Day 5, Leg 4

In my blog titles, the "Day" and "Leg" have been the same up to now, but starting today, they're going to be different thanks to my scheduled rest day. And it's going to get worse: I have two more rest days during this trip, so the numbers are going to drift further and further apart. Will my readers survive the trauma?

Today is a day of rest, so I have time to go over some housekeeping items—little details about me and the walk, stuff I suddenly remembered to write about, etc. I feel bad about not walking today: my feet feel fine, as does the rest of me. It's a bright and beautiful day, and I'm now regretting my choice not to be out in it. Then again, I had the chance, while in town, to get some supplies for my phone, my head, and my freezing fingertips, so I did get to enjoy some of the sunlight and the hustle-bustle. More on the shopping errand later in this post. Let's begin with a random rundown of some stuff that's been on my mind.

Runny nose. I've had a runny nose since Day One. I figured that catching a cold might be a possibility, but this hasn't turned into a cold. More likely, it's a combination of an allergic reaction (I've also got itchy eyes) and my nose's reaction to the morning cold. This means I'm doing the sniffle thing every five yards, as I walk, in an effort to keep my face from leaking like a faucet. Inconvenient and annoying, but certainly not enough to make me want to give up on the walk. (I do keep a package of tissues in my cargo pocket, but who blows their nose every five yards?) Distance walking often means dealing with inconvenient shit and figuring out whether that inconvenience is enough to make you abort your mission. A runny nose is nothing. Even a cold is probably nothing, especially since I normally spend a lot of time outside and in the elements. If I could get through COVID, I can get through a runny nose.

Pack-strap adjustment. My backpack was hanging unevenly on my back during the first two days of the walk, slewing irritatingly to the right. I could check my pack alignment by stopping and looking at my shadow on the ground. I'm a slow thinker, so it took me that long to figure out that each shoulder strap comes with two smaller adjustment straps: (1) a lower one—which is the one I usually focus on—to make sure the pack is secure against my back, and (2) an upper one—which I had barely paid any attention to—for exactly my problem, i.e., the problem of uneven hanging. I further realized that tightening the upper-left strap would pull the backpack slightly leftward, so I did that, and voilà: no more problem. The more even hanging also means the left shoulder strap no longer digs into the left side of my neck, causing friction irritation. Nice. I'll show these upper straps more respect in the future, and as always, I'm thankful to Gregory, the company that made this backpack, for the smart design. Gregory can't help it if the backpack's user isn't so smart.

Traveling leg pain. Another problem I've been dealing with—and this is more a general comment about all of my walks—is traveling leg pain, i.e., pain that seems to move around my legs. Maybe my left ankle will feel a twinge. My answer to that is just to walk through it. That twinge disappears, then a pain starts in my right ankle. Just walk through it. Occasionally, the pain appears in my knee. Just walk through it. I've found the answer to many of life's problems is just to walk through it. There's a metaphor hidden in there somewhere, I'm sure.

That one toe blister. During my recent abortive practice walk that was only 11K in the rain, I acquired a blood blister on my left sole. That blister flattened and blackened; I don't think I've ever seen anything so black on my skin. The good thing about this is that whatever's happening down there now seems to be protecting my sole from further blistering. This could all be an illusion, of course, to be dispelled with the first heavy rain I walk in. But I was frankly amazed, yesterday, to take off my socks after more than 35K of trekking to see that my feet looked exactly the same, with no further blistering or irritations. My left big toe, by contrast, has had it bad for a while, now. It blistered on its outer edge even before this walk started, and I think it's the new shoes' fault. The Skechers don't feel tight, but I suspect they may have some slightly tight spots. That initial blister shrank, dried up, and hardened on its own, but over the course of the first two days' walking, another blister formed right next to it and swelled impressively. Didn't hurt a bit—it just looked nasty. Blisters form in response to repeated impacts and irritations, operating kind of like a slow-motion air bag. At a guess, they are at least in part Nature's way of protecting the bone underneath. (They also serve a more obvious disinfection function.) Well, last night, I saw that the impressively swollen blister seemed to have popped on its own. Not completely, though: I saw there was still a little puffiness. But the blister is no longer the monster it was. I guess I'll take that as a win.

