making a bug-out bag in Korea

Do you know what a bug-out bag is?

If you don't, follow that link and read the article. You'll need some context. I'll wait.

In case you're too lazy to do that, though, let me just give you the skinny: the term "bugging out" means evacuating your home due to fire, earthquake, poison gas leak, alien invasion...or war. A bug-out bag is an emergency kit, personally assembled by you, a forward-thinking human being, in case you have to be away from your home for 72 hours.

The only natural disasters that face Seoul on a regular basis are monsoons, fires, and maybe the occasional tsunami. (Japan does a pretty good job of soaking up all the typhoons and earthquakes that come this way, though.)

You have to remember, though, what's sitting just 60 kilometers (37 miles) north of this city.

That's right. North Korea.

On Wednesdays I have no class, which means I get to putter around doing whatever I want. Today even more so: I had no choice but to moon around the apartment all day waiting for the deliveryman to arrive with the Coleman waterproof matches I ordered from Gmarket. I bought myself a Stanwell beechwood pipe and some tobacco a month ago, but I've been dogged by the lack of proper lighting materials. You can't use a Zippo to light a pipe, 'cause the butane makes the tobacco taste funny. Moreover, you have to hold the lighter upside-down, and that singes your fingers. Wooden matches, however, neither taint the flavor of your smoke nor char the rim of your pipe. So I had my heart set on matches. After a fruitless search through every grocery mart, convenience store and bar in my area, I found them on Gmarket and ordered them. They were due to arrive today, and the deliveryman wouldn't just leave them at the door; I had to receive them personally. So I couldn't leave.

To pass the time, I watched the 2012 movie Red Dawn.

And suddenly I thought of a much better use for those Coleman waterproof matches.

The movie made me realize just how unprepared Miss H and I were for a disaster—of any kind. She and I have talked about preparing bug-out bags for months now, ever since we moved into our new place in East Seoul. We did all the usual stay-at-home preparations, like compiling our important documents, files, IDs, bankbooks and passports into one convenient and safe location, buying eight liters of emergency water, acquiring flashlights and lanterns and candles and a fire extinguisher, et cetera. But somehow we never got around to putting together a bug-out bag. Senseless, I know. A 72-hour emergency kit would be invaluable in case we had to leave the apartment (and, say, assemble at Jamsil Stadium for evacuation by the U.S. Army as North Korean troops overrun the DMZ).

So I resolved to fix this inadequacy this very afternoon. After taking delivery of the matches, I stuck six boxes into my Timberland® 20-liter backpack. (The other six boxes will go into my drawer with my pipe.)

And that was the start of it all. I hunted high and low through the apartment and located some other items to stick in:

• 2 cans of tuna
• Nature Valley® granola bars
• 2 flashlights
• a deck of cards
• plastic sporknife (yes, they exist)
• diarrhea medication
• multitool
• first-aid kit
• sunblock
• lens wipes
• 2 liters of water
• complete change of clothes
• Colgate® WISP™ toothbrushes
• lensatic compass
• Ziploc® bags
• vitamin tablets
• cash and coins

Noticing that there were several items on my list that just weren't in the apartment, I hopped the subway across the river to Cheonho and went to E-Mart. There, I acquired the following:

• Ottogi tuna (2 bundles of 3 cans, ₩3960 apiece)
• bowls of prepared rice (pack of 3, ₩3450)
• Diget chocolate biscuits (₩1580)
• Dr. You granola bars (2 boxes of 4, ₩3980 apiece)
• kitchen knife (₩2000)
• small paring knife (₩1000)
• folding knife (₩5100)
• hand saw (₩7900)
• folding trowel (₩7500)
• packet of quick-start charcoal (₩1360)
• camping rope (6mm x 10m, ₩2,900)
• duct tape (10 meters, ₩1350)

The items remaining on my list are:

• glow sticks (for when flashlights fail)
• hand-cranked radio
• ponchos
• tarp
• space blankets
• signal mirror (though I think I'll just use the small shaving mirror in my grooming kit)
• safety whistle
• camp axe

I'll have to get these either at Homeplus (which is a subsidiary of Tesco, and generally better stocked than E-Mart) or a camping supply store.

