at the Techno Motel

Naver Map me:

테크노모텔
인천광역시 서구 탁옥로33번길 13

I'm in Incheon and at the Techno Motel, where the front-desk guy turned out to be very nice, especially once I told him I'd stayed here before (he also asked about my tee shirt). Getting here required me to take the Line 3 from Daecheong Station to the Express Bus Terminal Station; from there, I had to transfer to Line 9 and go out to Magok Naru Station. At Magok Naru, I transferred to the Airport Rail Line (which passes by Gimpo Airport on its way to Incheon International, thus explaining why so many people were on the train at that time of night) and rode to Geomam Station. It was a 3.2-kilometer uphill walk to the Techno Motel; I'm going to enjoy walking downhill tomorrow morning.

I'm pretty sure I forgot to bring my toshi (biker's tubular sleevelets or manchettes that cover and protect the forearms from the sun) with me. At first, I reasoned that, since I'd be back at my place come Day 2 of the walk, I could risk two days of sun exposure and just pick up my toshi on Sunday. But as I was walking uphill to the motel, I passed a bike shop. Never one to deny a sign from the gods, I ducked in and was loudly greeted by an old golden retriever that barked and wagged its tail at the same time. Threat Level: Zero. I asked the guy if he had any toshi; he asked me what kind I wanted. I didn't know they came in kinds, so I shrugged and said, "The kind that protect you from the sun." We moved off to the side of the shop, away from the golden; the guy rummaged around some racks and dug up a pair of sleek-looking black toshi. If my original pair of white toshi represented the Jedi, then these were the Sith version. Cool. They cost me a scrote-shriveling W15,000, but as I learned last time, the UV protection is worth every penny.

I had time to think about some technical issues as I walked to the motel tonight. The biggest issue is water: based on all the pro-hiker videos I've been watching, almost nobody uses a hydration bladder anymore: too heavy. Most hikers these days use a lightweight water-collection bag and a gravity-operated nanofilter to strain out pathogens and contaminants. Everyone else uses water bottles (e.g., Nalgene), or even good old bottled water. My hydration system consists of my Baen Sendi water bag, purification tablets, and my Grayl travel filter, which is made of metal and decidedly not gravity-operated. I could shed nearly a kilo of weight by dropping off all that gear once I'm home again and sticking purely to bottled water. That arrangement would be much lighter, not just because the plastic water bottles are feather-light, but also because I can buy the water in 500-ml bottles and stuff a liter of water into the cargo pockets of my pants. That's a kilo of weight that's not sitting on my back. So I'm doing an experiment: I'm seeing whether I can walk tomorrow's 35-km trek with only two liters of bottled water, one liter of which will be in my thigh pockets. If this works out—and I'll know by the time I reach my apartment on Day 2—I'll ditch my current gear with no regrets.

The Techno Motel is a nice place to stay overnight—clean and simple, and I'm using a pretty decent Samsung desktop computer that's a ripoff of the Mac's all-in-one, your-monitor-is-also-your-CPU design. The motel-room fee is a bit more expensive than a yeogwan's at W50,000 (in 2017, it was W45,000 if I remember correctly), but this is, for me, my time to get spendy in 2019. This walk is how I'm celebrating turning 50, and it's a month-long fuckin' party.

No pics tonight. Expect plenty starting tomorrow.