Day 2, Leg 2

Day 2, Leg 2 finds me back at my apartment. Yes, this does feel weird. One of our company's managers joked that I might decide to just give up once I found myself back home. While it's strange to be using my own place as a motel, it's not strange enough that I plan to drop everything and just hang here for the rest of my vacation. I'd never be able to live down the shame of just giving up (by which I really mean: I'd never be able to live with myself if I gave up).

Before I talk about how the day went and show you a bunch of pretty-ish pictures, I wanted to mention a couple things about yesterday's Day 1 walk that I had neglected to talk about in that writeup.

First: the grasshopper orgy. When I was about ten kilometers away from my destination (the EG Hotel in Seo-gu, western Seoul, south of the Gayang Bridge), I found myself on a familiar stretch of the path where there was no room for walkers: there was just a two-lane bike path, and I had to rely on the grace of every passing biker so as not to get hit. Luckily, this wasn't a big deal: the bikers simply dodged around me when necessary. But I noticed, as I was walking along, that the grasshoppers along the path were all mating. I kept stumbling upon pair after pair of 'hoppers—the tiny male sitting on top of the larger female (because, in the arthropod world, sexual dimorphism is reversed when it comes to things like size and relative aggressiveness). So I began to think I was walking through what was effectively an entomological orgy. I got mean and tried to stamp some of the mating pairs with the rubber goat's-foot tip of my trekking pole, but to no avail: the 'hoppers might have been in the throes of sexual frenzy, but they hadn't lost their situational awareness, and they deftly dodged my trekking pole every time. I guess that's a bit like how some humans will actually stop fucking to answer a ringing phone: situational awareness.

Second: the "Ohhhhh!" dude. Earlier in the walk, I began to notice that certain bikers and walkers were subtly or not-so-subtly reacting to my tee-shirt design. Koreans generally respond positively to foreigners wearing Korea-related paraphernalia (as long as the paraphernalia puts Korea in a good light, of course; how would you feel if you saw a "Fuck America!" tee design?), and one gentleman made a loud "Ohhhhh!" as he drew near me. Nothing but that noise: "Ohhhhh!" He uttered the syllable in a tone of voice indicating, "That is badass!" In doing so, he sounded a bit like Jabba the Hutt witnessing one of Luke Skywalker's miraculous Jedi powers. I simply smiled and didn't engage him in any conversation. We passed each other on the path, and the moment was gone. That was the strongest reaction I got to my tee design yesterday. Today, I was accosted by a 55-year-old gentleman who not only shouted "Ohhhhh!" but also stopped his bike and started asking me about my walk. We spoke in a weird mixture of Korean and English; I don't think he could quite process the idea that I could carry on the conversation in Korean. He warned me that another typhoon was heading toward Korea's southeast corner, and he advised me to be careful about heart attacks. He couched this last piece of advice as a weather-related pearl of wisdom ("The weather is very hot down south!"), but I'm pretty sure he was thinking that I was so fat I might keel over on the path—despite my having told him that I had walked the same path once already. Ah, well.

Anyway, today's walk was better than yesterday's. I'm going to chalk this up to both my meds and to the slightly shorter distance I walked (about 30 km, per Naver Map). I stopped a couple times, but today, there were no one-hour breaks. Unfortunately, because I started today's walk around 7:50 a.m., I still arrived at my apartment fairly late in the day: around 4:30 p.m. This isn't doing my neck any favors: the days are now getting shorter, and the afternoon sun is low in the sky, at an angle that allows the sun to shine onto my neck, where my hat can no longer protect me. So I need to leave ruthlessly early every morning in order to arrive at my destination no later than 3 p.m. That'll be easy tomorrow, seeing as I'm only walking to Hanam City, the first city east of Seoul: it's just 25 km away. and that fits nicely with the three-day trend of ever-shorter walks: 35 km on Day 1, 30 km on Day 2, and 25 km on Day 3. Alas, Day 4, which takes me from Hanam to Yangpyeong, is another 35-km trek, but I think I'll be in good shape to do that walk. I haven't lost any weight yet, but I can already feel improvement on a cardiopulmonary level: I breathe more easily and don't get tired as quickly. This has long been true of my body: it responds quickly to the benefits of exercise, which makes me wonder why the hell I don't get off my ass and exercise more often (and more intensely).