Some of you might scoff at the completeness of this list. "What do you need a hand axe for?" you'll ask. Good question. Hopefully, we'll never need it. But just in case the North Koreans come storming across that border faster than expected (or they bring some Chinese or Russian friends with them), I want to be ready. The worst-case scenario here is Miss H and I hiking through the wild hills of K-Land trying to get back behind friendly lines, or make our way down to Busan to catch a boat for Japan. If we have to rough it for a few days, at least I'll have the tools, ropes, tarps, and matches I need to make our campsites comfortable. Even if the North Koreans never invade (or the zombies never attack, it don't matter to me) we'll at least have a well-stocked supply kit for untoward exigencies.

One more thing.

You'll notice that I entitled this post "making a bug-out bag in Korea."

The emphasis was intentional. There are some items which I would normally include in my bug-out bag, but can't, because I live in Korea. The first one, obviously, is this:

A gun, stupid.

When disaster strikes, people go crazy. Ain't no denying that. I think K (Tommy Lee Jones's character from the Men in Black franchise) said it best:  "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it." So when the crap hits the fan and looters take to the streets, I want to be prepared to defend what's mine: my life, my property and my loved ones. I have to be honest: as an American, I'm a bit uncomfortable living in a country that doesn't allow private gun ownership, especially when there's a militaristic regime lurking on the horizon.

The second item is this:

It's a survival knife, in case you didn't know. An Aitor Jungle King II, to be exact. I haven't really shopped around and chosen the survival knife that best suits me, but this is pretty much what I'm looking for: a straight blade with a saw-edge and a good long grip with a lanyard ring. A splendid knife for cutting branches, skinning game, or personal defense.

Korea has this thing about knives, though. Turns out that any pocketknife with a blade longer than six centimeters (a paltry 2.36 inches) is classified as a "sword" under Korean law, and requires a "sword permit." This means that the 10-inch Bowie knife I have in my footlocker back in California would get me chucked in jail over here. Bollocks. I'm not sure what the laws concerning non-folding or straight-bladed knives are like, but I have a feeling they're similarly restrictive. The three knives I bought today at E-Mart were an attempt to ameliorate this deficiency.

And there you have it! My Korean bug-out bag. Once I acquire those last few vital items (particularly the tarp and ponchos), Miss H and I will be well ahead of any disaster which fickle chance decides to throw at us. With any luck, we'll never need this stuff, but it sure will be nice to have on hand.

And if we want to go camping, we're already packed...

sunken ships and captured forts

A Korean junk, circa 1871. (Photo taken by U.S. military personnel; courtesy of Wikipedia.)

Did you think the Korean War of 1950-1953 was the first U.S. military action on the Korean peninsula?

Have you ever wondered who the first American soldiers to receive Medals of Honor in a foreign conflict were? And which conflict it was? 

You're about to discover the truth.

The year was 1866. The American Civil War had recently come to an end. The heart-rending, gut-wrenching conflict was finally behind us, and the process of reconstruction was underway. America now gazed across the oceans, seeking new horizons, searching for trade partners, hoping enterprise would soothe its bruised soul. Commodore Matthew Perry had pried Japan open with a crowbar in 1854, and U.S. interests had been entrenched in China for decades. Korea had been on the table since 1844, neglected due to lack of interest. American eyes now turned to the isolationist empire on its small peninsula. It offered a tempting and pristine target for merchants and traders.

On August 16, 1866, a merchant marine side-wheel steamer named the General Sherman puffed into Korean waters. Belonging to the British trading firm Meadows & Co., the 187-ton Sherman carried a cargo of cotton, tin and glass, hoping to entice the Koreans into a trade partnership. The Sherman was also heavily armed, just in case the Koreans weren't in a listening mood. She was crewed by a Captain Page, Chief Mate Wilson, and almost twenty Chinese and Malay sailors. Also aboard were the ship's owner, W.B. Preston (American) and Robert Jermain Thomas, a Protestant missionary and the excursion's official interpreter. Assisted by Chinese junks, the General Sherman steamed up the Taedong River and anchored just outside the Geupsa gate, at the border of the Pyongan and Hwanghae Provinces.

The traders established contact with the Koreans and told them they wanted to dicker. The Koreans refused, but agreed to supply the foreigners with provisions. The Sherman was told to wait at the Geupsa gate until the Korean regent could be consulted. He would then either send the envoy home or invite them into Pyongyang. For unclear reasons, however, the Sherman weighed its anchor and steamed further upriver, eventually running aground on an island in the midst of Pyongyang. A Korean ambassador was sent to the ship with an offering of food, and a stern warning: the ship must return to the Geupsa gate, or all aboard would be killed.

