Today’s adventure across Korea was met with much anticipation. We had just finished a week of long shifts and lots of work, it was time to ride. Our weather for today’s mission was expected to be great. I had accomplished no less then twenty-five weather checks throughout the days leading up to it and we were ready.
From the start we experienced a rather cold and stiff breeze swooping in from the ocean side of things and the decision to not wear the cold-weather bibs was looking to be a stupid one. Our roll-out lasted about .8 miles when we were met with a locked-down front gate. As we stood around waiting for the gate to reopen, I am convinced it was the beginning of the end to our warm ride. Either way it didn’t matter because we were going.
After about 30 minutes of standing around and freezing the gate finally opened. With cold legs and screaming quads our first stop was the reservoir pictured to the left. A very pretty site, that we cycled right on by in an attempt to keep the blood flowing and to stay warm. What you can’t see in the picture is the millions of tiny gnats that we encountered as we rode across the banks. Literally swarms and swarms of gnats. I was following the lead guy, so I hunched in right on his rear wheel in a futile attempt to let him break the bugs for me. Once we made across it was time to stop and perform a cleansing of the bog mafia that now resided in our helmets.
Pictured to the right, I had just finished my debugification prior to this lovely pose. It was now time to keep moving and regain what little warmth and blood flow we had created earlier. As I had stated in the last post, cutting across fields to reach your intended objective seems to be the route of choice. Could you imagine if we had cement roads in the US cutting across farm fields? The amount of endless routes would be crazy, and it is here in Korea.
There is some beauty in that can be found in farm fields and its in that beauty I believe that allows me to enjoy traversing through them. On this particular day we were met with a cement truck though; stopped directly in our path. After a quick dismount and some carrying of the bike were able to get around him and press on. As we made our way through the fields we started our approach into Gunsan City when I was reminded of the fact that one of the favorite past-times for Koreans is golfing.
To the left here you will see the Korean version of a driving range. They are all over the place, large netted structures that typically house double and triple decked driving ranges. One of the coolest features of these ranges is the set-up. One its cool to just look at and marvel but two, the way the netting is laid out, your ball simply rolls down the netting into a trough and pops up out of a hole in your station. As fast as you can hit them, there will always be another ball waiting for you. For about 7000 Won you can hit as many balls as possible in the span of a couple hours. That equates to roughly $6.00 to hit a couple hours worth of golf balls. I can only imagine what they could charge for this back home, but I am guessing it would be more then six bucks. Continuing on, we were making our way to Gunsan City.
As we headed into town it was really starting to cool down. One of the draw backs to cycling if there actually is one lies in the fact that the faster you pedal, the colder it gets. A fact that I would be reminded of several times today. Though its difficult to make out, it seemed the park was full of Korean war monuments, fitting I suppose, but we were really just guessing as everything was written in Korean, so I cannot be certain of it.
We were greeted with this lovely little bridge upon our arrival. My cycling partner Brian informed me that in the evenings the bridge is lit up like a Christmas tree and quite the site to see. Another adventure perhaps, in August. At this point I was really starting to get cold and it was time to look for warmth. Right on the corner adjacent to this beautiful bridge set a very quaint and adorable coffee shop and it was screaming our names.
After some much needed coffee and warmth it was time to head back out. We started our ride around the body of water but only 15 minutes in and the wind was howling. I told Brian that I was officially cold and miserable, he agreed, it was time to head for home. What seemed like a good half-hour later we were finally back out of the park and headed for the house.
The trip home would be much quicker then the trip in. I am what I like to call a determined cyclist. I have this uncanny ability to put my head down and just pedal through it, however today, I was struggling. Looking back a few times to make sure Brian was still with me we put the hammer down.
Over the bridge, through the woods and over another bridge, down the street and to the right, past the driving range and into the tunnel we were back at the farm fields. Since Brian pulled bug blocker duty on our trip in I took the lead and blazed a trail across the reservoir. It wasn’t long before looming in the distance was our six story building we call home. Near frozen to death and looking more the like the front grill of a car after a long road trip we had made it. All in all it was a great day. I still enjoyed my trip across Korea today and that’s all that mattered. It might have helped just a little knowing that we were about to go consume bacon-cheeseburgers and a few Sam Adams.
To see more pictures from today’s ride you can visit my Flikr site here. Enjoy.
Great post! Love keeping up with your ride.
Thanks Ilyse