Day 8, Leg 6

My record for this walk. And I did not walk 46.2K. 18% exaggeration.

It now says 39K, not 40K. That's right—diminish my victory.

a good shot of the Big Dipper, interrupted by wire

sunrise, kind of

a tributary to the Nakdong

geese fleeing North Korea

smashing pumpkins ('tis the season)

mist, mist, and more damn mist

the scrote-spider sculpture by the dam (Hapcheon-Changnyeong-bo/합천창녕보)

persimmon trees, and persimmons, everywhere

lovely tree with almost lime-green leaves in front of Dodong Confucian academy (도동서원)

I'm attracted to dilapidation, which has a weird beauty.

40K done, and the Hong-C Motel sits on its own steep hill, so that ascent was the final kick in the ass for my arrival. I left the Jeokgyo-jang Motel at around 4:20 a.m. and arrived in southwest Daegu (the little town of Hyeonpoong-eup in the peripheral municipality of Daegu) at around 6:30 p.m., the one-hour early start having served its purpose. At the Hong-C, the guy who gave me a room wanted to charge me W20,000 extra just because I wanted the room for two straight nights without my having to leave and come back (what the fuck kind of stipulation is that?), but he ended up charging me only an extra W10,000. Gee, thanks, guy! A lot of motels will scam you with extra costs these days—any excuse to milk an extra few tens of thousands of won out of you, especially if you're a foreigner. I don't think I'll be coming back here. There are better-placed motels of equal quality.

But some good did come of my being tired and refusing to step out and find food: I finally downloaded and learned how to use the popular food-ordering app called "Yogiyo." It was surprisingly easy to create an account; Korean apps normally require you to take several steps backward before you can move forward (e.g., by asking you to jump outside the app to register with some other certification app before you can continue to create an account on the app you were originally working on). Yogiyo was, by contrast, up and running in no time. I was impressed. So I used my newfound superpower to order some extremely carby bunshik (think: street foods mostly made with flour), which came to me within 40 minutes. Nice.

It was another gorgeous day for a walk, but around 5:00 a.m. or so, temps dropped to freezing. Luckily, I had anticipated this: I'd broken out the chemical-heat pads before stepping out of Jeokgyo-jang Motel; they lasted a couple of hours and produced modest amounts of heat—just enough to keep my fingers from freezing. 

My feet, well taped as usual, seem to be none the worse for wear. From here on in, no segment after today will ever again be 40K (or as Naver currently says, 39K). I have a 36K day on November 12, just three days before the end of the walk, but 36K shouldn't be hard after doing 40K. Besides, I've walked 60K before—nearly 100,000 steps. 

So at this point, it's an endurance game. I've done the worst hill, and today, I've done the longest segment of the whole walk. There are a couple mean hills left, but none that combine the steepness and length of the hill I'd done the other day. Today's hills were occasionally steep, too, but they were all relatively short. The final day of the walk features a double-whammy of two mean (but shorter) hills in a row, but once those are done, the rest of the segment is as flat as a pancake (if your pancakes are normally flat).

I'd forgotten that today was the day I would take the detour around the mountain where Mushim-sa 무심사/無心寺 is located. Approaching from Busan actually made finding the detour easier. For those who don't understand what I'm talking about, I should provide a little background: Normally, when I'm walking from Incheon to Busan along the Four Rivers path, I leave Daegu and find myself heading toward Mushim-sa, a temple on a modest mountainside (literally "No-mind Temple," no-mind being an important concept in Seon Bulgyo, a.k.a. Zen Buddhism). In 2017, when I did my first trans-Korea walk and knew nothing about anything, I elected to follow the bike path past Mushim-sa and up the mountainside, not knowing any better. It was a horrible experience, filled with a succession of steep, switchbacking slopes. A colleague of mine who had biked that same route had said he'd nearly broken his chain on the climb by the temple. The next time I came near Mushim-sa, in 2019, I was savvier, and I saw a sign that I'd missed last time: It was for a detour around the entire mountain. I say without shame that, since 2019, I have only ever used the detour, and I have never taken the Mushim-sa path ever again. So when I say that the Mushim-sa detour is easier to find when coming from Busan, that's a good thing. Will I ever try the Mushim-sa route ever again? I might, but only if I'm in a particularly masochistic mood.

Today's walk was, all in all, a good one despite a series of small, steep hills. The path just north of Mushim-sa is a kind of "Spider Alley," full of shaman spiders even in early November. So I have a ton of spider pics just from today's walk. Parts of today's walk felt interminable, but I got through it, and while my feet are a bit achy, they survived the segment. 

I now look forward to moving from southwest Daegu to west Daegu on Wednesday, where I'll experience what I hope will be the culinary high point of this trip: my meal at An Shi Seong, my favorite Korean-style Chinese resto on this trip. I'm looking forward to some crunchy gganpoonggi, i.e., crispy, sweet-spicy chicken poppers with mixed veggies—Korea's answer to General Tso's chicken. Go to my Kevin's Walk 8 blog (link on the sidebar) and write "An Shi Seong" in the blog's search window, find the relevant blog post, and scroll way down to see the deliciousness for yourself.

After Daegu will be Gumi City, and after Gumi City will be two stops in Sangju, marking the beginning of this walk's final phase. I'm beginning to think this schlep might be doable. I'd been fully expecting to die during this trek, but perhaps I can get away with saying Not today to the god of death.

I hope you enjoyed the above images. I have almost 400 more. Once again, I had to curb my shutterbugging to conserve battery power, and it worked. 

And now: laundry, shower, YouTube, sleep. Night.

ADDENDUM: Per the yearly ritual, I've lost an item. This time around, it's a winter hat. So I'll have to pick up another one when I'm at my next stop, which is downtown-ish in nature. In the meantime, I have plenty of other headgear to protect me.

ADDENDUM 2: I spoke too soon. My right big toe has a blister. So far, the skin is intact, and it doesn't really hurt, so I'm leaving it alone for the moment. I've got extra layers of bandages on it; we'll see if that helps.