arrived

And that's it for another trans-ROK walk!  Frustratingly, my battery power dropped under 5% right at the final kilometer, so I had to pause a few minutes at a very distinguished-looking shwimteo to recharge up to about 12% so I could document the last one thousand meters of this adventure.

I've decided on how I plan to spend the rest of today.  It's still early, so I'll cab over to Busan Station, get a room at the Busaninn yeogwan, then go get a KTX train ticket for tomorrow, preferably in the morning.  After that, I'll cab way out to Haeundae Beach to eat a pizza at Gino's, since I now know, thanks to John Mac, that Eugene has opened a Busan branch.  Will walk out to the beach after that and touch the ocean, more for shits and giggles than because the gesture has any symbolic significance. 

In 2017, the walk's endpoint had a large and bustling convenience store.  Last year, the site was little more than a closet run by a surly guy.  This year:  nada.  So no celebratory Coke until later, alas.  Ah, well.

I'll give a full write-up for the day later this evening, after I'm back from my triumphal meal.

UPDATE:  the Busaninn is temporarily out of operation because of the virus.  I walked over to the motel after purchasing my train ticket and saw the following sign:

So!  No business, I guess, until the pandemic blows over.  I skipped right over to the Plaza Tour Hotel, which charged me W50,000 for a decent room.

I'm at Gino's now, getting ready to chow down on garlic knots and a large Butcher pie (Gino's version of a meat-lover's pizza).  The cabbie who drove me here was friendly but scatterbrained:  he realized partway through the route that he hasn't turned on his meter.  I asked him to quote a fair price, and when he dropped me off, I tipped him generously.  The cab ride back ought to be more straightforward:  everyone knows where Busan Station is.

the last kilometer

final 2 km

5 km to go

down to the final 10

Day 28, Leg 21

Stayed in bed for a long, long time this morning.  Felt good to be that decadent, and that's another reason why I do a two-night stay before the end:  it's the gathering-oneself before the final leap.

A quick peek at Wikipedia reveals that the dam vs. barrage issue is a bit confused and confusing.  One section of the Wikipedia article on dams says this:

According to the World Commission on Dams, a key difference between a barrage and a dam is that a dam is built for water storage in a reservoir, which raises the level of water significantly. A barrage is built for diverting [water and] raises the water level by only a few feet.

Another section, meanwhile, says this:

A barrage is a type of low-head, diversion dam [that] consists of a number of large gates that can be opened or closed to control the amount of water passing through. This allows the structure to regulate and stabilize [river-water] elevation upstream for use in irrigation and other systems.

So either a barrage is not a dam, being fundamentally different in purpose and function, or it's a type of dam.  And this is why we love Wikipedia.

Went walking around town today.  Took a few pictures, as well as a video. 

I've said that I think the harvest is a bit late this year, but as you see, the fruit and vegetable merchants are out doing their thing.  Maybe it's just the rice that's having a slow start.  To be sure, I passed by (and took many pictures of) fields where the rice had been harvested.  But compared to last year, I didn't see nearly as much harvested rice on rectangular sheets this time around.  I hope the harvest is completed before the true cold sets in.

My walk around town revealed much about the nature and character of Yangsan.  It's a city for sure, but scaled down in comparison to Seoul or Busan.  Property has been aggressively developed since 2017, and there are now plenty of restaurants and shops downtown, i.e., close to the train station.  Otherwise, Yangsan is a sea of apartment complexes and one-room neighborhoods.  It's highly, highly residential, and given its close proximity to Busan's city limits (about 5 km from here), it's safe to assume that Yangsan is a satellite city, the same way that Suwon and Suji are satellites of Seoul, or the way northern Virginia services DC by housing people who work in DC.

Eventually, I decided to rehearse tomorrow morning's departure from Yangsan.  This took me back out to the park area that I had passed through en route to this motel yesterday.  While at the park, I heard drums, and a voice in my head that somehow combined James Earl Jones and Clint Eastwood commanded, Follow the drums.  So I did.  And I was led to some sort of rehearsal, which inspired me to take some video.  The video is longer than 60 seconds, which apparently makes the file too large for Blogger's "upload video" function to upload.  I therefore placed the video on YouTube, but I can't embed the video here using my phone.  The best I can do is provide you a link.  If I remember to, I'll change the link to an embedded video once I'm back in Seoul. 

Tonight, I plan to chill, keep watching YouTube, and get my pack ready for a very early departure tomorrow morning.  I'll have several hours of walking during which to decide how I'll be resolving the pizza situation.  Is Slice of Life Pizza so good that I'll cab halfway across Busan just to eat it?  Personally, I think Gino's in Itaewon is substantially better; it might be worth it just to wait until I'm back in Seoul.  I don't know; nothing's set in stone yet.  I'll let you know what I decide tomorrow.

