Day 9a, Leg 6

We're stuck on Leg 6, I guess, until I take up the walk again on November 9. I've been home since about noon today, and I rejiggered my schedule per what I'd said yesterday: weekends only from now on, but only after a two-week rest period. Today: a foot wash, an Epsom-salt bath (a luxury I can't have on the trail), a re-application of blood-stopper powder (the stuff doesn't control all the bleeding the first time around), a re-dressing of my foot injury (see the lovely photos below), then I'm off my feet for the rest of the day.

I got back to my apartment at around 11:50 a.m. today after a 7:50 a.m. departure by bus. Pretty uneventful bus ride, all in all: it was long enough that there was a rest stop about halfway through the trip. I went to the restroom, ate a sausage-on-a-stick (which was more or less keto) and a corn dog (which wasn't), and slept awkwardly in my seat most of the way home. Bought myself some Paris Baguette salads for lunch, looked at and photographed my foot injury (you'll love it), then puzzled over why I wasn't able to leave replying comments to comments on this blog... until I restarted the computer, and everything ran smoothly.

a shot of the creek from yesterday as I was limping back from the pharmacy in Hyeonpoong, Daegu

today's early walk out to the bus station, around 6:10 a.m., with Jupiter presiding over a next-door building

The moon through wires; at almost exactly 3 o'clock from the moon is Mars.

I think this says, "I planted a flower of hope, and a flower of life blossomed." Blandly beautiful.

a gate that I would see up close later that morning

One of the final shwimteo before going back to my place... look at all the chairs!

a sign for the bus station I was heading to; got a ticket there yesterday

At the bus station, a staffer saw me hesitating at the ticket machine, which wasn't set up the way the ones in Seoul were. I was trying to find where I could select the departure date; the machine seemed to have selected the same day (i.e., yesterday). The staffer came over, and we talked about when I wanted to go: the following morning, as early as possible. The staffer tapped the touch screen, and I finally saw where the "select date" button was. I inserted my debit card; the ticket was spat out, and that was that. I thanked the staffer for his help.

the final rise to the bus stop/station, located near the top of a hill

my bench, by Bus Berth #1

The early morning was actually cold. I put on my windbreaker, which is better for such things than for protecting me from rain.

Hyeonpoong Public Bus Stop

My ticket, paradoxically described as "first class" (우등/udeung) and "general" (일반/ilban). I think the "first class" part refers to the bus's being a limousine bus. The "general" probably refers to the seat itself.

close enough to Daegu proper to see the pollution haze common to big cities

looking east-ish

the face of defeat... but I'll be back on November 9

That wedge-looking monument had been bothering me since I first saw it, partially obscured, upon my arrival in town. It was at the top of the same hill the bus station was on. I went up.

A lot of painful limping to get up the stairs, but I got up.

ascent

a look back at the bus station from an elevated position

The stairs gave way to a switchbacking track... maybe to fool bikers into thinking they could bike down.

that damn wedge in the distance, just beyond the trees

It's called Choong-hon Tap. Technically, a tap is a pagoda, but it can refer to many things that suggest a tower, like a cairn of stacked rocks on a trail or a large, vertical monument. The hon comes from yeonghon, or "soul/spirit." I guessed that the choong in Choong-hon was the same choong in the famous Korean-military shout of Choong seong!, Korea's answer to Semper fi! (semper fidelis = always faithful, the US Marines). Choong by itself means "loyalty" or "faithfulness"; Choong seong means something closer to "allegiance," i.e., faithfulness or loyalty to a king or country—to someone or something bigger than oneself. So it's almost literally semper fi. At this point, my guess was that this was a military monument. It wasn't lost on me that the monument's placement was such that it appeared to have taken the hill.

Just a tourist approaching in the early morning.

Maybe some mowing and weed-whacking around that bench, guys...?

Wedges and dagger-like shapes are common design features of military monuments.

