Halloween. Today is a resting day. Traditionally, I take a day off after doing a leg that is 30K or longer. Check the blog's sidebar for a link to my itinerary so you can see which upcoming days will be rest days. I built six of them into the calendar, i.e., out of a 20-day schedule, I'll be walking for only 14 days, averaging over 28 km per day, which is a little bit longer than my 26K/day average when I walk the 633-km-long Four Rivers path.
What a relief it was, last night, to take a shower after four days. Up to now, I've been cleaning my feet with alcohol swabs to stave off toe infections, and I've been sponge bathing the rest of my body—pits, crotch—to minimize body odor. It could be worse: because the mornings are so cold, I don't work up any kind of sweat at all. That said, my two shirts still managed to get funky after four days, so with grim satisfaction, I hand-washed them along with my socks and Spandex-adjacent underwear before taking a real shower. I wrung my clothes out and will take advantage of this rest day to hang-dry them. I've also got a room fan blowing a breeze at the hanging clothes, so they ought to be dry well before noon.
When I got up to pee this morning, I looked in the bathroom and saw how bloated I'd become after yesterday's insane orgy of carbs (which included real sodas, Biscoff cookies, and the Korean knockoff of the Nestlé Crunch Bar, the Crunky). One of the problems with being wired wrong is that you gain weight or get fat at the drop of a hat. I could see the weight gain after a single session of undiscipline. So that settled it: no lunch at the Chinese resto today. My fasting blood sugar is probably still over 200 right now (ideal is 90 or lower).
The plan is to stroll around town and buy a pair of scissors (my multitool's blade is useless for cutting stretchy athletic tape). I also need to swing by a pharmacy to see whether they have some kind of ointment for my ankle neuropathy, but honestly, I just came out of a great night's sleep, and the neuropathy, when it does occur, now seems to be more of a distant background rumble than those foreground jabs of the Emperor's Force lighting that it had been two days ago. So I don't think I really need any ointment.
My feet look fine. As often happens, removing my various tapes and bandages can be a bit of a morbid gamble: you never know what you're going to see. I ended yesterday feeling various aches and irritations, so I was expecting to see the usual complement of blisters and pre-blisters... but there was nothing. And this morning, the aches and pains seem largely to have disappeared.
Let's take a tour.
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| left foot before dressing removal |
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| So far, so good, but what's underneath? |
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| I don't see anything oozing. Always a good sign. |
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Right foot, top: everything's in order. I ended up removing the dark-blue, right-side ankle wrap in anticipation of eventual neuropathy on that side (there's been none so far). Just a precaution. |
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| right foot, side view |
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| right foot, bottom: I see the pinky-toe wrap is coming undone. |
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| Right-foot ankle wrap did its job and kept the Achilles bandage in place. |
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| right foot, across the top: everything in order |
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| left foot, the reveal: no open wounds or irritations |
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| right foot, all dressings removed: only a mark left from the ankle tape |
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| Not to worry: those are healing toe wounds. I hope they don't reopen. |
So as you see, this early in the walk, everything remains in order. And after my shower, I re-dressed my feet. In theory, I'm now ready for the next phase of the walk.
Today begins the slow-but-increasing misalignment of my days and legs: yesterday was the last time those two numbers would ever be the same: Day 4, Leg 4. Today is Day 5, Leg 4, and from now on, with five more rest days on my calendar, the leg numbers are going to drop further and further behind. The final day of the walk will be Day 20, Leg 14.
I feel bad about providing you with only a creature feature yesterday, so let me offer up some more and varied images from yesterday's walk, including an introduction to my abandoned-glove obsession: ever since I first noticed these gloves lying lonely and forlorn on the road, I've felt compelled to document their existence. Assuming these gloves used to belong to bonded pairs, I hope there's a heaven where the two gloves can be reunited and spend eternity happy.
The following pics are just from yesterday's batch of nearly 500 photos.
