Day 25, Leg 19

Today's walk was only 28 kilometers, not the 30 projected by an overzealous Naver Map.  All in all, the trek went smoothly.  I was sad to leave Namji-eup, but the time had come to depart.  The Heitz Hotel, at W45,000 a night, had proved to be a most excellent accommodation; I sense that even more keenly because of where I am now, a ratty motel called Hwang To Bang (황토방 모텔), which has the nerve to charge W40,000 for its dubious, slightly scuzzy comforts. (And yeah, the name definitely sounds vulgar when you say it with an American accent.)  Anyway, I'm in Hanam-eup now, about 70 kilometers from my final goal.

I left Namji-eup at exactly 6 a.m., just a few minutes before the sun popped up.  The walk began in darkness, but once I was out of the town and across the river, the sky was already lightening.  The terrain today was mostly flat; my second hill from hell (which won't be nearly as bad as the first hill was) comes tomorrow, and after that, it's smooth sailing to Busan.

I said a sad goodbye to Changnyeong Haman Dam (창녕함안보), which is the final dam before the end.  Technically, the end of the walk features a dam-like structure that the French call a barrage (this is the "둑" in the expression "하구둑," where the syllables "하구" refer to an estuary; my goal is the 낙동강 하구둑, i.e., the Nakdong River Estuary Barrage), but I think this is technically not a dam.  The Changnyeong Haman Dam appeared early on today's leg; I got there at almost 8:30 a.m., which made me wonder whether the admin building's convenience store would even be open.  As it turned out, the convenience store was open, and the friendly ajeossi at the register told me to grab two free persimmons out of a crate as a gift.  As you've seen from my photos, it's persimmon season.

Somewhere around the 25,000-step mark, I found an awesome spot to put myself down for a long nap.  It was a nicely manicured jeonmangdae (전망대), an observation deck that looked to have been recently built.  This one was set rather low, but it offered a grand view of the river valley.  The path was generally quiet today, and I had the whole deck to myself, so I napped and let my phone recharge. It had been cloudy all morning, but while I was on my back with my hat over my face, the sun made several attempts to peek through.  This time, the clouds won:  today's gray weather was an aftereffect of yesterday's rain.  I had dodged a bullet by giving myself my traditional rest day in Namji-eup, and that saved me the trouble of hiking in the rain.

Something of interest happened over the last eight or so kilometers of the walk today.  When I got up from my awesome nap at the jeonmangdae, I started toward a large bridge that I knew I'd have to cross.  A few hundred meters ahead of me,  a dude with a backpack seemed to be ambling along.  He rounded a bend and disappeared, and I didn't think about him again until I saw him a little later, seated at a bench on some parkland.  As I approached, the guy got up slowly, shrugged his pack on, and began walking.  I easily tromped past him, but I felt a pang because I recognized the man's stiff, slow gait:  he was in obvious pain.  As with the walking dude in Choongju, I didn't say anything to this guy as I passed him, but I did wonder whether he was heading to Busan as I was.  I got the distinct impression that this was his first big walk (if that was indeed what he was doing), and that he hadn't prepped properly for it.  The guy, a burly Korean, was obviously younger, stronger, and healthier than I was, but he couldn't even maintain a 3.5-kph pace.  I looked over my shoulder periodically, and for a couple kilometers, I saw him doing his best to maintain distance with me, but he eventually faded farther and farther back.  Either he was intent on ambling along, taking time to smell the roses, or he was in serious agony.

Let's assume the guy was basically athletic, and he suddenly got it into his head to try some distance walking because he thought it'd be easy.  "Hey, Ma!  Gonna walk to Busan next week!"  I think that most people who are athletically inclined can recognize how insane that attitude is.  The body responds to habit-formation; this is what training and conditioning are all about.  Just because you've trained your body to do X, Y, and Z doesn't mean it can easily shift to doing A, B, and C.  An accomplished wrestler can't suddenly run a marathon.  The commonsense basics for gaining proficiency at anything are easy and obvious:  you set a goal for yourself, then you work incrementally toward that goal.  This takes time, effort, and focus.  Nothing worthwhile in life is easy to accomplish, and you can't just declare, one day, that you're walking to Busan.