Some areas have apparently been taped off.

flagpole and flag

If you blow the image up, you see 충혼당/choonghon-dang over the door. I think the Chinese for this is 忠魂堂/충혼당/choonghon-dang, or Hall of the Spirit of Allegiance. My dad used to take us to a yearly performance by the US Army of something called The Spirit of America, a pageant and performance meant to show off the US Army's history and evolution, as well as to be a paean to what the Army stands for. I can imagine my liberal friends rolling their eyes and seeing this only as propaganda that papers over our military's failures and misdeeds, so what would those friends say now that they know more about what this monument represents?

I should probably look at this bas-relief from a better angle.

kind of facing the dawn

That's not grenades and explosions on the right: those are mugunghwa (Rose of Sharon), the ROK's national flower.

It's not a very big monument, but it's in a prominent spot.

that gate I saw while I was still below

The front. Something's being repaired or renovated or installed.

same guys facing east, now seen from the front

best angle

and another bas-relief

and a different sculpture with a different trio

the stairs down (or up) for the hardy folks

The gate from the front. I had to do a 0.5 zoom to capture the whole thing. The Chinese characters here, unlike at a Buddhist temple or a Confucian seoweon, look to be read from left to right: choongeui-mun  (忠義門), or the Gate of Loyalty and Integrity. (One translation, anyway.)

The sun will be popping up right about... there. 7:09 a.m. Gotta get back down to the bus station soon.

trees to be planted

a side monument: mu gong su hoon ja hoe—Military Merit Award Society
(thank or blame Google Translate)

back down, now, to catch a bus

Erigeron annuus, or the daisy fleabane

The stairs... they go up.

Avert your eyes now if you don't want to see my exposed flesh! You've been warned.

This doesn't look so bad, but...

That's looking rather raw and frog-leggy. And no, you're not seeing any exposed bone.

I have a feeling the Epsom-salt soak is going to hurt.

To keep from oozing into my shoe, I again wrapped my dressed foot in a plastic bag from a convenience store. I may have to double-bag from now on, though, because for the second time, the act of walking short distances was enough to wear a hole into the bag, thus defeating its purpose. Lucky for me, there's a skin clinic across the hall from where I work. I've been meaning to visit the clinic for years to see whether I've picked up any skin cancer from all of these walks, but this injury, only skin-deep, seems to be much more immediate and serious. So I'll see the clinic on Monday. They're gonna love the smell.

Well, I guess there's a first time for everything, and after seven previous walks, all of which involved a degree of pain, I've finally run up against a walk that has defeated me. Just looking at that wound, though, with its oozings and pustulations, makes me think I've made the right choice to let the foot heal. One risk with going to the skin clinic is that the ladies there might decide I need to rest for three weeks, not two, which would force me to change my walking schedule (click my itinerary, linked above, and scroll down to see the revised calendar). I'm also worried that being off my feet, more or less, for two weeks will cause me to detrain, so I'll have to increase the staircase work and see about getting on my bike to at least keep the cardio up, if not the conditioning. What's upsetting this time around is that, as happened three years ago after my stroke, I started the walk much lighter, leading me to believe I'd avoid most of the wear and tear that come from carrying too much weight. This time, though, as I speculated earlier, a confluence of factors militated to take me out of the game. Let me spend today being sulky and depressed, then I'll pick up the exercise/health/healing regime again tomorrow.

This walk isn't over. As my boss half-joked, I couldn't live with myself if I didn't complete the route before the end of this year. 2024 sucked, overall, but I can at least finish it semi-well.

UPDATE: I finally cut away the dead skin:

oozing but not bleeding

The skin wasn't doing much except to trap water and body fluids like blood and blister ooze, so it had to go.

another angle, different lighting

slight swelling of the right foot from a little infection

The infection isn't acute. I'm keeping it at bay until Monday, when I can be prescribed antibiotics by the skin clinic (which, frankly, might just refer me to my doctor at the internal-medicine clinic in the opposite corner of the building where I work). Nothing more than a small swelling—no redness or gangrene around the wound or on the whole foot, no fever, no rotten smell (the sea-salt bath took care of the musty, wrapped-in-a-plastic-bag odor; I'll do two more baths tomorrow). I also bought larger bandages to cover the wound (if exposed dermis qualifies as a wound), and I applied more blood-stopper powder, which I'll be leaving on as I sleep, to stop the weeping.