This is where accounts get muddled. The Koreans claim that the foreigners kidnapped the ambassador and held him hostage. They demanded to be allowed inside the city and even went so far as to fire the ship's cannons into the crowd which had gathered on the banks of the river. This went on for four days. More envoys were sent, words were exchanged, and the vessel kept firing its guns up and down the riverside.

Reality check, here. I'm not an apologist, but I find it difficult to believe that a trading ship would just up and start a war on an isolated nation for no reason. Doing so would hardly have been profitable. More likely there was some massive misunderstanding that took place. The Reverend Thomas was the only Westerner aboard who could speak Korean, and no one knows exactly what his level of proficiency was. After living in this country for almost 21 nonconsecutive months, I'm well aware of just how easy it is to cause massive misunderstandings. The language barrier is pretty thick here. The cultural discrepancies between Korea and the Western world don't seem great at first, but they can sneak up on you. And Koreans wear their hearts on their sleeves: they will react passionately and vehemently if something untoward happens, and they will correct forcibly if they can't make themselves understood. Perhaps Thomas, Captain Page or Mr. Preston all underestimated their hosts' magnanimity. Perhaps they just failed to keep their minds, eyes and ears open.

Whatever the cause of the misunderstanding was, it cost them their lives. The Koreans tied several boats together and filled them with wood, sulphur and saltpeter. They set them aflame and sent them drifting toward the General Sherman. The first two boats left the steamer unscathed, but the third lit her up like a Christmas tree. Unable to quench the blaze, her crew dived into the water, where the Koreans unceremoniously beat them to death.

And so ends the first part of my story. The second now begins.

Nobody knew what had become of the General Sherman, but since there had been American nationals aboard her, it was a cause of concern for the United States of America. So, in 1871, a military expedition to Korea was mounted. Its mission was to ascertain the fate of the Sherman and her crew, protect a new diplomatic legation being sent to open trade routes with the peninsula, and to establish a treaty with Koreans for the protection of shipwrecked sailors. (The Joseon Dynasty, like the Tokugawa shogunate, took a rather dim view of castaway foreigners on its shores.)

American history books (if they mention it at all) call this the 1871 Korean Expedition. The Koreans call it the Sinminyangyo, and it was centered on an island in the Han River estuary called Ganghwa-do. It already had a history of punitive incursions; the French had mounted a military expedition there in 1866, the same year the Sherman was destroyed. The Japanese would later invade there in 1875, and shanghai the Korean regent into signing a trade agreement, thereby ending the Joseon Dynasty's isolationist policies.

The American warships first attempted peaceful overtures, but the local officials dodged the subject of the Sherman incident, perhaps to avoid having to pay recompense. The Americans stated their intention to explore the region peacefully. Official Joseon policy, however, forbade foreign ships on the Han River, which led directly to Seoul. So the Korean troops fired on the American ships from their stone forts on Ganghwa's heights, without inflicting much damage. The Americans demanded an apology within 10 days. None was forthcoming, so on June 10, 650 American sailors and Marines off the Colorado, Alaska, Palos, Monocacy, and Benicia landed at Ganghwa-do. They stormed several Korean forts on the island, one after the other. Set against them were some hundreds of Korean regulars, known as the "Tiger-Hunters" and led by General Eo Jae-yeon.

Another Wikipedia image. This is a posed photo, but these are the U.S. Navy commanders. That's Admiral John Rodgers, the expedition's commander, leaning over the table on the right.

The account of the action is quite thrilling, and can be read in detail here. Suffice it to say that about 250 Koreans armed with outdated matchlock muskets were killed, for the loss of three Americans. The fort defenders were easily defeated by the better-armed Americans, who were also aided by artillery fire from the Monocacy. Five Korean forts were taken, as well as numerous prisoners. The Americans hoped to use these spoils as bargaining chips to force the Joseon rulers to the table. No dice. The Koreans refused to negotiate with the Americans and told them they were welcome to keep the "cowardly" defenders of Ganghwa-do.

So the American ships sailed away to China, and that was the end of it.