UPDATE:  here's that video, now embedded:

Day 27, Leg 21

It's a bit premature, but reaching Yangsan already feels like finishing the walk.  The final stretch lies before me, and on Monday, I'll wake up around 4 a.m. and walk the remaining 28.8 kilometers to the Nakdong River Estuary Barrage (낙동강 하구둑), the official endpoint of the Four Rivers bike path.  I cheated twice this time around both to avoid camping and to follow a fortuitous shortcut to Choongju, and this means the total distance I will have walked won't be the official 633 km:  it'll be more like 615 km.

I didn't sleep that well last night, despite the lack of marauding mosquitoes.  As a result, I again left the yeogwan a little late, stepping out the door at 6:50 a.m.  The walk itself was magnificent, albeit brief compared to my longer walks:  the terrain was relatively flat, the scenery was achingly beautiful, and the weather was sunny and calm, contrasting with the previous day's bluster.  One problem I have with bright, sunny days, though, is that they make it hard to take decent photos with my cell-phone camera:  the camera registers bright areas and exaggerates the shadows in the dim areas.  This is true even when I'm pointing the camera decidedly away from the sun.  Ideally, I should run my pics through Photoshop to remove the effects of glare/haze, but I don't have that luxury while on the trail, so my apologies for the glut of imperfect pictures.  (I'm aware there's free online photo-editing software, but you're not going to persuade me to experience that particular pain in the ass while using a cell phone.)

I actually feel robust enough to finish out the trek tomorrow, but stopping for two nights at Yangsan is now a kind of tradition.  That said, my feet hurt worse today than they did a couple days ago, when I was walking to Hanam-eup and contemplating that other walking dude who seemed to be in a lot of pain.  I also broke protocol and lanced my huge blister this evening; it was ridiculously large by the time I arrived at the Bliss Hotel today.  (I could see the blister bulging out through my thick sock.)  I had another large blister quietly burst on me a couple weeks ago; the burst blister required no further attention, so I think I can get away with not treating this lanced blister with anything more than a thorough foot-washing, which I've now done.

Am still mulling over what to do on Monday.  The easy thing to do would be to forgo the pizza celebration and just cab it to Busan Station after I arrive at the walk's endpoint; I can eat at a decent resto in that neighborhood, and the Busaninn yeogwan is right there.  I can also stroll over to the station from the yeogwan to buy a KTX ticket for the following day.  Skipping out on pizza would mean not visiting the beach at Gwangalli, where I've traditionally walked down to the waves in order to symbolically touch the ocean as my own official way of ending the walk.  But do I need to do this?  I didn't touch the ocean when I started out in Incheon; the ocean wasn't accessible from the trail's starting point.  Same goes for the endpoint, which allows you a tantalizing view of the ocean as you're crossing the barrage but doesn't allow you down close to the water.  Touching the ocean at the end, but not at the beginning, seems... asymmetrical.  I'm not attached to the tradition. 

At the same time, my inner glutton wants a goddamn pizza as a condign reward for a job well done.  Could I settle for something less grandiose as a capper to this journey?  Doubtful.  Maybe there's a decent pizzeria near Busan Station.  I'll have to check.  I seem to recall that that neighborhood has no shortage of restos.  I might get lucky.

The walk to Yangsan, despite the annoying Saturday crowd of fair-weather bikers (many of whom loved to stray into my pedestrian lane because fuck you), got me all sentimental.  This will be my last walk along the Four Rivers path for a while.  I'm already thinking about next year, when I plan to walk the east-coast path that goes roughly from Gangneung to Busan.  This means starting from square one again in terms of planning and research, but that's kind of exciting.  The east-coast path is 720 km long,  making it only slightly shorter than the Camino francés (780 km, depending on how it's measured and what your starting point is).  Given that my buddy Mike wants to walk one of the nine caminos when we turn 60, there's no time like the present to start a-practicing.

The computer here at the Bliss Hotel isn't working, which is par for the course, but the WiFi is nice and strong, so I'll do a pic dump of some of today's images below, then I'll slap some pics of yesterday's walk up on yesterday's post (Day 26, Leg 20).  Just come back periodically to check for updates.

Lots of beautiful parkland:

Barely a kilometer into the walk:

Dead snake (very small):

Fog on the water:

Lots of dead earthworms:

Rest spot:

Some of the cyclists who passed me today.  Many of them ignored me when I nodded to them in greeting; as I get closer to the big city, people become more distant and standoffish:

One of three stone dragons swimming in bricks and concrete:

The bike path and the river:

What a difference a year makes!  This span was nothing but a series of pylons when I passed by this way last year:

I'm about a kilometer out from my motel:

Downtown Yangsan:

Arrived:

Just a sample of the 160-some pics I took today.

PHOTO ESSAY: