Day 28, Leg 22

[NB: maybe this problem will clear up, but today's post for November 10 is being shown as a November 9 post for some reason. Meanwhile, when I view the post from my edit window at Blogger.com, the date and time are displayed correctly: November 10, 4:05 p.m. I have no idea what's going on.

In looking over my recent blog posts, I see that this time/date stamp problem has happened several times, and I'm only just noticing it. What's happening?

UPDATE: the time-zone setting for my blog decided to switch itself to Los Angeles at some point. I've reset it to Seoul time, so everything should be in order now. Whew.]

Some final thoughts before the final day.

As I've mentioned, Naver is telling me that tomorrow's route is 30 kilometers. That doesn't jive with my memory of 28 or 29 kilometers from previous walks. Naver has also plotted slightly different courses for me on occasion this trip, so that could be a factor as well. In an attempt to unconfuse myself, I plotted the course again and looked closely at the route. Ah. For whatever reason, the cycling route is markedly different this time, with a large fraction of tomorrow's path being on the west side of the Nakdong after a bridge crossing. (Many of the larger bridges can easily add a kilometer to your walk.) Out of curiosity, I also clicked the button to see the recommended walking path, and I saw a route that looked remarkably like the path I have followed since 2017—a path that hews exclusively to the east side of the river, but with one minor detour inland. Naver says the walking route is 27K. 

So I'm just going to walk the route I know. I'll need Naver for the first thirty minutes to do the weird, twisty path that'll get me out of Yangsan, then I can do the rest from memory, which is easy with the Nakdong right there on my right side.

The bike route:

note 2 bridge crossings, with the path 2/3 on the west side

The walking route:

I'll be walking this route but ignoring the inland detour.

I admit that the thought of doing the west side of the Nakdong is intriguing, but I'm going to save that for another walk. Also of note: it may be hard to see, but in the Naver maps above, the bike paths on both sides of the river are labeled as the "Nakdong River Bike Path." This is something I remarked on after my very first trans-Korea walk: the overall path is not a single path down to the end: you have options. Think of these Gukto Jongju as networks of paths all tending in a particular direction.

Today, in my one brief excursion out of the motel, I made good on my threat to visit the Vietnamese place around the corner. The food was fine but meager; I had a bowl of pork noodle soup and some mandu done up in a vaguely Vietnamese, but mostly Korean, style. I now have a yen to make my own banh mi sandwiches when I get back to my place.

the Viet resto's front

the lone cook

one customer aside from me (it's about 1:20)

not pho; it had some name like huddiu

chili oil to add character

some okay mandu

When I was in Yangsan previously, I ate at a Japanese restaurant. I might stick to that. The Vietnamese food wasn't bad, but the experience on the whole wasn't the most impressive (and we were just discussing first impressions in the comments of my previous post; sometimes, first impressions matter, and they're all we have to judge things by).

While I wanted to walk around and drink in the town a bit more today, two things stopped me: (1) I had washed all my clothes yesterday, and I didn't want to stink them up prematurely since they're already going to be funky after tomorrow's walk (sorry, Neil); and (2) I want my right foot to have as much rest as possible, which means keeping off my feet as long as I can. So here I am in my motel room, writing this entry, pondering life, and rotting my brain with YouTube. The nice thing about a motel room with good WiFi is that you don't need to break out your other electronic gear (e.g., your portable power pack and portable WiFi hotspot).

Today, the morning rains came and went; the day became sunny, then cloudy. Still no bad weather forecast for tomorrow, so the final day ought to be an awesome one. I can tell you one thing I'm looking forward to when I get back to Seoul: shaving. My mustache now hangs over my upper lip, and that's causing all sorts of awkwardness and discomfort. I did finally buy a pair of nose-hair trimmers, and I zealously went to work on my nostrils with the trimmer and a razor. I also clipped my fingernails for the first time in two weeks (fingernails are normally a weekly thing for me), so that was gratifying. I think I've performed just about all of the purification rituals necessary to appease the mountain and river gods and dragons, so with a little help from the old ibuprofen, we ought to be good to go for the walk's last day. I want to leave around 4:45 a.m. tomorrow, which means waking up at 4:00. It'll be sad to go back to my office routine, and to my slob's life of waking up around lunch once I'm back in Seoul, but there's this little voice in my head whispering It doesn't have to be that way. Will I listen to that voice?

PHOTO ESSAY

a mostly empty resto

one other customer

huddiu

soup and mandu

not many, and not special-tasting

Yangsan is a city under constant construction.

the outside of the Vietnamese resto

my Westin Joseon reservation for 11/11, 5:30 p.m.