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| "Hwangtobang Motel" |
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| across the bridge, pre-dawn |
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| looking back |
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| dawn's early light |
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| Don't pick the persimmons! They're someone's precious property. |
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| Lots of "Thou shalt not" signs all over Korea. In this case: no open-flame cooking. |
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| abandoned glove |
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| abandoned shoe? |
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| I could make a career of photographing these symbols of loneliness and neglect. |
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| one of many, many parks |
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| "Watch for slipperiness in snow or rain." |
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| one of several hills |
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| Koreans have several kinds of anti-avalanche measures. |
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| around the bend of the Nakdong |
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| picnic area, mostly empty in November |
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| looking back at the dam |
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| family gravesite with myo (tumuli)—very expensive these days |
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| bridge approach to Namji-eup |
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| what greets you when you enter the town |
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| Heitz Hotel, with its Germanish spelling |
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| one of my room's perks |
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| I slew the chicken before it could slay me, but it might win in the end. |
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| ... |
As I said earlier, I'll eventually slap up all the photos for each day—hundreds of them. During the walk, I normally put up only ten pics because people with short attention spans had complained, during my previous walks, about having to go through all of the images. What I do now is frankly a relief: by limiting myself to only ten images per day during the walk, I can devote more time and energy to writing (which is good because, at the end of a long day, I'm often nodding off while I'm writing). Adding the rest of the pics later, after I'm back from the walk, satisfies my "completist" urges and appeals to the "I wanna see it all" crowd.
There are certain motifs that I've become alert to when I do these walks, so you'll see plenty of photos that show a recurrent theme. These are aspects of the walk—of Korea—that I've come to appreciate over the years. So look for Joro/shaman spiders, big-engineering structures (bridges, dams), flowers, gloves, dilapidation/neglect/decay, personal injury (blood, wounds), Nature's critters (living and dead), straightaways, stairways to mystery, color contrasts, strange geometries, unique trees, and so much else.
When I did my first trans-Korea walk in 2017, I was bowled over by the quiet, modest beauty of the land. All I'd known up to that point was Korea's urban reality. I'd been a child of the suburbs when I'd lived in Virginia; my time in Seoul had turned me into a creature of the city, but these yearly walks have returned to me a sense of nature and spaciousness. Korea's not much when it comes to bombastic grandeur: there are few huge skyscrapers here, no Grand Canyons or Amazon Rivers. What Korea does have, though, is the understated beauty that one hears about in Taoism and Zen Buddhism—the spirit of the valley. It's quiet and nonlinear, but not nonlinear in a clashing, crashing postmodern way—it's more like the Japanese artistic notion of wabi-sabi, in which the artist gives in to naturalistic unevenness because That is the way of things—the way of the Force.
Let's keep our fingers and tentacles crossed in the hope that the rest of this walk goes as well as the first few days have. Rest today, on the trail again on Saturday.
ADDENDUM: My portable power pack doesn't seem to provide me with much extra power. I used to be able to charge my phone to 100% several times with it, but its performance has degraded over time. Yesterday, over 30 km, I almost ran out of charge because the power pack wouldn't charge my phone up beyond 50%. So the pack's age could be a problem. Morning cold could be a problem too: Cold is the enemy of batteries. But if cold is the problem, why doesn't my phone's power drop as fast?
ADDENDUM 2: By God, after yesterday's ponderous meal, I'd better have a good shit tonight. There's no greater nightmare than to be in the middle of farmland, out in the open and visible to everyone, and needing to take a shit with no porta-toilet in sight. The 33K trek tomorrow will only serve to massage my bowels as I walk, so it's better to get this duty over with today, while I'm safely in Namji-eup, than tomorrow during the trek, which won't end until late afternoon. Don't get me wrong: I'm prepared to do whatever is necessary if Nature's call is strong and strident; I've done such things before. But if I'm being honest, I'd really rather not.
ADDENDUM 3: Happy Halloween.
ADDENDUM 4: There's something guilt-inducing about lounging around all day. I did stroll around town a bit, but only a few thousand steps. And I did visit the closest convenience store, where I bought fake "krab," a chicken breast, and two Coke Zeros for lunch instead of heading over to that Chinese place. The lady owner can have my business next year. I also bought the scissors I'd originally come for, and after my stroll, I put the scissors to good use, cutting a large bandage so that it would fit better around my toe. While I was at the convenience store, the young lady at the register asked me about my tee shirt (as I always say, it's a conversation-starter), so I told her about this year's walk, and she asked for permission to take a pic of the shirt only. I know I'm not the only guy walking across Korea, but at a guess, I'm the guy with the best merch. Oh, and I also did my resistance-band/bodyweight routine today. I'm trying to stave off the detraining effect caused by letting my upper body go to seed.
Not looking forward to tomorrow's hill. Pray for me.