But was it? This seemingly insignificant action had far-reaching consequences. Firstly, Daewon-gun, the Joseon regent, saw fit to strengthen his isolationist policies in the wake of invasion—to no avail. The Japanese sailed up the Han River in 1875 and threatened to fire on Seoul unless the Koreans agreed to trade. (The Japanese must have taken a leaf out of Perry's book, huh?) Trade agreements with the Western nations soon followed, including one signed with America in 1882.

Perhaps more importantly, though, nine sailors and six Marines of the American expeditionary force were awarded the Medal of Honor for the actions at Ganghwa-do.

These were the first Medals of Honor ever awarded for action in a foreign conflict.

How about that, eh?

AND NOW YOU KNOW...

e-hiatus, day 2

The results are encouraging: I finished reading Transgalactic and got started on a book that Miss H's mum lent me, Race to the South Pole by Roald Amundsen. This will be interesting. I've read Sir Ranulph Fiennes's Race to the Pole, which details Robert Scott's Antarctic foray, and thereby learned about the English perception of their Norwegian competitors; this new book will be the other side of the coin (from the man who actually won the race). 

I didn't touch my phone. I watched the second half of For a Few Dollars More (I watched the first half yesterday to reward myself for knocking 20 pages of my novel out). I checked Facebook, but didn't do anything, except reply to a message from a dear friend whom I don't want to keep waiting for a month. I made a few calls and took a few (one from Helen, our recruiter at ESL Park, who told us that we still don't have all the paperwork we need for a Korean job, and that furthermore no positions will be opening until late February or March). Miss H and I have been in communication via e-mail (due to the ban on texting), and it's strangely exciting: suddenly, instead of microscopic blurbs of information, we can put down our entire thought process and convey a complete message, with salutations and loving farewells attached. It's almost like we're separated by some incalculable distance and are keeping contact through love letters. I never thought e-mail would strike me as a charming way to connect, but due to my submersion in texts, I couldn't gain perspective. This hiatus is already yielding startling and unforeseen revelations.

The only bummer about today is that I had to fork over a good portion of my life savings to the bank. I hate bills. Things are becoming desperate. I'm fine for next month, but the month after that might be troublesome. I applied for a bartender's position with the parks & rec district in the next town over, but I've had no word from them yet. All I can do is lounge around in my bathrobe and wait for a miracle.

I busted through two more chapters of the damn novel, trimming, cleaning, snipping, and making general improvements as well as a few major edits. The thing is streamlining nicely. I also cracked open a new book: Get Published, a volume I've owned for some time but never perused at length. Should help me jump-start my writing career, I hope. I can see now that I haven't started yet. I could be submitting articles to High Desert Magazine or the Daily Press (despite my sordid history with that latter organ). I don't have to wait for a book deal. I could get started on this crap now. I think I will tomorrow.

But for now, Clint Eastwood, Lee van Cleef and hot buttered rum shall sustain me.

fortune-hunting for dummies

How does one become a soldier-of-fortune? Is it something you have to work hard at? Do you have to know how to be in the right place at the right time? Or do you just wind up there by chance?

In other words, do I need to work harder at becoming a reckless, wandering rogue, or do I have to wait and seize the opportunity when it arises?

I'm a romanticist. I'll confess the fact openly. Adventure calls to me. Yeah, sure, I hear you scoff. This is the 21st century. Adventures are passé. No one has them anymore. They went out the window a long time ago. The world shrank. The maps were filled in. Technology outran us. The world is safer now than it's ever been...and yet, somehow, more dangerous than ever. That means that (a) either the would-be adventurer just flails around attempting to have adventures and discovers that safety measures and fail-safes and civilization have occluded his efforts, or (b) he is immediately killed in the attempt by a heat-seeking missile or a pissed-off terrorist.

I know adventures are dangerous. I know I'm a foolhardy, air-headed young man with hardly any worldly experience. I know I probably won't last two seconds in the middle of an intrigue or a murder mystery or an international incident. But I can't stand just sitting around and having a normal life, cutting coupons and listening to talk radio. Maybe on my days off I'll do that stuff. For now, however, I seek adventure, and romantic old-fashioned adventure at that.

