China – Olympic Venues (Bird’s Nest and AquaCube) September 20, 2009

Beijing, September 2009

For those who have not seen it in person, the Olympic Track & Field “Bird’s Nest” Stadium is THE most impressive piece of contemporary architecture on the planet.  I realize that not having seen some notable structures up close and personal  (Gehry’s Bilbao Guggenheim, for example), I am in no position to make such a statement, but I’m standing by it nonetheless.  I first saw the stadium, under construction, in a picture in The New Yorker.  Having mistakenly (it happens!) thought that the structure was part of the Tate Modern in London, I found an excuse to visit the Tate and spent a day searching in vain for the improbable, organic, oversized steel form from the magazine.  Later I read the article more carefully and discovered that I had missed the location by 8 or 9 timezones and vowed to one day make a pilgrimage to Beijing.  Opportunity knocked this past week.

The Olympic venues are lit up until 9:30PM most nights.   As colleagues spent the last evening of a 2-day meeting dining together, I guiltily declined their invitation and set off after dark to see the National stadium.  I was so thoroughly enthralled by the Bird’s Nest, AquaCube and Olympic Mall, that I awoke early the next morning and went out again at 6:30AM to take more pictures before my flight home.  I clicked away until my camera registered “Battery Exhausted”.

I let the pictures below speak for themselves.  I show the day shots first, then those taken after dark:

The amazing Bird’s Nest National Stadium

It’s Huge!

Skaters

Rappel practice

AquaCube and the 7-Star Hotel

The Bird’s Nest at night

Bird’s Nest detail

What can I say – I am partial to the letter K

 

The AquaCube

 

For those going to Beijing:  I have visited numerous times.  I have seen the Forbidden City and The Great Wall.  And I have been subjected to Beijing’s general lack of civility and inattention to service.  I AM NOT a a finicky traveller and I did not take offense, but I did notice.  I also noticed that this trip was very different.  Post-Olympic Beijing is a qualitatively different experience.  The air is cleaner.  The people are nicer.   The service is better.  The city planted almost a million trees in the run up to the Games and they created many magnificent public spaces.  I understand that they also made attempts to teach some English to every taxi driver and to train all hotel workers how to deliver Western-style service and amenities.  Travel here is much easier and much nicer than before.  I would never have recommended Beijing as a travel destination before, but cannot help but do so now.  I get a chance to go back and test this theory in November!

StelvioBike September 8, 2009

Stelvio Pass Bike Ride – Switzerland, August 28, 2009

This picture scared the bejesus out of me: a 100 km ride with a sustained 2300m (7,545.91 ft) climb as its centerpiece.

The Classic Stelvio Pass Postcard

In January, I had spoken to my friend Ruedi and he had suggested that we do the StelvioBike ride in Switzerland on Saturday August 28, the day before a scientific seminar in Bremen Germany and, coincidentally, the one day this year that the pass is closed to auto traffic.  In my mind, this outing took the form of a quick little detour to Switzerland during a planned biz trip to Germany.  With a typically-compromised, US-centric view of European geography, this seemed perfectly reasonable to me.  With a work-centric, typically-compromised training program to prepare for such a ride, this also seemed somehow possible to me.  What the hell…why not?

Of such stupidity are true adventures born!

Web sites devoted to the Stelvio scared me enough that, mercifully, one reality did in fact sear itself into my brain.  The ride was big enough that I would need to train…at least a bit.  In typical-Ken fashion I tortured myself, thinking about the thousands of dollars I would need to part with to get a suitable road bike.  I shopped.  I kept picking out the top-of-the-line bikes…and not buying them.  A neighbor and friend, Jeff, put me out of my misery by selling me one of his many used bikes (allowing him to outfit a sweet new ride!).

Logistics!  I ended up having to fly to Switzerland from Korea.  SFO, Korea (see previous Jeju Island post), Frankfurt, Zurich.  Drive with Ruedi to the Swiss Alps…dinner with his friends…do the ride.  Get back to Zurich.  Jump on a plane.  Go to Germany.

The morning that I was leaving Korea, I found out that Ruedi had crashed on his mountain bike and broken his collar bone.  He was clearly sidelined and I thought (with a certain sense of relief) that the Stelvio was over for me before it had even started.   Hey – I had got a road bike and I had trained a bit, so it had not been a complete waste!  When I spoke to him in person, Ruedi took a somewhat different approach to his injury – all the plans had been made, he said, and I “might as well” do the ride on his bike.  Celise provided similar encouragement.

So I arrived in Zurich at about midnight on Thursday night, rented a car, Stayed the night.  Friday – Ruedi spared me having to navigate Zurich to find his home – he brought his bike to my hotel.  I loaded it up and drove through the Alps (Davos, Flualapass, Zernez…) to the SMALL town of Cinous-Chel on Friday, and had a delightful dinner with Ruedi’s friends.

