Day 1, Leg 1

First day of the new adventure. It was equal parts tiring and awesome. Naver showed the bike-route distance as 30K, but we can round that down to 29K because I did the last kilometer or two using the walking route (which is always shorter) rather than the biking route. The Naver app always offers you choices.

There was some angina, and there were plenty of energetic old people out kicking my ass on the trail. I almost didn't beat an old woman with a walker. The day turned bright and windy; it remained very cool in the shadows, but otherwise, things warmed up a little as the day progressed. The wind made taking pics of flowers a chore. 

I ended up with some chafing on my left foot, right under my big toe; I think I can do 20K tomorrow, but I'm going to have to watch the irritation and tape it up better. I can't afford broken, ripped, or torn skin.

Perhaps the strangest part of today was seeing no one out on any of the fields of the enormous ecological park—the one that lies alongside the part of the Nakdong River that sits closest to the river's estuary barrage, a dam-like structure with a road running across it. No soccer, no other field sports, and no goddamn park golf. Plenty of bikers, runners, walkers, and joggers, though. 

While I know park golf is a good way to get seniors off their asses and out moving and talking and playing with purpose, I think the game has become an out-of-control blight on Korea's riversides, destroying massive amounts of fallow riverbank just to develop fields for this insane/inane game. Wanna keep the seniors entertained? Take 'em hunting. The mentally coherent ones, anyway.

I had to sit fairly frequently during today's walk, more because of incipient breathlessness than because of angina. But because I left so early to start the trek, I got to Yangsan by 1:30 p.m., way sooner than my 3:00 p.m. ETA. I considered taking an extra day off, for a total of seven rest days and twenty-one walk-calendar days, but I've decided I'll keep going tomorrow morning after a thorough wash, retaping, and rest. I hope that's enough. So—no changes to my itinerary, which you can find on my sidebar. Ask AI for help if you can't read Korean.

I got up at 3:10 a.m. after almost no sleep, dressed and prepped, caught a cab to the trail's starting point, and started the walk at 3:57 a.m. When I arrived in Yangsan at my usual Bliss Motel, a new-to-me male staffer charged me an extra W10,000 as an "early fee," so the room costs W60,000 for a night. This feels like an extortionate "foreigner's tax."

Here's Naver's conceptualization of today's 30K route. Because I was flagging at the end, I shortened it by about 1 km:

Walk stats. 44.6K steps today. With my phone's new system software, I see that the Samsung pedometer now does a better, more accurate distance calculation, and it also has a stingier, arguably more accurate activity-calorie count. Overall, I like these new changes.

The thing told me directly that I'd walked 29.5 km. I think the extra distance comes from in-town walking.

The low calorie consumption even seems to take into account my very slow walking rate and decreased stride length. I generally like these improvements and might even come to trust the pedometer's way of measuring distance.

le léon qui garde le barrage

Sasang-gu's mascot, I guess. Jesus.

where I cross into a lovely, 7K segment of pretty trail

early morning chiaroscuro

In Korea, they don't have the larger, meatier, more ambitious bracket fungi that we have in the States. A shame.

close to kilometer 13

Tree after tree of bad luck finally gave way to a happy string of 무당거미/mudang geomi (shaman spider, a.k.a. Joro spider) photos.

low-slung bridges

the Unknown Tenter

the tower that signals it's time to cross over into town

That's a wrap for my first day on the trail. I think this walk is doable, but it's going to be close. Expect more madness tomorrow.