If the air quality remains as bad as it's been the last several days, I might not be able to do a walk at all, N95 mask or not. I'm not sure that it's actually worth the risk.
When I wrote, a while back, about how the air-quality rating system works, I noted that a rating like "harmful" actually meant "harmful if exposed at this level for 24 hours." In other words, spending a few minutes outside in the bad air isn't a huge problem for those of us with healthy lungs. But if I were to walk from Seoul to Yangpyeong again, I'd be out in the thick of it for hours—for the better part of a whole day, in fact (I'm anticipating a 17-hour walk). No mask is absolutely perfect when it comes to screening out all that microfine dust; forgive the pun, but that's not something to sneeze at.
Another factor leading to a possible second delay is something I haven't talked about yet, probably because it's uncomfortably personal. But to hell with it—I've blogged about my shitting habits many times before, so how bad could this be? You see, when I walked out to and back from Gwangnaru this past Sunday, I wasn't wearing my walking undies, i.e., my "boxer briefs," which protect my crotch from friction the way a pair of Spandex biker shorts will. As a result of my unwise choice of undergarments, I ended up rubbing my crotch pretty damn raw, and I've been paying for it ever since. Many guys leave brown streaks in their briefs; I'm leaving line-shaped blood spots. So I might need a week or so to heal up, but if I delay another week, I'm actually going to have to reschedule the walk for some time in April: I've got to start prepping for a large meal I'll be serving on Friday, March 22, so I won't be in any shape to go on a walk then, and on the weekend of March 15, I'll be doing all the necessary shopping for the 22nd. So there goes March. Ah, well.
We'll see, in a couple days, whether I'm in any condition for distance walking, but I'm not confident that I'll heal that quickly. Currently, I don't bleed unless I walk any sort of distance, and then the blood dries up, the crotch skin tightens, and it's fucking painful to stand up and walk around, reopening scabbed-over crotch wounds. I've got antibacterial/analgesic ointment, but maybe I need to buy some talcum powder...
From what I'm seeing on the 'net, this must be the worst it has ever been...and I've seen it pretty bad. I only ever wore one of those cheap cloth masks and only a couple of times. Apparently those are pretty much worthless against these fine particles?
ReplyDeleteI'll count myself lucky that all I have to deal with is the smoke from people burning crap all over the place.
Good luck to you. You are correct--discretion is indeed the better part of valor. Not worth risking your health!
For what it's worth, my AQI app has the air quality improving this afternoon, with all day tomorrow being in the yellow and green showing up early Friday morning. So you might be in luck on that front. Then again, we all know what a lying bastard the AQI app can be.
ReplyDelete(Why has the not-a-robot verification thing gotten so annoying lately? Every single time I post a comment it makes me go through two of those graphical texts. And I just got one that showed a ladder on the side of a building and asked me to identify all squares with stairs in them. So I clicked "skip" and it told me to "try again." Go to hell, reCAPTCHA.)
HaHa! Yeah Charles, I thought I was being punished or something. Glad it's nothing personal! I guess it's healthy mental gymnastics or something. Kev's always looking out for his readers that way...
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