The backpack remains a wonder. As long as I don't cinch the chest trap too tightly, I don't need to worry about the shoulder straps' chafing of my neck. The pack still sits perfectly centered on my back, sliding reliably into place every time I take it off and then put it back on. I can't get over how much better the ride and feel of the backpack are compared to how things were with my old (and dying) Gregory Whitney 95.

I made it back to my place with only two liters of water, and now that I'm essentially home, I've dumped several items from the pack: my entire hydration system, an unnecessary bottle of aspirin, and a few other knickknacks (like a razor) that didn't make sense. Because I have a couple inn/motel stops where food won't be available, I swung by the grocery store and picked up some mixed nuts, banana chips, and raisins to make a sexed-up version of gorp (good ol' raisins and peanuts, for you non-hikers who might know the food as "trail mix").

Had a scare, late in the hike, when I got up from a rest stop and tromped about 300 meters before realizing I had somehow failed to pocket my cell phone. I double-timed back to the bench I'd been sitting on; the bench was now surrounded by Korean teenagers, one of whom was vomiting rather dramatically onto the asphalt while a companion reassured him, one arm comfortingly around the puker's shoulder. The teens weren't sitting on the bench, and they were ignoring my phone, so I ducked inside their circle, grabbed my phone, made a show of verifying that it was mine, then turned around and made tracks.

And now: my walk stats, as chronicled by my pedometer:

This step count is about 85% of yesterday's, which makes sense because today's distance of 30 km is about 85% of yesterday's distance of 35 km. The mileage figure is bullshit, of course, and in terms of calories, I probably burned no more than 4000, net, during the walk.

Here are the pictures you've been waiting for.

My head cast a weird shadow on the hotel wall this morning:

Flowers along the riverside:

A wider shot of the flowers, giving you more context:

First bit of garbage seen today:

Sarah Palin's not the only one with a bridge to nowhere:

Below: "The Death Star will be completed on schedule."

Soccer:

A shwimteo! Sorry, but I had to take the shot:

I'm not sure whether the following images count as graffiti, per se, but this is a chance for me to note that finding good, artistic graffiti in South Korea is difficult. Street artists here don't seem to have much imagination. Anyway, some person or people put up these images of musicians, so I snapped a few shots:

John Lennon:

Stevie Wonder:

Jimi Hendrix (see the dude sleeping there?):

Bob Marley:

I just thought this looked impressive (click to enlarge):

First glimpse of Yeouido's National Assembly Building:

You'll have noted that today's air quality was poor. Below is a somewhat better, clearer shot of the National Assembly Building:

One of the things I like about these paths is that they constantly change character. Note the woven-rope walkway in the pic below; I find this to be a clever and fairly eco-friendly way of solving the problem of laying down cheap-but-durable-and-also-biodegradable material for people to walk on.

Cute sculpture, but the trash pisses me off:

We're still walking across Yeouido. Here's one section of a large, artistically done pool. It's not clear to me whether these pools are meant for wading, but people wade in them all the time during the warm months:

More trash. Really pissed off.

