Day 4, Leg 4

On this date last year, as I was walking out of Hanam City, my foot popped.  In that first fraction of a second, the experience was both horrible and horrifying.  I was certain that something had broken inside my foot, and that I'd have to call the walk off.  I never did figure out exactly what had popped and why, but I quickly realized that no bones had broken, and no tendons had snapped.  Either event would have been agony, but as I took several cautious steps right after the popping noise, I realized I wasn't in pain.  Reasoning that I was still functional and therefore good to go, I continued with the rest of my walk and made it to Busan without a hitch.

All of this makes me happy to report that, today, there was no pop, and overall, I'm doing pretty well in terms of pain levels.  This time last year, and back in 2017, the walk to Yangpyeong left me almost crippled with agony.  Right now, my feet are achy and grumbling, but I'm fine.

Unfortunately, thanks to yesterday's many delays, my late arrival in Hanam meant a very late departure this morning, hence a three-hour-late arrival in Yangpyeong.  I'm staying here for two nights, though, so I ought to have my schedule sorted by the time I leave here Saturday morning. 

When I got to Yangpyeong, I made a beeline straight for my favorite Chinese place, but the screechy server with the nasal, Chinese-accented Korean told me the kitchen had closed.  It was 8:20 p.m.  So I sighed and schlepped over to Hoya Chicken to enjoy some spicy dak gangjeong (popcorn chicken).  It was indeed pretty spicy; I'm going to pay for this tomorrow. 

Walking alone meant that I could walk a bit faster, although I did take several rest breaks.  Yesterday, because I was walking with JW and his kids, every rest stop was a decision-by-committee.  Today, I could breathe more freely.  I don't like being beholden to other people's schedules and whims; it's stifling.

Without further ado, then, here's today's photo essay. We start off with the walk out of Hanam City and toward the Paldang Bridge. I saw the jinggeom-dari (stone footbridge) below and thought it was the jinggeom-dari to end all jinggeom-dari. Normally, such footbridges have only one row of boulder-like stones spanning the creek; this one sported three:

These shwimteo had a vaguely modern, Protestant look about them:

Choices, choices... but not really. There is only one path to follow to Busan, and you know which one it is:

A glimpse toward Starfield, where my buddy and his kids went after we parted ways yesterday:

I can't make up my mind, on this section of the path, as to whether to walk in the bike lanes or on the gravel path for walkers that parallels the bike lanes. I hate gravel paths, which inevitably introduce gravel into my shoes. Despite the hatred, I chose to gravel it this time:

I'm somehow reminded, below, of the Claude Serre cartoon (Serre was big in the 1980s) that shows the freeway-exit sign offering two options: toutes directions and autres directions.

Your first good look at the Paldang Bridge:

Islands in the stream:

Rounding the bend and seeing the mountains:

As with many things in Korea, the solution to a problem is rarely direct and linear. To get up to the Paldang Bridge, you must first cross under it, then turn right when you see the U-turning ramp that leads upward. In the pic below, I'm about to cross under the bridge:

When I was partway up the ramp, I took the following pic:

You've seen this next pic many times before if you've followed all my other adventures that led toward Yangpyeong:

How had I missed the fact that the cosmos itself had blessed my trans-Korea walk by shaping the paths into a giant letter "K" for "Kevin"?  I must rededicate myself to being worthy of such a blessing:

You've also seen this view before:

A shot of the grand old Han:

This construction was new to me:

And here are those angel wings again:

"So, Professor Xavier, the position of winged X-man has been filled by Angel? Fine, but do his wings sprout out of his head?"

If I'm not mistaken, the banner below is echoing the holy words of Saint Billy of Joel:  "I love you just the way you are."  Keirsey and Bates wrote about how so many couples end up engaging in toxic "Pygmalion projects," i.e., the partners try to remake each other into their own respective images. Saint Billy's words are often appreciated but rarely followed.

The Korean expression is cumbersome and complicated, and the Western mind has to pretzel itself a bit to understand:

지금 모습 now form

그대로 like that, in that way

그대를 you (accusative case)

사랑합니다 (I) love (you)

Roughly, "I love you like that, in the form you are now." Sounds a bit like Asian-nerd video-game speech: "Though you be not in your final form, love there is nevertheless."

Anyway, I assume that Billy Joel's lyric is the most natural and most plausible translation.

 

Utterly random stretch limo:

Right around the spot where the limo sits, the path dodges away from the river a bit and goes slightly uphill.  At that point, the mood and character of the trail change.  The river is still visible along this stretch, but it feels slightly estranged.  For about the first kilometer after the path changes its face, you see the backs of a lot of restaurants:

This distinctive and dilapidated structure has been here since I first started coming this way, and I've never been able to figure out whether the place is still in operation. Any guesses?