Now, I have no idea how right or wrong I am about this guy, but my nunchi (a Korean term for percipience, perceptivity, or people-reading skills) tells me that the dude was in pain, and the cause of his pain was lack of planning and conditioning.  If he's stubborn enough, he can power through the pain all the way to Busan, but I bet he'll think twice about ever doing such a walk again.  Contrast him with my buddy JW, who has made distance walking both a routine and a priority in his life.  JW hasn't done a full 30K day yet, but with the conditioning he now has under his belt, he's ready to take a multi-day hike, and if he can do 25K (which he's done several times), he can easily do 30K.  I guarantee that JW wouldn't be in as much pain as this dude was. 

Anyway, I arrived at Hanam-eup around 3:30 p.m.  The township has a bunch of pharmacies, so I went looking for some more ibuprofen.  (I still have two boxes of 600-mg tabs, but I don't want to run out of meds before the final walk.)  The first pharmacy I went to had no ibuprofen; the second had only 200-mg tabs, so I bought some of those.  I then made a beeline for the kalguksu place I ate at last year and had myself a bowl of son-kalguksu and dolsot bibimbap.  

After that, it was a matter of hunting down the Hwang To Bang Motel, which I had selected as an alternative to last year's cheap-but-nasty yeogwan, the Haegeumjang.  No one was at the front office when I arrived; this is a common occurrence when you're dealing with smaller, family-run establishments that assume they won't get customers until much later in the evening.  Such places usually have large signs in their windows saying, "Sorry! If no one's here,  call this number."  I've sort-of gotten used to doing this, but the whole arrangement still feels awkward:  I'll call the manager, be told to just go to room number such-and-such, and I can pay later, when the manager comes back.  This means I don't have a room key, which in turn means I don't feel safe leaving my room to do some shopping or eating.  So I'm trapped in my room while I wait for the manager.  And since I don't know exactly when the manager might show up, I can't launder my clothes or even take a dump for fear that the manager will come banging on my door to ask for my overnight fee.  As I said, the whole thing is awkward.  Pro-level establishments either have someone at the front desk 24/7 or tell you how you can pay via wire transfer before you arrive.

This evening, the lady managing this place didn't show up until 7 p.m.  When she and I had spoken on the phone around 4:30 p.m., she had told me to just go to Room 201, a room that was unlocked and ready for guests.  This evening, when the lady knocked on my door to ask for my fee, she gave a start and said, "Oh!  You're a foreigner!  You speak Korean so well!"  This was funny because I had told her I was a foreigner over the phone earlier in the day.  Some folks just don't listen.

Anyway, here we are, at the end of another lovely day.  The ball of my left foot has another big blister on it, but it's not painful.  Otherwise, I seem to be doing just fine.  Tomorrow is the last arduous day of the trek, and after that, I walk to Yangsan City, spend two nights there, then lumber triumphantly into Busan, where I'll probably celebrate the way I did last year, i.e., by eating a whole fucking pizza and walking out to the beach to touch the ocean.  I'll spend the night in Busan, then take the train home the following day.  The day after that, I'll be back in the office, continuing to toil away in obscurity.

The schedule, spelled out:

10/23 (F):  walk to Nakdongjang yeogwan
10/24 (S):  walk to Yangsan City
10/25 (Z):  rest day, Yangsan City
10/26 (M):  walk to Busan & celebrate
10/27 (T):  KTX to Seoul
10/28 (W):  back to the grind

But you crave visual stimulation, so...

Observation deck atop the dam's admin building.  Not where I had my awesome nap.  That happened later.

One of the rare signs indicating the direction of the path I'm on (toward Busan):

A judicious camera angle, et voilà:  le tricolore français:

I've never seen a street name painted on the street like this before.  Must've walked right past this last year:

Where I had my awesome nap:

Astonishingly, this was the only glove I saw today:

A squash attempts in vain to escape its fate:

Strangely wounded tree:

Crossing the bridge to Hanam-eup:

I know that dak-gangjeong (닭강정) means chicken poppers or crunchy popcorn chicken.  But what does it mean when your temple is named "Crunchy"?

Linner.  Or dunch:

PHOTO ESSAY: