the walk

Coming to you live after a brief afternoon nap. I could use another few hours, frankly.

I did it. 33 kilometers (I'd forgotten about the extra 3 km) walked from Yangpyeong Station to Yeoju Bus Terminal. And it wasn't bad on my feet at all. Even after taking that fall during the night, I could walk perfectly fine and with very little pain from the scrapes on my right hand and left knee. And my right big toe looks great.

I want to display photos now, but I'm going to do it two ways (and I'll be doing this in earnest when I blog the walk): first, you'll see a sort of top-ten list for those with short attention spans. After that, you'll see all of the photos of the hike. This full-length photo essay is for the conscientious, detail-oriented, experience-loving people. So pick your poison according to your level of impatience and attentiveness.

Top ten:

Beginning of the walk, 400 m from Yangpyeong Station, Namhan River on the right. Gentle rain.

AccuWeather needs to work on the "Accu" part of its name. It kept forecasting "clear" except for two hours during the night, but I walked through a gentle rain for much of the walk, with the weather letting up only in the latter half.

one of the suburban-style properties along the way

A shot downhill after topping the rise of the Hill from Hell. This was all under construction a couple years ago.

One of the more interesting aspects of these long walks is the chance to see what changes have occurred over the course of a couple years.

the approach to Ipo-bo (Ipo Dam)

silhouettes of the congregation of jangseung close to the dam

a big, fat standard orb-weaver, relative of the East Asian Joro spider

some kilometers later: Yeoju-bo (Yeoju Dam)

a loudly rushing stream, energetic thanks to the recent rain

haunting display of low-lying clouds or mist or fog

a view of Yeoju-bo from an admin-building park bench

 Full photo essay:

Yangpyeong Station, having just gotten out of the subway

a loving glance back at the station, my starting point for the night's walk

The first thing I noticed upon arrival (around 11:20 p.m.) at Yangpyeong Station was the gentle, misty rain that Koreans call 이슬비/iseul-bi (I guess you could translate that literally as "dew-rain"). A brand of soju here is called Cham Iseul/참 이슬, or "real dew." The forecast had said thngs would be "clear" at Yangpyeong through most of the night, but it drizzled lightly like this for almost two-thirds of my walk. I didn't mind; the weather was cool thanks to the typhoon, and the rain gave me a chance to break out my new hat. I had also brought along my poncho, but I ended up never using it. There was just no need.

Beginning of the walk, 400 m from Yangpyeong Station, Namhan River on the right. Gentle rain.

approaching Galsan riverside park

Galsan Gongweon, Galsan Park

If you were to look closely at the rabbit, you'd see that people have been busy graffitiing a goofy face onto it.

hydrangea (I had to look these up), all over the place

Down the path we go, with the park on the left and the river on the right.

This happened the last time I'd done a nighttime walk through here: just before midnight, all the lights along this part of the path suddenly switched off. It's an awesome, exhilarating moment: during that brief second after the lights shut off, and your eyes haven't had time to adjust to the dark, everything around you is pitch black. Then your eyes begin to adjust, and you can see the features of your surroundings well enough to navigate. The painted stripe dividing the walking/biking path down the middle leaps out at you. On a cloudy night like this, there's no starlight, but light pollution from Seoul, 60 km away, is carried by the clouds to where you are. And little lights from towns across the river shine out in an eldritch way:

some lights across the river

more lights across the river

even more lights acrss the river, making me feel as if I'm in some sort of adventure

another suburban-style property

a lone light in the darkness

house on a hill, vague in the dark

some utility building with its lights left on

the bridge with the Buddhist-sounding name: Hyeondeok-gyo, or (I think) Present Virtue Bridge

crossing the bridge

I thought this shot was going to come out better. A resident's garage area.

Is it creepy to photograph houses like this?

almost a Christmas vibe

someone with a stump where his arm should be

Almost exactly 90 minutes into the walk: the Hill from Hell.

Up we go. I made it all the way up without stopping to rest—except once to take a house photo.

This house. Bit of an Amityville Horror vibe, right?

I climb steep hills by zigzagging a switchback path that cuts down on the steepness. Longer walk, but less effort.

sharp curve on the downward side

A shot downhill after topping the rise of the Hill from Hell. This was all under construction a couple years ago.

I'm in Gumi-ri, it seems.

