifee said that if she had appendicitis, she wouldn’t have appetite nor be able to bend and touch toes w/o pain in the side.  Whew.

Got off the phone.  I held Anna and started rubbing her back… felt bit of knots on her left spine so I massaged that away.  Then everyone (except me) wanted pizza for lunch so we ate that. Anna felt better by this point and when we walked over to the other gate for our new connecting flight, I was worried that we wouldn’t get on…  but I guess the other agent had left note on our case and reason for missing the previous flight ’cause the new one called me as Mr. Jang and asked me about how Anna was doing, and that they’d get us seats soon.

Though they had charged us $60 for luggage ($15 X 4), at least their service didn’t suck.  We finally flew into La Guardia airport and we were welcomed with NYC’s finest drivers and 2 hour traffic.  But we are home.  Thank God.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Posted on

I got hacked! Part II – PayPal

I wake up this morning and get two e-mails from PayPal. They are receipts that get sent automatically upon paying someone. www.chinesetravler.com I don’t recognize the site and checked it out. The whole site is in Chinese!! 😡 My account got hacked obviously so I logged in to change password and such and then file a claim for unauthorized payments.

Later on, the website personnel called me to confirm if this was my own doing or not.  Of course, I told him it wasn’t.  I also filed for them to look into this case.  While it’s not much, $52.50 total, it’s the CONCEPT that they could’ve taken a whole lot more!

Lessons learned:

  • Make your passwords stronger by using non-words only that you know
  • Change the passwords frequently.

I hope this doesn’t happen again.

Posted on

Getaway Trip to Austin

So since I had free time and being more flexible, I decided to head up to Austin to see some friends I hadn’t seen in years!

I got hold of Minkyung who was visiting her mom in Kileen, and went to see her.  She is now a mother of two!  😮  Her one-year-old daughter was sleeping so she came out with just her 4-year-old daughter.  She is very cute and looks and acts just like her mom.

After that, I came down to have dinner with two Young Nak members:  Taeyoung and Sungsoo.  Taeyoung is still as well-behaved as ever… and still calls me “ah-juh-ssi”!  LOL.  I suppose I deserve that since she’s 20!  😛  Sungsoo, who is now 23, was becoming a very thoughtful man.  For those that know him, I knew him when he was in high school and has always had attitude with him.  So I was very pleasantly shocked to find out he’s been teaching Sunday school, taking kids on mission trips and such.  God does do miracles after all!!  LOL…

Then, I went to visit the newlywed, Sunhee.  It happened that Chancety was in town as well, so I got to see those … along with Sunhee’s wife.  It was good just hanging out and catching up.  I was just glad to see him doing well…

Then thanks to Joe John, I had a place to sleep for the night!  😀  After church at good ol’ AKPC, I had lunch with Young Ji, young Hwa, and Hakbum, and good ol’ time catching up on everyone…

Afterwards, I tried to see if I could visit Daniel and Amanda but they were busy.  But thankfully, Karen noona and her family were free!  So I went to visit them in south Austin and had good time catching up sharing about everything from raising kids to Korean culture.

I realized that it really isn’t that far from PS’ house to Austin!  It’s only a little over 2 hours!  And I wasn’t even speeding!!  Anyhow, I hadn’t seen some of these people for 5 years!  When I visit Dallas, I will be seeing people that I hadn’t seen in longer time than that!!  Yikes!

Posted on

Finally in Korea!

After what felt like days, we are finally in Korea!

The flight from Houston to San Francisco was ok but JJ developed some kind of fever and was very cranky.  🙁  So at the wonderful airport of San Francisco, we got him some medications.  On the flight to Korea, Singapore Airline was great.  Service was more than terrific as the stewards and stewardesses kept checking up on us, the mere economy class, and took extra care and time on the kids.  However, food sucked still.  Badly.  Worse than some other airlines, including Korean Air.

Overall, I felt like a zombie on the plane.  But I managed to stay awake till midnight (locally) so I am somewhat adjusted to the time zone here now.  Now, bring on the food!!  😛

Posted on

My Trip out to Huntington Beach and LA

So for work reasons, I had to fly out here to Huntington Beach area.

My layover was in Las Vegas, and though I only had 10 minutes inbetween connection flights, I had time to take pictures…

Due to constricted schedule, I couldn’t go to the beach… so on Tuesday night when I flew in, I barely had time to eat dinner with a long-time friend of mine, Roland.  He is now in southern Cali doing what he wants to do: counseling.

Then after horrendously long 8-hour presentations, I headed up to K-Town area to meet up another long-time friend of mine: Dan Suh.   He was my roommate back in ’95 when Won Lee was our 3rd roomie.

And guess what?!!  Won Lee calls me (that’s who Dan is talking to!) and he’s freakin’ getting married in Anaheim in August 16th!!  Won Lee is a character…  but Dan is now a college pastor at Onnuri in LA area.  If you are looking for good down-to-earth pastor, check his church out.

Danny Rhee!  Oh he was my favorite to hang out with when I was in Austin!  Why?  ‘Cause he was the only one that would laugh at my ssul-lung (off-the-wall, random) jokes!!  😛  Good kid, but I learned that he had a tough life.  To talk more, we went to hang out at the infamous…  Pinkberry!

We talked for about 3 hours there… God did some amazingly cool (and funny) stuff with (and in) Danny’s life!!

While it was great to see them, I still am bummed that I didn’t get to see KJ Ahn (now an associate EM pastor at Young Nak, I believe).  Maybe next time…  nonetheless, it was great to see them all…

Posted on

Travel Update

Well, I am now in Dulles Airport in Washington, DC!

It took us another day to get this far!  It’s a long story and I will save that for another day… but we’ve been stuck here for nearly 8 hours!!  Ahhhhhhhhhhh…!!!!