I've just been reading about a guy named Frederick Townsend Ward. Does that name ring a bell? I thought not. I'd never heard of him before, either. I've never seen his name in any history book. And yet I should've heard about him by now, because he led the sort of life I would've liked to have led if I'd lived in the 1800s. Or any century, really. This guy did it all: ran away to sea, filibustered in Mexico with William Walker, served under Juarez, rode from Mexico to San Francisco on a mule, enlisted in the French Army, served in the Crimean War, resigned after being insubordinate, and finally sailed to China. It's in China that he forged his most enduring legacy: training, commanding, and kicking major ass with the Ever Victorious Army in the Taiping Rebellion.

Now, here's the setup. A fellow named Hong Xiuquan (who was sort of like China's version of Joseph Smith) proclaimed himself to be Jesus Christ's younger brother, set himself up as a prophet, established the Taipei Heavenly Kingdom, declared the ruling Manchu Dynasty to be decadent and sinful, and started a war that would eventually kill 20 million people.

Freddy Ward arrived in Shanghai in 1860, when the Taiping Rebellion was already a decade old. He and his brother had ostensibly come to set up a branch of their father's trading company, but Ward's biographers cite "ulterior motives" for his presence in China. Given that he had spent the last decade as a highly successful mercenary on two continents, we can hazard a guess as to what that purpose might've been. In any case, Ward's brother set up shop while Ward took a job as the executive officer on the Confucius, an armed river gunboat (commanded by a fellow American) in the service of something called "the Shanghai Pirate Suppression Bureau." This was a private paramilitary group put together by Xue Huan and Wu Xu, members of the Shanghai city government, and bankrolled by Yang Fang, a banker and mercantilist from Ningbo.

Sources are somewhat vague on Ward's service record with the Suppression Bureau, but he must've distinguished himself highly. Before the year was out Wu Xu and Yang Fang had contacted Ward and made him an offer he couldn't refuse. Impressed by Ward's lack of racism, his military experience, and his mercenary ambitions, the two Chinese men told Ward that they were organizing a new group, which would become the Foreign Arms Corps, composed primarily of foreigners who could handle firearms and were interested in a free bunk and the spoils of war. Though anxious to keep any association between the Imperial government and the Western powers a secret, Xu and Fang realized that a mercenary army was necessary. Conscripted peasants and poorly-trained Imperial officers simply weren't cutting the mustard against the fanatical Taiping rebels. Fortunately, the Chinese G-men had found the perfect man for the job. Ward immediately agreed to head up the Foreign Arms Corps. He then went straight to the Shanghai wharves and began recruiting every Westerner he could find who could shoot a gun, even if they were too drunk to hold one at the moment.

The start was rocky. Xu, Huan, and Fang were demanding financiers, and Ward was virtually their slave until he had won several impressive victories against Xiuquan's forces. This was not accomplished easily. Though Ward's rowdy crew of sailors, deserters and brigands was equipped with the latest small arms (including Colt revolvers and rifles) they had only begun to train properly before the Manchus sent them out on their first mission. Ward protested, but in vain; at his backers' urging he and his men were forced to accompany an Imperial force to recapture Songjiang, without so much as an artillery piece to back them up. The initial attack failed. The second was successful, but at a heavy price: despite reinforcements of some 80 Filipinos and a couple of artillery pieces, the 250 men of the Foreign Arms Corps lost 62 men, with 100 more wounded, including Ward himself.

Virtually the same thing happened at the town of Chingpu, the FAC's next target, and this time around, the Taiping knew they were coming. The FAC lost half its men, and Ward was shot in the jaw. The musket ball exited his cheek and left him with a speech impediment for the rest of his life.

After resupplying in Shanghai, the FAC attempted to bombard Chingpu into submission, but Li Xuicheng, the Taipings' best general, sent 20,000 men to sweep the attackers off the map. Ward's troops retreated to Shanghai to lick their wounds. Ward himself left the city for a time to get his face fixed, and one of his subordinates (H.A. Burgevine) took over. But Burgevine didn't get along so well with the Manchu management, and after some dust-ups he was arrested and died in an accident.

