Day 13, Leg 13

I'm at a motel and on extremely weak WiFi. Uploading pics may take some time. If I ever do this route again, I'm going to bring my portable WiFi device along, even if it is only 4G. 

A couple milestones today. First, I've now completed Day 13, which means that, day-wise if not distance-wise, I'm halfway done with this walk. Second, this was the first over-30K segment of this trip. The last time I did 30K was probably before my stroke. I tried, a few times, to do 35K walks over the past few months, but some circumstance always intervened.

I didn't succeed in buckling my belt as tightly as I did yesterday, so it's a bit premature to celebrate true weight loss. We'll see what happens in a week or so. But now, some stats:

Distance: about 32K

Time: 496 minutes

Steps: 47,370

Calories Burned: 5,912

Calories Consumed: 3,962 (deficit = 1950)

The morning started out quiet and drier than I expected. The rain had apparently stopped before 4:35 a.m., which is when I was out the door—an hour early, as promised. The path was initially flat and straightforward; I simply followed the coast without veering away from the shore. At one point, I found myself peevishly wondering why the entire route couldn't be like this—flat all the way to Busan. Obviously, the answer is that the road- and trail-builders had to work with the terrain they had. Humans have long had the technology to move mountains, but doing so is often prohibitively expensive.

I had a clear view of the sea at 6:16 a.m., and I anticipated a decent sunrise but was foiled again, this time by clouds, which didn't clear up until later in the morning. I did, however, get some interesting shots of ship lights on the horizon (squid boats, I assume; fishermen use light to attract thousands of squid) while the sky was still dark. My new phone can take in a lot of light at night, making nighttime images seem much brighter than they are in real life. This can be an asset, as with the boats on the horizon, but it can sometimes be annoying when you're going for a particular natural-light effect.

After the initial flatness came the hills, scattered throughout the day. There were maybe five major hills today, and the first was by far the worst of the bunch. Not as bad as the one from a couple days ago, but still difficult. That said, the stairs training did help me get through all of today's hills without my becoming exhausted. Maybe this is arrogant, but I'm starting to wonder whether I really need to push myself to climb my apartment's staircase three times by the end of the year. Doing 1.5 staircases seems to be enough for a decent level of cardiovascular fitness. Anyway, it's something to think about once I'm back in Seoul (along with cardio alternatives, like jogging and jumping rope).

As I've done on previous days, I passed a bunch of burial mounds. Most of these mounds, unlike all the ones I've seen before this trip, are located at ground level instead of in raised areas. I didn't realize that ground-level myo were a thing, but I guess I know now. What disturbs me, though, is that many of these ground-level mounds seem to be on or right next to vacation properties and other businesses. I'm now curious as to how the zoning laws work. Aren't myo sites hallowed ground? I saw one pension next to a campground that seemed to have burial mounds. Not creepy for the kids? Not a pain for the families that come out every few months to maintain the mounds (weeding, etc.)? What about burial sites amid farmland? The whole thing is very weird and strange, and until I can make sense of this, the sight of ground-level burial mounds, especially those next to vacation properties and in farmland, is going to violate my sense of the sacred.

Today's big news is that, senile fool that I am, I left my mask in Sonamu Pension. It's hanging on a wall. I wonder whether the pension's ancient owner will even notice it. Today's walk, despite its length, didn't take me into any mid-size towns or cities, so I didn't have a chance to buy a new mask at a convenience store or a pharmacy (pharmacies sell the washable black mask I favor). So I had to improvise. At first, I used the bandanna from off my head as a temporary mask, but it turns out that it takes only a few hours of sweating for the bandanna to smell terrible (I do wash it every day). Breathing my own funk for a few minutes was enough to convince me to think of a different strategy. Luckily, I keep a second (red) bandanna in my pocket, and that one, while smaller, still worked as a makeshift mask and didn't smell bad. Win!

I hit two cert centers today, one at the 11K mark and one at the 30K mark, and then the plan was to go to Weolsong-jeong Pension. That pension turned out not to have any available rooms ("방이 안 돼요," the old lady said, which could mean anything from "No rooms are ready" to "We're racist and spit on foreigners, so fuck off"), so I had to backtrack a kilometer to Beach Motel, which is run by a surly guy with little patience for my type, whatever you take "my type" to mean. The motel itself, at W40,000, isn't bad, except for the shitty WiFi. It's going to take a million years to upload pics for today's entry, and I took nearly 500 pics today (perhaps to make up for yesterday).

Being in Beach Motel adds a kilometer to tomorrow's walk, but that's not horrible: tomorrow's walk goes from 21.4 to 22.4 kilometers. Doable. And I don't have to leave my lodging at 4:30 a.m.

But you're here for the photos (except for Charles, who's here for the scintillating, Pulitzer-winning prose), so here they are—kind of. I'm starting to upload them at 5:09 p.m.; I'll be curious to see what this blog post's time stamp will be. 