Toenails. Since last year's hike, the toenail on my right big toe has been two-thirds black. As I've come to learn, a blackened toenail just needs to be left alone, and it will generally fall away of its own accord, probably at some inopportune moment while I'm showering or changing socks. This toenail, though, has been stubborn. I've suspected that a new toenail was growing underneath the blackened one, and I got confirmation of that two nights ago when I looked down at my foot and saw most of the upper toenail curled away from the rest of the toe like a spiraled sliver of partly chiseled wood just hanging there, waiting for the chiseler to finish his job. The toenail wouldn't let go without persuasion: as I said, the nail was only two-thirds black, so at a guess, the non-blackened part of the nail was still robust and alive, even after all this time. I took out my toenail clippers, rolled the nail as far back as I could, and cut along the "root" of the nail, by which I really mean the far side of it, not the cuticle. Sure enough, there was some bleeding: the toenail was a stubborn bitch. Luckily, I'd brought along enough bandages to patch up an entire platoon, so I cleaned and bandaged the bleeder, but not before taking a good look at the "new" toenail underneath the blackened one. No two ways about it: the "new" toenail looks ugly and unhealthy, probably as a result of being under the blackened toenail for the better part of a year. I've begun to realize that toenails have lives, personalities, hopes, and dreams of their own; they shrivel and wither when you stifle them. I can only hope that this new exposure to light and air (when I'm not wearing footwear, I mean) will breathe new life into this nail... which will probably just end up blackened on some later distance walk. Speaking of blackening: the second toe on my left foot has a darkening nail. I expect that one to be black by the end. There isn't much to be done about this problem: if you're a heavy guy going distance walking for a long period, your toes are basically fucked, so all I and my toes can do is try to be stoic about it. Wow... who knew I'd have so much to say about toenails?

The group with the golden retriever. I briefly mentioned, in yesterday's post, that I'd met a golden on the path. She was a cute puppy, maybe around a year old, not quite yet in her final boss-monster form. I was approaching a tunnel when I saw a group of Koreans standing around the opening, taking pictures of each other while a dog ran around excitedly among them. The guy who was obviously the leader of the group saw me and said, in decently accented English, "Hey, could you take a photo of us? Sorry." I gamely took his cell phone while the mixed group of guys and gals struck their poses and smiled. I gave them my best "One... two... three!" in English to accord them the full I Encountered a Furriner experience that they can tell their grandkids about years from now.* With the photo done, I turned my attention to the dog. "What's the dog's name?" I asked. "Sarangi," the guy said. This immediately called to mind a stupid pun that, fortunately, I did not utter. Sarang means "love"; Sarangi adds an "ee" sound to make a diminutive like "Lovey." But Sarangi also sounds a lot like sarang-ni, which means "wisdom tooth." I was on the verge of jokingly cautioning the dog not to get plucked away like a wisdom tooth, but at the last moment, I refrained, not trusting my Korean ability to help deliver the joke properly. With nothing else for us to say to each other, I parted ways with the group, thinking that would be the last I'd see of them. But, no: when I was several hundred yards away from the meeting spot, the lead guy passed me on his bike... with the dog strapped to his back by some special dog-harness. It was a cute-yet-bizarre sight, but I could immediately see that (1) the dog was obviously used to this mode of transport, and (2) she was having the time of her life. Dogs "see" the world mainly through smell, which is why most dogs love going fast: they're perceiving the world at a wildly compressed rate. The guy and his golden were soon lost in the distance, and I was left to ponder the subtle magic of animal-human bonding.

Only Skechers. While I was at my apartment and prepping my large backpack for the next phase of my journey, I made the command decision not to take along my New Balances. I don't know what's going on with those shoes, but the New Balances proved, on that recent abortive practice walk, that they would not be my friends during this trip. The Skechers, despite the weird, new blisters they help create, are much more comfortable, and I'm willing to risk having rapidly thinning treads for the sake of comfort. I'm gambling that the Skechers will get me through 633 km of trail; we'll know soon enough whether that's the case. If the treads wear out too early, though, and I happen to be in a town or city, I can always seek out a local cobbler (a shoe repairman, I mean, not dessert) to fix or at least bolster the soles. In the past, I've had some shoes re-soled; quality among cobblers varies a lot, so shoe repair is itself a gamble. But what in life isn't, right? You could get smashed by a random truck while crossing the street, or you could be sky-beamed and ass-raped by colon-obsessed aliens. There are no guarantees.

9-to-4 sleep schedule? I think the only way to really compensate for my post-stroke slowness is to start the day's walk earlier. This means, in theory, going to bed around 9 at night and waking up at 4 so I can be out the door by 4:30. That's pushing things even for me, but it's not as crazy as it sounds: Korean monks follow a sleep schedule that's around 9:30 p.m. to 3:30 a.m., i.e., six hours a night. And being out the door at 4:30 a.m. is nothing even by non-monastic standards: I've been out at Namsan around 2 or 3 a.m., and there were plenty of old people walking the paths at that hour. Crazy bastards. So yes: maybe I'll try a 9-to-4 sleep schedule, and if that becomes 10-to-4, i.e., only six hours, well, that's fine, too. I normally get by on five to six hours of sleep.

Foot pics. What would life be without a little sharing of the pain? Although, in truth, my foot problems right now aren't very painful at all. I just like the idea of making you, my readers, shift uncomfortably in your seats as you behold the Lovecraftian madness of my mangled appendages—dead yet alive, and now haunting your dreams.

big blister from a couple days ago; seems to have partially deflated now

the blackened remains of a blood blister from October 10

the blackened toenail comes off with a little persuasion

The "new" toenail looks sickly.

How today's shopping went. I slept in a bit, but I was still up around 8:30 a.m. I spent much of the morning writing the first part of this blog post, a luxury I have because this motel room has a desktop computer, allowing me to write at length. Typing on my cell phone is a slow, frustrating process that leads to way more typos than I normally make.

