Ann and I met at Gasworks this morning for a 40 mile ride around the south end of the lake. We both questioned our sanity as we bundled up in lots of layers. Once we warmed up, it was a great ride even though we both were suffering a bit near the end. No speed records were broken but it was entirely appropriate for January base training. The company was exceptional!

40 Mile Ride @ 03:00:00

I have been encouraged to write down some of the thoughts I have have about an upcoming trip, and figured this is the only place I write consistently so I am going to give it a try here. I have decided to run the Seoul Marathon this March. The race is not nearly as significant as the location because I was born there, lived the first three years of my life there and have not been back since.

It is a place I wonder about every day and have always planned to go to at some point but could never find a clear destination for that journey. I started the search through my adoption agency for my birth family over 3 years ago but have never heard anything. I have no illusion that this journey will lead to any answers about where I came from but I need to see, smell, experience this place that imprinted me so powerfully even though I have yet to retain even a wisp of a memory from my early years.

I decided to do the marathon because that is my place of comfort and it will help to ground (exhaust) me as I travel with the range of emotions that will surround me. Tonight, we are going to the Wing Luke Museum to hear Grace Cho, who is the author of Haunting the Korean Diaspora: Shame, Secrecy and the Forgotten War. I believe that when one is determined to go down a difficult path, the universe offers all the information, help and support needed. I am a product of that war and this not entirely painless step is one to be taken today.