back in the world

And here's what your Humble Narrator looks like now, 12.5 kg lighter and a bit weatherbeaten (with his Irish genes providing the freckles that Koreans find so ugly):

It really was a fun and interesting walk.  I'm sad it's over, and I'm sad that I won't be returning to the Four Rivers bike path for a few years, but there are other paths to explore.  When I do finally come back to this path, it'll be like revisiting an old friend, I think.

Meanwhile, enjoy my pale forehead, which spent a month protected by a bandanna, shielded from the unrelenting sun.  My dark hands and pale forearms look just as ridiculous thanks to the toshi (protective sleevelets) I wore during the walk.  The suntan on my hands makes it look as if I'm wearing gloves, but when you look closer, you see that my tanned skin looks dry, cracked, and timeworn.  I'm almost tempted to say that my time exposed to nature left me looking like a Person of the Soil, but that would be insulting to people who actually work with the earth:  my skin is still relatively soft and uncallused, showing that all I did was walk across the country, not toil day after day and year after year, working the land.  My recent effort was nothing compared to those good folks' daily effort.

As much as I enjoyed my time on the trail, I have to say it's good to be back in the warm embrace of civilization.  While your time on the path can teach you martial virtues like stoically delaying gratification until you're at the end of the day's walk, it's also nice to have the benefits of society within easy reach.  The point is not to give in to those temptations too frequently, thus backsliding into corpulence and indolence.