It's October, so the massive Korean orb-weavers are out in force.  I must have passed hundreds of them while leaving Incheon on Day 1. I passed hundreds more today while walking to Yangpyeong.  Here's one, busily sucking out a soul:

I encountered Sifu Pai Mei in a defensive crouch:

No one messes with Pai Mei. He'll snap your back and your neck like they were twigs, and that will be the story of you.

A first look at Paldang Dam, the only dam along my route that I can't access directly (there's got to be some route down there):

The trail feels less open here, more covered and private. Bikers were out in force because this was Chuseok day, but things were still quiet. A sliver of silence:

Below: we're close to the dam. I'll be heading through a tunnel, the first of maybe ten or eleven, that sits off to the side. 

The aforementioned tunnel:

Also new to me:  all the architecture on display:

Some funky shwimteo below:

A fairly ordinary, modern shwimteo:

Funky shwimteo redux:

The spiders have their guard posts everywhere:

One could be easily spoiled by such views:

The "me and my shadow" pics were a fixture of previous walk blogs. Normally, I'd take long-shadow shots in the early morning. I made an exception today. 

Woodhenge!

Mysterious waves of vegetation.  Is it vines?  Something else? 

A split (I'm going right... or rather, straight):

A classic shwimteo:

Lots and lots of bikers as I approach Neungnae Station:

I didn't take any pics of Neungnae Station this time around.  I did, however, take a nice, long nap for about 40 minutes.  A group of girls had gathered nearby, and they would periodically break out into this annoyingly long, annoyingly loud fake laugh that sounded like a combination of a sheep's baa-ing and a retarded horse's whinnying.  Fran Drescher would've approved, but it annoyed the fuck out of me, seeing as I was trying to take a nap.  

Have I mentioned how much I hate demonstrations of the hive-mind mentality?  I could rant about all the hive-mindedness I encounter here in Korea, but I'd rather talk about two blonde chicks with went to Switzerland with me as part of our third-year-abroad program (we were all French majors).  In our group of seven people who went to Switzerland—one half-Korean guy, one prim and studious half-Turkish chick, one hilarious and fun Dominican chick, one gay Caucasian, one strangely man-hungry Caucasian chick, and two goofy American blondes—the two blondes bonded instantly and telepathically.  It was morbidly fascinating to watch.  They'd do the whole finish-each-other's-sentences thing; one would start singing a tune, and the other would pick up the song to make a duet; they thought alike, they spoke alike, and they acted alike.  I was attracted to one of them, but because the other insisted on being the first girl's fucking shadow, I never truly found a way to get some alone time with Blonde Drone #1.  These days, I blame myself more than I do the girls; I now know that I had a lot to learn back then about confidence and assertiveness.  Anyway, my point is that the two of them were goddamn drones, part of the blonde hive mind.  Their individuality disappeared whenever they were together, and all I could do was just accept that fact while staring in horror.  I hate hive minds, and those horse-laughing girls at the Neungnae Station waypoint triggered some not-so-pleasant memories.

After leaving Neungnae, I had to cross the river:

In the following shot, I'm looking back and roughly northwest along the Han.  This may be the South Han River (Namhan-gang), but the bridge I'm crossing bills itself as the North Han River Rail Bridge.  I never understood that.  We're definitely heading south at this point.

Below:  a weirdly roofed shwimteo as seen from the rail bridge:

Obligatory shot:

A shot of whatever town is close to Neungnae Station as I'm crossing the river:

BOO!

I started thinking about redesigning Zen Buddhist monks' robes to include some folds of cloth that are colored to reflect local nature.  Splatters of red, black, and yellow, as might be found on a Korean orb-weaver, would be interesting.  So would the blue, gray, white, and black of a ggachi (magpie).  Here's another Zen monk, living the simple life:

At this point, I've done fifteen kilometers from Hanam City, and I'm at Yangsu Station, which is where I had met JW and his son months ago, back when I did another crazy 60-km hike from my place all the way to Yangpyeong.  From Yangsu Station, it's another 20 km to Yangpyeong.  A long way to go yet.

By now, it's after 3 p.m., and I need to start thinking about conditions as the sun goes down.  In the meantime, I found this shot strangely beautiful:

And the path changes character again.  Much of the latter part of the path ran parallel to the rail line, which is why I encountered so many stations along the way.  People tempted to give up on such a walk can just hop on a train and go back to Seoul.  No one'll stop you.