Sa dae gang gukto-jongju = 4 Great Rivers End-to-end National Path
Namhan-gang Jajeongeo-gil = Namhan (South Han) River Bike Path

the bridge in the sport park (called a "Leports Park" for some reason)

Gaegun Leports Park

the bull that eternally guards the restrooms

Deer and Cow guard the hangari (large clay pots).

all the sports you can play at Gaegun Leports Park

cow, concentrating

looking a bit sad thanks to the rain

my favorite sports-park shwimteo, where I rested for 15 minutes

I was using MapMyWalk to track my progress and was disconcerted to see I'd gone 2.5 hours to walk only 10 km. That's quite slow. I can make excuses: I stopped frequently to take pictures, I wasn't in a hurry, I took rest breaks, etc. Still 10K in 2.5 hours is only 4 kph. Slow.

light and mist interact as I leave the park

shwimteo in the dark

stacked hangari in the dark

1 km to the Ipo Dam certification center—important info for bikers

Ipo Dam in the distance

I used the "night mode" on my phone cam to get this shot of a hulking, shadowy building.

getting closer to Ipo Dam

cert center in the darkness: bikers get stamps for their passbooks here (you win an award for biking several paths)

silhouettes of the congregation of jangseung close to the dam

using my phone's flash, I got some individual shots

drunkenly leaning on a companion

stone jangseung, forever connected

Wassuuuuuuuuuup??

A few meters after this, I approached Ipo Dam and wanted to get a picture right as I was passing by. I had my soaking-wet handkerchief/bandanna in my left hand and my phone in my right. The area by the dam's entrance was lit by electric lighting, but the lighting cast long, sharp shadows that obscured the little, curblike rise in the pavement that I tripped over. I've walked this route several times in the past and had never tripped over this rise previously, but there's a first time for everything. As I fell forward, I tried to save my phone by turning my right palm upward, which is why all my abrasions are on the back of my hand. My left palm actually had a tiny bit of purpling from when I threw it out in front of me to blunt the impact of the fall, but it was otherwise unscathed.

So I was on the ground, feeling like a 90-year-old man in a senior center who's keeled over, and no staffers are around to help him up. I eventually managed to struggle back to my feet. A limited self-check revealed the nasty scrapes on my right hand and the relative absence of damage to my left. My left knee felt scraped, and I couldn't see whether my pants had been torn at the point of impact, but I suspected the worst. My phone, disappointingly, didn't survive unscathed: it had banged against the ground despite my effort to protect it, and while it still seemed to function fine, I noticed a tiny pebble sunken into the lower-right corner of the screen and a small web of cracks around the pebble's entry point. My phone's screen also now had a bright, narrow, rainbowish vertical line along its entire right side. The line wasn't wide enough to occlude the screen. As an experiment, I palm-swiped to take a screen shot. The shot didn't show the rainbow effect, so I guessed that the damage was only at the level of hardware, not software. The phone was otherwise functional, but I was severely disappointed that a seemingly light impact had done this much damage. I had bought my phone one of those rubber casings for just this sort of problem, but the casing proved to be useless. Ah, well. I suspect I'm going to have to replace the phone; I somehow doubt this damage can be repaired. I'll visit the local Samsung office Monday morning.

the blood scabbed over quickly, providing a natural bandage

a sweatier version of the previous pic

My thumb got fucked up, too, including what turned out to be a blood blister.

closeup of the blood blister, which I'd thought might be a tiny pebble

Yup: the knee definitely got scraped up, too.

This part of the walk, after Ipo Dam, took me past a campground that had been closed during COVID. I guess the campground owners lost all their money because the grounds were totally closed and abandoned-looking last night. Barriers had been placed across all paths to prevent walkers, bikers, and drivers from moving along that stretch of road. Luckily for me, the barriers were easy enough to skirt. No police or security officers were there to tell me to turn back, so like a thief in the night, I circumvented the barriers and continued down the path.

You can barely see those silly wooden platforms that Korean "campgrounds" like to use as platforms for tents. Why on earth would anyone ever want to camp this way? But such campgrounds are popular here.

approaching a post-campground bridge that marks the next phase of the path

Using my flash, I got a better shot of my knee. It ached a bit while I walked, but it wasn't bad,

Around this time, I wrote that update, then elected to turn my phone off and keeping walking, holding off on using the phone until after sunrise. This also meant turning off MapMyWalk, so all I ended up with was a partial workout reading. One of the first post-sunrise pics I took was of a big, juicy orb-weaver (Eustala conchlea? Eustala anastera? I don't know). I'd forgotten to turn my flash off, given the morning light, but the pic came out pretty well:

There's little sense of scale, but this was a tiny frog. And there it lay.