PHOTO ESSAY

NB: given how bad the WiFi is here, I'm going to upload maybe ten images, then upload the rest tomorrow on the assumption that I'll have better WiFi elsewhere. Sorry for the inconvenience, but sending 488 images through such puny bandwidth is like trying to hyperventilate through a straw. Images for now:

boat lights on the horizon

Uljin is apparently known for two things: crabs and squid.

Hanging season has begun in earnest. Note how the squid have all been processed before drying.

a little granny ass to get your juices flowing... and yes, this is one of the stooped old ladies with the carts that I was talking about

I'm really starting to like the sight of boats in the harbor.

obligatory spider

shwimteo and sky

a rather normal-looking glove

cosmos

first cert center

Yes, I'm holding back. Expect way more tomorrow. Since tomorrow's walk is shorter, I'll have time to stop in a café (assuming there is one) and upload the rest of the pics, which I'll leave below. So come back to this post tomorrow and check for the full complement of pictures. Again, sorry for the inconvenience.

UPDATE: turns out there's a café across the street, so I've managed to use its WiFi to upload all of today's pics today. Rejoice! And there are captions.

around 4:35 a.m.

boat lights on the horizon

Jesus fire

best translation wins one of my socks

chairs with character

the lone shwimteo... but how to get there?

ah—mystery solved

just a regular restaurant

in real life, the scene was much darker

tetrapods and crabs

I don't see any dumpsters on the east coast, but I do see this method for disposing of garbage.

approximately where the sun should show up for sunrise, I think

myo, i.e., burial mounds

the bright spots on the clouds hint at the sun

squid hangin' out

ol' sexy granny

lots of shwimteo on today's route

a big, fat spider to make up for the big spiders I saw yesterday and didn't photograph

boat

people work for a living out here

I see these putt-putting all over.

spiders were everywhere

wind-powered generators in the distance

shwimteo and sky

Kingston

church

Traffic! Happy, McCrarey?

more windmills at a distance

a rest station where I stopped and had breakfast

a rather normal-looking glove

remember this sign

I've been walking along a freeway for a bit. It's early morning on the east coast, and I'm away from any big cities, so there's not too much traffic, but there is enough to make me a bit nervous.

leaving the freeway

cosmos greet me on the other side

hey, Mom

cert center coming up

voilà

take the low road

anti-avalanche crosses

The pebbles perched on the bricks are, I assume, the work of people.

damn wire ruins this shot

It was 11K to the first cert center. Another 19K to the second cert center of the day.

Let the squid-selling commence!

just across the street, competition

The squid have no idea we humans are doing this to them. What's it like to be unconscious of how delicious you are?

This makes up for the awesome crab sculpture I saw the previous day and didn't photograph.

The urge to anthropomorphize squid by giving them smiles baffles me. They already look like dicks. What more do you need to do to them?

burdz

always good to see harvested chilis drying

A lot of these little squid stores have these fake ajummas in front.

deconstructed shwimteo

the reaching shadow

abandoned

stopped off at this beach to hit the terlit

digital zoom to the rescue

more myo at ground level

like a US roadside motel

myo—you recognize them by now

hill

down the other side

dark maw of mystery

OK, fish experts: what am I looking at?

weird and striking

chaos emerges from order

YOLO

That's a lot of dead people.

another hill

more death

up

approaching the top

Chinese-food ad, in case you're hungry while in the tunnel

net

fellow traveler

This one was obviously dying, so I confess I helped him.

beehives coming up

I tried zooming in so you could see the bees, but I don't think I succeeded.

onward and upward

still ascending

cows seen on the way down this hill

Is it the suburbs if you're on farmland?

a member of the tiny-house movement

a shwimteo, kind of

What am I looking at?

land of plenty

blossoms

from this tree

another chair is punished for its crimes

getting closer to Pohang, a major city

yet another hill

dead on arrival

up

just before the summit

There's an airfield near here. I think it's for pilot training.

down we go

descending

a long-dead frog

somewhere out there is a stooped old lady without her precious cart

more drying chilis

lots of clear blue

What's the story?

digital zoom (30X?), distant ship

same ship, 1X zoom

I liked the chili shadow.

ded burd

old and busted, but still a shwimteo

What the shit is this thing coming up?

Seriously, what am I looking at?

I can't help myself. I have to explore this.

explanation?

I'm behind the main building shown in previous photos. Tiger and sage.

sage

kitty

back down (the rear doors of the building were open, so someone was obviously inside)

looking back

figures on that strange pagoda-boat

the dragon head at the bow

onward

more Chinese food, shamelessly marketed

abandonment!

decay!

and suddenly, I'm in New England

tethered, this chair will be going nowhere today

without the main cushion, you're kind of missing the point

gulz

gloves, not abandoned for once

I took a rest in this shwimteo. Ceiling.

again with the legless chairs

some sort of display

an aspect of Korean history I know nothing about

shrooms

second cert center of the day, right by the shrine(?) it's named after

ahead, on the right, is where I thought I'd be staying

I ate lunch, then turned around to go to the motel I had passed. Also passed this shrine, as indicated by the above sign.

the shrine itself

more cosmos

What does this sign mean? No passing?

my motel, the Bitch—uh, Beach Motel