With the blogging partly done, I decided to re-don my dirty clothes and go shopping so that I could come back to my room, finish the blog post, begin recharging all of my electronic equipment, wash my underwear and socks, then spend the rest of the day watching YouTube while my stuff dries. Ideally, I'll be in bed at 9 tonight to try out my new schedule. I sometimes give my married friends shit about having become 10 p.m. pussies no longer able to hack staying up late at night, but when I do these cross-country walks, I become a pussy myself.

With the help of Naver Map, I found an "electronics" store, of sorts, run by two friendly old folks. They didn't have the 3-pronged charger cord I wanted, but they did have a cord that fit my cell phone, so I bought that. I also found a military-surplus shop almost immediately; the place was run by an initially sour old woman who warmed up to me as we talked. She didn't have the hat suggested by commenters—i.e., brimless in the back, but with cloth draping down to protect the nape—but she had the hat I'd originally wanted—i.e., one with a shorter brim than my current hat has. This hat has a military pattern on it, meaning it doesn't look like a fisherman's hat like my one at home, and its sides are basically mesh, so it's shit for protection against rain, but that's fine since my blue jacket has a hood. I also got gloves to protect my hands from the morning cold. The only thing I forgot to get was protection for my face, but since I'm toting a second bandanna with me, I can use that as a sort of mask that will allow my exhalations to keep my face warm. Also, since I'm heading to Yeoju tomorrow, I know there's a biking store along the way that might sell something better that I can put over my face. 

Meanwhile, here's the gear:

smaller-brimmed hat, charging cord, and "ROK Army" gloves (which fit fine, being XL)

The surplus-store lady had a pile of hats, all in the same style, but she insisted on sifting through them because there were different sizes. She considered my huge head and said, "Maybe a 2XL for you." Turns out she was right: I tried an XL, and it was too tight. The 2XL, which cost the same as the XL that I'd grabbed, fit perfectly.

Some scenes from Yangpyeong's bustling markets:

Female pattern baldness is a thing in Korea. My mom suffered from it and did what she could to hide it.

veggie seller, with bags of gochu (chili peppers) in the foreground: 'tis the season

Do not buy the old women, or you will be mashed between the buttocks of the old-woman god.

ambitious fungi, cut down in the prime of life

And here's an in-the-mirror selfie with my small, beady eyes and scraggly, pube-like beard, peeking over this motel-room computer's monitor:

the escaped-from-prison look

My current room is very poorly lit, and the sun is coming in at the wrong angle to be of much help. The new charger cord isn't helping much, either: everything is still charging slowly.** I don't have this problem in my own apartment or at the office, which makes me wonder if there's something congenitally weak and wimpy about the motels I end up in. Or maybe I just have bad luck buying charger cords. I don't recall this being a big problem in years past, but starting maybe two years ago, I began more and more to see slow charging as a problem (could it be the phone itself? if so, why does it charge fast at home?). 

Anyway, these are first-world problems not worth dwelling on. I'll have a quiet rest-of-the-day, and I'll leave for Yeoju tomorrow, ideally around 4:30 a.m. I'm not looking forward to the rain: the AccuWeather forecast for Yangpyeong is no rain until 2 p.m., but the forecast for Yeoju is scattered rain all morning and part of the afternoon (8 a.m., 11 a.m., 1 p.m., 4 p.m. are the relevant hours for me). The radar shows a storm front moving in SE from China and North Korea, but it's only the wispy southern edge that's going to brush past my area. I'm hoping the rain won't be heavy; temperatures will be in the high 50s to mid-60s while it's raining (13°-18°C), which shouldn't be too bad. I wonder how pissy the weather will be on my camping days. We'll know soon enough.

And that's it for today. It was a good shopping errand, except for not getting the face protection when I had the chance. Then again, I might still go out to that surplus store again in a bit. The old lady won't know I'm not wearing socks and underwear. Or will she?

__________

*I do hope you realize that that's a joke. They probably didn't spare me a second thought.

**That changed. After some unplugging and replugging, the phone is charging fast.

PHOTO ESSAY

Paresse(?) Motel

The open markets were abuzz with activity.

Fishy, fishy, fishy fish... that went... wherever I... did go!

I guess that says "1st Market Street, West Gate."

A resto serving gopchang (cow/pig chitlins).

sliced or grilled, baby

huge bags of dried red chilies

fresh veggies sold next to the chilies

some sort of pancakes (bindae-ddeok? jeon of some kind?)

more veggie sellers

The menu advertises sorghum dumplings, two types of buckwheat pancakes, soju, and makgeolli (drink).

The old ladies mentioned earlier in this post.

A wizard would go nuts.

Some of the most immodestly anus-shaped mushrooms around.

yikes

I can only assume that's a cow's tail. Ox tail. Whatever.

Nope, no copyright infringement here.

more shrooms

a rare sight these days

different types of seaweed(?) for sale

cuteness overload

another veggie lady

the equipment I'd bought

This Lotteria burger proved to be... not bad. I'd go back for this.

My I'm-a-hardened-prisoner stare... not my best look.