Bridge on the way to Davos

I woke to persistent rain the next morning (again thinking with a less-certain sense of relief that this might mean the ride was off…).  Defying the weather, I followed Ruedi’s friends south toward the darkening skies of the Italian border to Santa Maria, Switzerland, with wipers running the whole time.  We mounted up and rode.  We crossed into Italy and descended to Prato, 500m elevation.  In Prato, the “biking buzz” was palpable with hundreds of cyclists making their way to the Stelvio Pass road.  French, German, Spanish, & Italian were spoken by the riders around me and were clearly visible on club attire.  All of a sudden, we made a right turn and the next bit of downhill on the road before us was atop the Stelvio Pass, 26 km ahead.  This is an uninterrupted climb of 2260m…something like 7,500ft…with an average grade of about 11% (max 14%).  The ride climbs a fabled series of 48 hairpin turns as it ascends relentlessly up a ridiculously steep Italian hillside.  I decided early on that survival was a good theme for the day – I just needed to not panic, stay focused, and pedal consistently all the way to the top.  That is exactly what I did, stopping only very occasionally to snap some pics.  Here they are:

The first of 48 notoriously steep switchbacks

Climbing into the clouds and rain - relentlessly UP

Scenic - toe of the glacier behind the clouds

Steep series of switchbacks

STEEP! (did I mention that it was steep?)

Up and up and up and up and up...

26 km, 7500+ ft and more than 2 hours later - THE SUMMIT

Freezing - time to descend

After the summit, the road tips down the other side and falls back down to Santa Maria in one long, steep descent.  We met at a restaurant after, shared a heifeweizen and a soup and went our separate ways – them back to Cinous-Schel for more riding the next day…me to Zurich, and a 7AM flight the next  morning to Frankfurt, Bremen and the International Mass Spectrometry Conference.

I won’t say that this was fun.   Too many complicated logistics and no Ruedi.  But it is a great thing to have done.  Once!

Ruedi provided some scenic pics from previous years’ rides when the weather had been sunny and warm:

Clear day - glacier

Looking up at the climb to the pass

Jeju Island, Korea September 1, 2009

Jeju Island – August 2009

Korean colleagues get that far-away look in their eyes and that longing tone in their voice when they speak of Jeju Island.  It is a world heritage site with many cultural, culinary, and natural attractions – most prominently the 1950m Mt. Halla volcano at the islands center.  Apparently the diving is world-class, and, as always, there is plenty of golf!  Korea has taken steps to preserve Jeju’s natural state, such as a strict ban on manufacturing on the island and designation of the entire coast as a marine preserve.  Koreans are proud of Jeju Island – and they flock to it!

Having overcome the combined deficits of no cell phone (my Blackberry was incommunicado!), no access to local currency (BofA helpfully disabled my ATM card the first time I tried to use it!), incorrectly booked flight to Jeju (itinerary had me staying for 2 days at Incheon airport!) and senses dulled by jetlag, I was able to catch a bus from Incheon to Gimpo airport and get on a standby flight to Jeju on Friday night.  I boarded late and took the last seat in a plane chock full of inquisitive Koreans.  This left we with a weekend to catch up on work – and explore.  The weather was hot and HUMID. 

I stayed in the Jungmun Beach Resort area and was able to see:

Yeomiji Botanical Gardens – nothing noteworthy.

 

Lotus pod

Seriously GREEN water in the Italian garden

Cheonjiyeon Waterfalls and the beautiful Seonimgyo Bridge of the Seven Fairies Legend. (Cheonjiyeon Waterfall is also referred as “God’s Pond.”  In legend, the seven fairies who serve the King of Heaven descended to the pond below the waterfall on stairs made of clouds to bath in its pristine water.)  Definitely worth a visit!

 

The Seven Fairies Bridge on the way to the falls

Crossing the Seven Fairies Bridge

The Falls

 

Jungmun Beach: not quite up to California beach standards…

Jungmun Beach

Statistically safe watersports

Gaetggak basalt beach – a beautiful, remote beach accessable from the Hyatt.

Beautiful basalt beach

And some interesting random sights:

Sea wall

 

Woman with yachts

I specifically avoided the world famous Teddy Bear Museum.

 

Hallasan Park with the Mt. Halla volcano, lava tubes, caves, etc. will have to await my next visit.  As will Jeju’s 300 or so lesser volcanoes.

I was lucky enough to witness one volcanic eruption during my stay.  Improbably, a 100-foot igneous rock mass rises from the rim of a clear, palm-lined pool.  We were having dinner at a restaurant in the area and were startled by belches of fire coming suddenly from the volcano.  We left our table and rushed to a viewing platform as the eruption gathered momentum.  Red and purple colored lava began to gush down as huge flames leapt from the volcano and the pool at it’s base.  Then a 30-foot tall fire-breathing dragon emerged from the pool and battled another large, green-eyed serpent that came from a cave in the volcano, roaring loudly and accompanied by a dramatic musical score.  This seismic event occurs with even greater regularity than Yellowstone’s Old Faithful geyser: it can be seen every night at 8PM in the pool area of the expansive Lotte Resort.  This and many other wonders await you on Jeju!!