I'm at the Songhak Motel, the last motel of this walk. It's more of a downscale yeogwan than a motel, really, at only W35,000 a night and with next to nothing in terms of amenities (like little complimentary cans of juice and "sticks" of instant coffee). At the same time, it's got a nice ondol floor along with a heated bed, not to mention a decent bathroom, so I can't complain. I got to the motel a little before 3 in the afternoon and had to phone the manager, whose daughter heard my voice echoing in the hallway. I had to pay the daughter cash for Room 209, but I was flush with cash after having had to deal with the Gangnam Motel in Jibo-myeon.
While it was a decent walk overall, today's segment started off with me taking a fall in the dark, scraping up my exposed right hand (the only way to use the phone is without gloves, which sucks when it's freezing) and right leg. I was walking along a particularly dark part of the road leading out of Jibo-myeon, staring into the glare of my phone, when my foot went off the road's asphalt edge and encountered nothing but empty air for a second—just enough to startle me and to throw me off balance. I tumbled forward with a grunt and ended up injuring my right hand and my right leg. I decided to keep walking until I had found a place where I could sit down, lit by a street lamp. I used wet wipes to clean up my dirt-covered pants and wounds, then spent a few minutes in the flesh-numbing, subzero cold applying bandages everywhere. At least the cold minimized the probability of infection. My cell phone also got damaged; I think the bottom-right corner of the screen might be cracked, so I'll have to take the phone in for repairs. Again. My hand was a lot more damaged than my leg, which had only surface scratches. My hand turns out to have a good chunk of skin torn off, plus some dark spots where pebbles or dirt got under the epidermis. I might have to see the doctor when I get back, but the hand is otherwise functional; I also washed and re-dressed everything once I got to the motel later in the day.
And that was about it as far as drama goes. I may need to apply a second layer of bandaging before I go to sleep tonight so as not to bleed on my sheets, but aside from that, everything is fine, and I'm ready for tomorrow's walk.
Good thing I'd bought snacks along the way: there's no convenience store or restaurant in the neighborhood I'm in, so I'm fasting tonight (no, I don't use the Yogiyo app). This sort of imposed fast increases the chance that I'll try that pizza place at the top of Andong Dam before busing back to Seoul. I've eaten a lot of carby stuff during this walk; my blood sugar is probably ruined, anyway, so... in for a penny, in for a pound.
Since I started from the Gangnam Motel and not from Daesun, today's walk was only 30K in length, not 31K. Tomorrow's walk is still projected to be 27K to the Andong Dam certification center, plus another kilometer to the top of the dam itself. In all, this will have been about a 403K trek, as originally projected, but we all know that measuring distances is an unreliable endeavor at best.
Enjoy the map, stats, and photos below.
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| 30K with the revised distance from the new motel |
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| 5280 calories burned, with less than 1000 consumed, so I lost over a pound today. |
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| Sirius, Betelgeuse, and Jupiter, plus Orion and some others |
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| farmland and undeveloped land at sunrise |
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| crossing a bridge |
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| startled burdz |
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| post-harvest farmland in winter |
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| plinking in Korea... just like in America |
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| The numbers should add up to 385K, but they don't. Something's wrong. |
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| tough flowers in a neighborhood, enduring the cold |
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| picnic setup? |
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| the heel of my hand at the end of the day, before washing and re-dressing the scrape |
PHOTO ESSAY
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| I do believe this is garlic in the winter. |
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| Hanu and Doenjang (Korean beef and soybean paste) |
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| "Meat Restaurant: Hanu and Doenjang" |
Sorry about the fall. With all of the walking that you do before the sun rises, I am surprised that you dont have a trekking headlamp. At least in the US, you can get a decent one that puts out a ton more lumens than a phone flashlight and they last a long time, all for about $40-50.
ReplyDeletePS. Hope the hand looks worse than it actually is.
Brian
Brian,
DeleteThanks. It definitely looks worse than it is. I'm bandaged up and feel nothing. That might change if I rub an alcohol pad across the skin.
Korea is rarely completely dark, and since I follow bike paths, most of those paths, with rare exceptions, are under the stars, so there's always some amount of ambient light either from distant urban light pollution, nearby street lamps and other electric lights, or nature (moon, stars). A headlamp would make more sense if I were mountain hiking in the pre-dawn darkness. I mean, it's not a bad suggestion, but ultimately, the cause of the fall was less the darkness and more my own unmindful stupidity. Got an Amazon recommendation for an unstupidator?
Damn, that hand looks painful. I guess that's the risk you take when walking in the dark, but since you were admittedly distracted by your phone, I suppose it could have happened any time of day. Hope the wounds heal quickly.
ReplyDeleteThe photos are nice, as usual. The river view from the bridge is my favorite today, and the sunrise shot is a close second. Speaking of shots, I've never seen a sign "plinked" like that in Korea. Then again, I was always pretty much in the city. And that picnic spot doesn't look enticing at all. My first thought was, "Where do they pee?"
Good luck on the final day of the journey. You've earned that pizza!
I remember the last time I was in Andong. I heard guns then. I get the feeling that Andong residents like their guns. My boss says it's often legal to own guns in South Korea, but their storage and use are restricted. Many folks have to store their guns at the local police office... where they'll do no good if there's a home intruder. I don't know the full story on the gun situation in Korea (I do have a photo of another shotgun-shell casing that I'll be uploading), but I do know there's no equivalent of the Second Amendment here. One of the prices you pay for living here.
Deletere: that "picnic" spot
A facetious guess on my part. I have no idea what that space is actually for. Probably not a picnic.
You might think about getting a pair of gloves with no fingertips, just to protect your hand in situations like this and still provide a little bit of warmth for when you need to use your phone. I actually have a pair of gloves with fingertips that can be pulled back for when I need to use the touchscreen on my phone. They're knitted gloves, though, so they would only provide minimal protection in a fall, but they do keep my fingers warmer than they would be otherwise.
ReplyDeleteSimilar to my reply to Brian: the root cause of the fall was more my stupidity than anything else. And I can't help imagining what damage would occur to my exposed fingertips in a fall. Plus, I'm big enough to damage gloves when I fall. All that momentum.
DeleteI do, in fact, have fingertip-less gloves, but they're for lifting weights, not for winter. Since I see so many cast-off gloves during these walks, maybe I should grab a right-handed glove off the ground, take it to a motel, wash it, and use it the following day. Maybe I should pick up several and use them in layers. Yeah... that's the ticket.