new walking route

On many, many occasions, I've passed by the place where the Yangjae Creek flows into the Tan Creek, but it wasn't until two nights ago that I finally decided to zig instead of zag, which is how I found myself leaving the Tan Creek path and walking back along the Yangjae Creek path—a part of that path that I had actually never walked on before. This heretofore-unwalked part of the Yangjae path was, in fact, the path's beginning: I noticed the painted meter markers beginning with "100." Normally, when I hit the Yangjae Creek path, I start from my workplace in Daechi-dong, walk to the creek, and take up the path by Yeongdong Bridge #6, which is at the 900-meter mark. I have now walked the previously unwalked 900 meters of the beginning of the Yangjae Creek path; it feels a bit like filling in a crucial blank on a form, satisfying my nerdy sense of completism.

If I start from my apartment building in Gaepo-dong (about 25 minutes' walk from Daechi-dong) and walk toward the Tan Creek, I can cross over the local section of the nearby Suseo Interchange via a footbridge, turn right, walk 15 minutes south to a main artery (a street that branches off the enormous Songpa-daero), walk back north the way I came, pass the footbridge, and keep walking toward the lower part of the Tan Creek path that eventually goes to the Han River. From there, I can hit the meeting-point between the Tan and the Yangjae and, now on the Yangjae Creek path, walk past all my old, familiar staircases (which I did last night—all fourteen of the biggies). I do my staircases, then take my normal route home. The total step count for this new Tan-Yangjae walk is about 23.5K steps, or almost four hours' walking at about 100 steps per minute. If I were to walk that route twice in one session, that would equal a day's walk toward Incheon, or around 30 kilometers. I might do that this weekend so as to get in one final practice walk before the biggie at Chuseok.

I like the new route. At night, there aren't too many people on it even with the nice, post-typhoon weather we've been having. The route is also long enough that I don't have to walk an especially ugly section of the Tan Creek path that approaches the Han River; that's my least favorite part of the path I normally hike whenever I'm going Han-ward. Now, I can just swing back west at the meeting-point of the two creeks and stay where there's plenty of greenery to keep me entertained. It's a good route. Am glad I found it.