When Ward returned to Shanghai in 1861, he managed to get the group back together. It wasn't difficult, even after the disastrous defeats the FAC had suffered. The Corps was beginning to make a name for itself. With its advanced weaponry, the puny force had held its own against the Taiping war machine even in defeat. Ward's stock was rising with Chinese civilians. The rogues and deserters and thieves and beggars down on the Shanghai wharves loved him too. With its solid financial basis, the Corps was able to offer extremely lucrative contracts—so lucrative, in fact, that they caused several mass desertions from the British warships in the harbor. This destroyed Ward's standing among the foreign powers, who already saw him as a filibustering, money-hungry brigand and a loose cannon. His forays against the Taiping rebels threatened trade routes and destabilized diplomatic relations. So ticked were the foreign powers that they issued a warrant for Ward's arrest. Realizing that sitting in a jail cell might impede his efforts to stuff a Bible down Hong Xiuquan's ugly neck, Ward opted for Chinese citizenship. He then led a bunch of new recruits into a third engagement at Chingpu, which likewise disastrously failed.

Then Ward sat down and had himself a think. It was no good. This kind of war was doomed to failure. He had a bunch of boisterous, drunken, disorderly vagabonds who depended largely upon the element of surprise and superior weaponry to get the job done. Furthermore, they were being pushed, nudged, chivvied and shoved into battle by their corporate sponsors in Shanghai, who desperately wanted victory and didn't care about training their troops. So Ward decided that, from now on, he would recruit the local Chinese into his army. These he would meticulously train and properly discipline into an effective fighting force.

Here, I can more adequately explain this with pictures. Freddy Ward was going to turn his army from this:

...into this.

And he succeeded. He set up a training camp in Shanghai where, aided by the most skilled survivors of the old Corps, plus a bunch of hardasses from the regular Imperial Army, he trained a crack outfit of 1000-plus Chinese troops (uniformed, helmeted, equipped and well-paid). He pronounced them ready for action in January 1862. This was timely, as Taiping forces had just re-invaded the region with 120,000 troops, bent on capturing Shanghai.

This time things were different.

With only 500 men, Ward drove a vastly superior force from their fortified positions in Wu-Sung in the middle of January. Shortly thereafter, at the city of Guangfulin, the Imperial troops demoralized and scattered twenty thousand rebels. In ensuing weeks, Ward and his hand-trained Chinese soldiers (with a little help from the Imperials) routed the Taiping from several cities near Songjiang. Thousands of rebels were killed or wounded. Ward himself suffered several wounds, which included getting his finger shot off.

Li Xiucheng, the Taiping army's best general (remember?), went out of his skull when he heard about all this. He sent a host of 20,000 men to attack Songjiang and crush Ward. Ward had about 1500 men to defend the city, and performed with flying colors. As the rebels approached, they came under fire from hidden artillery positions. Two thousand men were mowed down instantly. Like lightning Ward's infantry charged out of Songjiang and captured 800 more, in addition to some supply barges on the river. The rest of the rebel army beat a hasty retreat. The Chinese peasants in the surrounding countryside went mad with joy and hailed Ward as a living god. There was no longer any question about financial backing from Shanghai or Imperial military support. Ward had made his name at last, and his contingent was dubbed "the Ever Victorious Army." Ward was given an official title under Imperial law, an exceedingly high honor for a foreigner.

All through 1862 Ward and his army continued to pull off random acts of badassery, defeating numerically superior opponents in entrenched positions. Ward fitted a fleet of steamboats with heavy guns and turned them into floating fortresses, sending them up canals and rivers to wreak havoc on the poorly-equipped rebels.

Sadly, Ward was mortally wounded in the Battle of Cixi in September of 1862. He lived just long enough to dictate his last will and testament, in which he provided for his son, his Chinese wife, and his brother. He had endured no less than 14 battle wounds and dealt the Taiping Rebellion a blow from which it would never recover. Though Ward's army won the war under the command of a different leader (Charles Gordon, who would die himself some years later in the Mahdist War in Sudan), it was Ward who had raised, trained, and led the brave Chinese on so many successful sorties.

(Whew.) That's quite a life, huh?

Now, my question is (as it was at the beginning of this post), how do you wind up doing something like that? Post a flyer? Stick an ad in the paper? Ward was born in Salem, Massachusetts. That's on the other side of the world from China. And yet he was such a rowdy cuss and did so poorly in school that his father stuck him on a ship to make a man out of him. And so Ward found himself sailing to all these different ports all over the world—East Asia, Central and South America, Europe—and, somehow, fighting in wars or hiring himself out as a mercenary everywhere he went. That takes guts.

I'm wondering: do I lack the guts? Or do I lack the means? Do I merely need to run away to sea for a while and see where the wind blows me?

What do you think?