Tuesday, August 27, 2019

Paul Carver's maps: open-sourced for y'all!

I mentioned earlier that e-friend* Paul Carver (a.k.a. Daeguowl) had very kindly sent me some PDFs of bike-trail maps. These maps show routes shot all throughout South Korea, including an immense route that's making me drool: taking the "U" shape of Abe Lincoln's beard when seen from the front, this giant trail goes from Incheon down the west coast to Gwangju, then across the south coast to Busan, then up the east coast to about Gangneung. It's got to be close to 2000 kilometers, and there's no way I can do the trail as long as I'm employed and have to answer to a boss. I'd basically have to quit work, set up a Patreon or GoFundMe page, then train like hell to do the longest walk of my life.

Anyway, thoughts of such a long walk are still nebulous. In the meantime, for those who read Korean, and even for those who don't (because I assume you can understand maps, whatever language they're in), I'm providing links to Paul's PDFs, here and here. Click, open the PDFs, and download them to peruse at your leisure if you want. If nothing else, you can look at the lovely pictures of the various bike paths and dream about clear air, a big sky, and friendly Korean fellow travelers—because meeting people is part of the experience, too.

Many thanks to Paul for his generosity.



*For those who don't recall or never learned this, I use the term "e-friend" to describe friendly acquaintances whom I've never met in real life but only know from online exchanges.



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