A small taste of Chuseok traffic:

Unlike in 2017, when I obsessively photographed these tunnels, I'm providing just this one shot for you below.  Tunnels are a relief from the hot sun; walking in them gives you an idea of what it'd be like to do this same route at night.  In truth, given how much I hate the sun, I would much rather do the entire walk to Busan exclusively at night.  The problem, though, would be the awkwardness of getting rooms at motels:  many motel managers are already antsy about having clients who arrive before 2 p.m., as I sometimes do; they'd rather not see you until after 10 p.m. if possible.  Arriving in the early morning, after a long nighttime walk, would be even more problematic.

Anyway, tunnels are cool.  Literally.  Here's your one-and-only shot of one:

Try looking this expression up in the Korean-English dictionary.  I'll wait.

Just about says it all:

Yes, I'm sunburned.  This happens every time, and it's never serious.  Before you get all breathless, yes, I do watch out for precancerous growths.  Thus far, nada.

Below:  a place that sells uncarved and carved blocks of stone:

A touch of Korean suburbia:

I live for these long, glorious stretches:

Your first of many glimpses of the Korean answer to America's amber waves of grain.  It's harvest time, now, so there'll be a lot of this:

The joke never gets old.  Below is Guksu Station, which sounds for all the world like Noodle Station (guksu = "noodles" in Korean).  Can't take this place seriously.

And again with the name, proudly displayed:

This flower is growing off a tree:

And here's the tree:

I probably did that backward.  Any cinematographer will tell you that you do the wide, establishing shot first to provide context, and only then do you zoom in on the details.

An interesting sculpture or tableau:

The above tableau/sculpture is in a park that sits close to the municipal boundary for Yangpyeong City.  (There are several Yangpyeongs:  an -eup and a -myeon along with the -si.)

Below is my favorite creek sign.  Satan deserves his own creek, I think.  Last year, this was where the day's photo essay ended.  This time around, I took more photos in defiance of the ambient dark.

Commenter Daniel asked about the sa in Satan-cheon.  Is it the Chinese character for four?  For death?  For something else?  I have no clue, and trying to look up "사탄천" with the Naver Hanja Dictionary was no help.  Personally, I like to think the name is three Chinese characters that translate to "Death Carbon Stream."

A naengmyeon-jip that I keep hoping to try one day, although when that day might be is unclear:

A bridge and a highway:

The path stretches on into the night:

A lame shot (thanks, phone) of the harvest moon:

A bridge glitters in the distance, a testament to the comfortingly civilizing power of electricity: 

As the small bridge glitters in the dark, Yangpyeong—which isn't a small city—follows the curve of the Han River:

This next photo was of something new, a vision of horror. Did my eyes deceive me?

My eyes weren't deceiving me.  Starbucks had moved to Yangpyeong big-time.  This new establishment was huge, and it had appeared here sometime between last year and now.  Starbucks, like Apple, has figured out how to market itself to big-business-hating liberals, who seem to think that Starbucks's corporatized mediocrity is somehow hipsterish and edgy, when in fact it's nothing but shitty assembly-line coffee and desserts that worsen in quality every year.  Overpriced and not worth a single drop of your life force, Starbucks could disappear in a cloud of Thanos-dust, and I wouldn't shed a single tear.

I tried to get a clear shot of the evil corporate mermaid, but my phone camera sucks at night. You can vaguely see "Drive Thru" written under the horrible creature's image as the mermaid, siren-like, beckons you into its lair:

I'm downtown now, close to Yangpyeong Station.  The air-quality indicator, which flashes a series of screen images about particulate matter, carbon dioxide, etc., says the air is... happy:

My Chinese place kicked me out because their kitchen is staffed with pussies who don't work past 8 p.m.  Lots of restos were closed for Chuseok, but I was pretty sure that Hoya Chicken, the unrecognized-bastard chicken of my alma mater Georgetown University, would be open for business.  And it was!  The solicitous ajeossi inside bent over backward to make me comfortable while other customers roared in vulgar, drunken voices.  We all celebrate Chuseok in our own way, I guess.  So, lastly: popcorn chicken for dinner:

Way spicy.  I should've gone for the regular.  I liked the pan-fried ddeok, though.

Even with a full day more or less off my feet, I feel as if I haven't gotten enough rest.  By the end of October, it's going to be one of those "I need a vacation from my vacation" situations:  I'll be coming back to work drained and sleep-deprived.  That said, the reintroduction of routine into my life will do much to dispel my spiritual and physical fatigue.  And I've got December to look forward to:  that's when I'll finally be zeroing out my dang debt and celebrating a for a whole fookin' week.  I do look forward to that.

A good, tiring walk, this was.  Many more such walks to go.