And here's the main part of the pool:

Next to the main stairs, you see a fountain sous forme d'escalier:

The tall Yuk-sam Building ("63 Building"), obscured by ambient particulate matter—possibly from China, possibly from Korean industry:

The leafiest bear you will ever see:

A closer shot of the 63 Building, which sits at the eastern end of Yeouido. So you've got the National Assembly Building anchoring the western end of the island, and 63 anchoring the opposite side. I had wanted to get another shot of the sculpture of the monster from the movie "Gwaemul" (lit. "monster" in Korean), but I took a slightly different route and missed my chance to see the sculpture which, at this point, I consider more iconic than the 63 Building:

Many bridges—for cars and subway trains—cross the Han:

I took the following pic because it marks the beginning (or end, depending on your direction of travel) of a covered segment of the bike path. I was getting tired of the heat and the sun, anyway, so it was a relief to walk a few kilometers in the shade. I'm not completely sure about this, but it occurs to me that the shade under those overpasses might be eternal because, in this part of Seoul, the Han is oriented east-west, so the sun never actually has a chance to shine under the overpasses. This makes me wonder, in turn, about mini-biomes and microclimates: are they significantly different, in this not-quite subterranean world, from what we find elsewhere in the city? If the vicious zombies from "I Am Legend" were to hide anywhere during the day, it would be in this section of the Han River bike path:

A look at what the under-the-overpass path is like:

Kevin at rest, staring pretentiously into the middle distance:

I like how the overpass inadvertently creates a frame through which to view the city. The effect is almost cinematic:

At this point, we're done with the shaded walk and back to crossing under bridges that span the Han. Many Han River bridges have park-like spaces with benches and large areas for people to assemble and/or engage in various fun or serious activities. As I walked by this bridge, it seemed some sort of Korean folk festival (or a rehearsal for one) was in progress, so I stopped and snapped some pics. The first pic:

And another:

We're out from under that bridge and out in the open. The path has swung away from the river, which is normal: most supposed "river" paths will often swing inland at some point. Here's a glimpse of what this particular section looks like (note all the tents—many people were out tenting today; whether they were actually camping is another story, but they probably weren't):

More flowers:

Namsan and N Seoul Tower in the distance:

The path turns gravelly for us walkers:

And now, we're back to asphalt:

It was right when I wanted to take a pic of this truck-on-a-boat that I realized my cell phone wasn't in my pocket. Ever want to see Kevin move fast? Tell him he's forgotten his cell phone—a device that now apparently contains his immortal soul, given how precious he considers his phone to be. Truck on a boat:

I snapped the following pic because of the information on the brown sign, especially that part in the middle, which says the place where the Tan Creek meets the Han River is 3.7 km away. That, in turn, means I'm not far from my apartment building:

You can sort-of see part of the Lotte World Tower in the distance, which means you're looking at the Jamshil district of Seoul. Jamshil will be a familiar name to those who remember their Olympics history: most of the stadiums for the 1988 Seoul Summer Olympics were built in the Jamshil area:

We've broken right and are now following the Tan Creek. I saw the following graffito and thought it strangely profound and artistic. At the very least, I'd say the artist has potential:

The final shot of this essay shows us part of the path along the Tan Creek, about 3 km from my apartment building:

That segment, above, is where I met today's "Ohhhhh!" dude. (I had met the previous "Ohhhhh!" dude yesterday, along the Ara Canal path.) I was worried that my interlocutor today was going to make me even later than I already was, but we talked for only a couple minutes, thankfully. I now know more about the need to watch out for hurricanes and heart attacks.

Shorter walk tomorrow. Stay tuned. And once I'm away from decent computers, I'll probably have to upload no more than, oh, ten pictures per blog post. Whenever I have access to WiFi, I'll upload all my phone's pics to Google Drive and will, whenever possible, post a link to allow you access to all my uploaded cell-phone photos, not just from this walk but from several life-events over the course of several years. You're welcome.

ADDENDUM: I forgot to mention that, by getting rid of unnecessary equipment, I've reduced my pack by 1.2 kg. But because I'm taking along three bottles of gorp, that adds 0.7 kg to my pack (although, as a consumable, it doesn't count toward the pack's base weight). So that's a net reduction of 0.5 kg, and I'll be taking along three liters of water Monday morning to Hanam City—two inside the pack, and one liter in my cargo pockets.

Photo essay (September 29 images):