Rose of Sharon (Kor. mugunghwa—eternal blossom), Korea's national flower

the Four Rivers logo/symbol

I've probably napped here on previous walks. This time, I saved my resting for when I got to Yeoju Dam.

Yeoju Dam from a distance.

Gasan Bridge.

A noisy, babbling brook, swollen from the typhoon rains.

about to step onto Yeoju Dam

eldritch fog

a bridge floating above a cloud

the Namhan flows Seoul-ward, against my direction of travel

more delicious fogginess

the famous Hunminjeongeum* wall, with the dam's admin building off to the right and in the distance

I always take this photo whenever I pass by here.

The Yeoju Dam certification center. Go in, stamp your passbook.

The dam seen from a park bench in front of the admin building (behind me).

looking tired after 27 of 33K, with red eyes

My eyes were also producing a ton of mucus by the end of the walk. It was sometimes hard to see.

By the time you reach Yeoju Dam, you've still got another 6K to reach Yeoju City and the Yeoju Bus Terminal. I rested a bit, got two canned mango drinks from the admin building's vending machine, sucked those down along with half a bottled water and some ibuprofen, then heaved myself to my feet and continued along the last part of my trek. Much of the final 6K is fairly bland and boring compared to everything before, but it's still a nice walk, and not a bad way to finish up before entering the city proper. I walked to the bus terminal and saw that the convenience store there was under renovation (I had hoped to buy wet wipes and bandages), so I went out the terminal's back to find a local convenience store. There was a CU not far from the terminal; I got some diet drinks, wet wipes, and bandages, then washed my wounds, dried everything, and awkwardly bandaged myself up so I could look more civilized around my fellow humans. The bus was scheduled to depart at 9:40 a.m. I had arrived an hour before that, giving me time to sit and ponder my situation.

Epilogue:

pants got ripped after all

The bus ride home was miserable. I thought the seat beside me might remain empty, but the bus stopped about five minutes into its drive to Seoul to pick up more passengers from a special express-bus stop, and one dude ended up sitting next to me. Fuck. I was tired, but I pulled away from him as far as I could to give him his space (we big guys are always a liability to our seatmates), but he did not return the kindness: his right arm kept digging into my ribs the entire trip. The dude looked foreign (i.e., non-Korean), maybe a bit South Asian. Perhaps he came from a culture where people don't care about personal space. Anyway, the fucker's elbow was in my ribs for the whole ride. It was a relief to get off at Express Bus Terminal in Seoul and find a taxi at a nearby taxi stand. I felt bad for the cabbie, though, because he had to put up with my stinky, post-33K self. When I apologized, he laughed it off.

After bandaging myself again once I was home, I looked better:

Still no sign of infection, but when I went to take a triumphal post-walk shit, I noticed right away that there was a logistical problem: how do you wipe your ass with bandage-covered fingers? I eventually found a solution, which I won't describe here.

I took a nap for a few hours while letting my washer deal with my clothes. I'm still pondering whether I even want to eat dinner right now: you've heard the stories about how physical effort draws the blood into your extremities and away from your stomach, making you less hungry. I've been sucking down some diet drinks, but that's about it. To eat or not to eat?

My knee is going to need some time to heal, I think. It got banged up—not badly enough to warrant medical attention, but it hurts to stand up or sit down, and I don't want to do anything that might throw the damaged knee out of alignment.

Other than that, I guess I'll just be resting this weekend. I did watch "Across the Spider-verse," but the movie produced some very mixed feelings, meaning that I'm going to watch it again before attempting a review. So you got a review going for you. Which is nice.

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*Hunminjeongeum: "proper sounds for the edification of the people." Hun ("hoon") = education, teaching, edification; min = the people; jeong = correct, proper; eum = sounds, utterances. This comes from King Sejong's efforts to democratize learning by developing Korean script, called hangeul (the script of the Han, i.e., the Koreans, not the Han Chinese). The original script is slightly different from the script we know today, but it's still readable.