Ring of Fury

I did it. I made it to the first ever South Korean International Grand Prix. Okay, I make that sound far more special than it actually is, but it was a great time to a) watch Formula 1 for the first time and b) only have to travel 10 minutes in traffic from my apartment. The day before the big event I didn't think I was going to be able to go, since I didn't feel like shelling out several hundred for tickets--and some shifty Facebook free ticket scheme (not surprisingly) fell through for 90% of the people involved. On the Facebook note, I get an email three weeks ago (I'm in a Mokpo Facebook group) purporting free tickets for all the foreigners in the area. Granted I would be silly to have faith in something like this, but it turns out I couldn't get the tickets anyway because they required a foreigner ID number at the gates: this is the number that every teacher in Korea has except FBers. You have to have it to do internet banking; to use the internet at Starbucks, hence its probably the only downside of my "diplomatic" visa versus whatever everyone else gets. I guess the U.S. ambassador can't use the internet at Starbucks; that makes me feel a little bit better. Well in the end, they only gave out 1/10 of the tickets they promised, so I would have likely been stranded anyway.

Not to worry though, the week of the race my host Dad got 4 tickets in the mail from some friend and decided I could use a couple of them for the day. Here's to you Pong Kil. Anyway, come race weekend Mokpo was swamped. The track is brand new--only cleared for racing a week ago--so everything, including traffic management, was thrown together like an eskimo luau. No worries though, I got there despite meeting the first dishonest cabbie since coming to Korea. Apparently he thought every foreigner at the race knew nothing of Korea, so he 'forgot' to turn on the meter and tried to charge us thirty for the ride. I said hell no, gave him twenty for the trouble and left...he didn't fight and only gave me this pouty look so I felt satisfied with the haggling.

Alright, to the race. Racing = awesome, everything else = *insert your favorite sad korean emoticon. That didn't spoil the fun though, even if they ran out of food before I got there. That's actually another first, Korea NEVER runs out of food; you never go home hungry--except at Formula 1. Apparently we (Jing and I) had great seats. I would agree; since it was at a switchback and you could actually see the cars for a minute before the blast by at 220 mph. I got to play around with some action shots on the DSLR, always a good time, and proceed to go a little more deaf every time another car flew by. These cars are beasts. Machined and driven to perfection by the best of the best, it's always fun to see the pinnacle of any sporting genre. To be perfectly honest I don't know all that much about the sport; I know a handful of racers and the general history/purpose, but that didn't stop me from enjoying the gleaming mechanical perfection as the cars fly in, brake on a dime, and speed off before you realize you dropped a doozie in your pants. The thing about sitting at one place in any racetrack (probably the same for any racing event) is that you get to the see the same thing, over, and over, and over again. With that said, I didn't fully realize this until long after thoroughly enjoying the spectacle. The flip side is that I never would have paid W660,000 (around $600) to sit in the same place and watch the same thing over and over again. I guess you have to pay to play--but since I didn't pay I have no complaints and only the warmest feelings for Korean Formula 1, even if they ran out of food.