the walk through the night

In the summer, if I'm to keep walking, I have to walk at night when it's cooler. On weekdays, I normally walk at night, anyway, no matter the season, because of my work schedule. But I can't walk during the day on summer weekends when the weather is hot. So, nighttime it is. I decided to do a 26K walk to Hanam City, so I scheduled the walk for late Friday night, timing the walk such that I'd arrive in Hanam just as the Saturday-morning buses and subways were starting up, making the return home easy.

What I didn't anticipate was that my walk would turn into a little adventure. Here was the first bit of excitement: as I was passing the Jamshil Bridge, I saw that a TV drama was being filmed by the waterfront. Instinctively, I took out my phone camera, hoping to snap a quick pic of the car and crew, but I should have realized that the whole area would be crawling with minders whose sole purpose was to stop shutterbugs like me. One such minder came up to me and politely said that filming and photos weren't allowed, so I said okay and kept walking. 

At around 1:30 a.m., I began to notice some gentle raindrops. Having checked the weather forecast Friday afternoon, I hadn't seen that any rain was predicted for early Saturday morning, but when I checked the forecast again while on the trail, I saw that they were calling for a brief shower between 2 and 3 a.m., so I was feeling the precursor to that. I decided simply to walk on, although I felt a bit betrayed by Weather.com, which is not the most reliable site to begin with. We also have to consider that Korea is mountainous, and predicting weather in mountainous terrain—which produces chaotic effects—is a dicey affair at best.

The showers struck almost exactly at 2 a.m. I didn't have any rain gear with me, but I'm generally okay with walking in a summer rain, so again, I simply continued walking, switching my cell phone from my shirt's chest pocket to my pants' hip pocket to offer the electronics some small degree of protection from the wetness. The skies pissed fairly heavily for a good 20-30 minutes (thunder and lightning, too!), leaving me utterly drenched and ready to participate in a fatties' wet tee-shirt contest. It's been unnaturally cool and pleasant, even during the day, for the past week, so the rain was a bit cooler than anticipated. As I walked, I thought about stopping under whatever shelter I might find, but it occurred to me that I'd end up cold and shivering: the best way to stay warm was to keep on walking. So I pushed on. 

As I said, the downpour lasted 20-30 minutes, causing enough accumulation for there to be rivulets and deep puddles along the path I was walking. Then, all of a sudden, the rain stopped. I was soaked, but I knew my body heat would dry me out within an hour. I had a sopping-wet handkerchief, though, that I knew would have to be air-dried, so I took it out and held it in my hand as I walked, allowing my arm swing to help with the drying.

The night, already cool, was even cooler after the rain. Had this been the typical "hot August night" (Neil Diamond), the standing water on the ground would have begun to evaporate, turning into oppressive humidity. Luckily, it was too cool for that to happen. As I kept walking, I began, slowly, to dry off. 

Normally, a walk to Hanam City should take about five hours plus a few minutes, assuming I'm unencumbered and not taking any breaks. I did stop, though—several times—once to take a snack break (nuts, beef jerky, and dried blueberries), and a couple more brief times to get out my eye drops and deal with a festering eye problem that's been plaguing me for almost a week. I also paused often to snap some nocturnal-walk photos; the trail is a lot more peaceful at night. In all, last night's walk took six hours. Another reason for the slowness may have been the rain, which made walking difficult even after the downpour had stopped thanks to the aforementioned puddles and rivulets. I arrived in Hanam City around 5:15 or so, then headed to a familiar bus stop to catch the 9303 bus back to Seoul. 

I had anticipated foot pain, but I brought some ibuprofen with me, and that did the trick: no pain at all. I don't want to get back in the habit of relying on drugs (which I generally haven't needed since losing all that weight last year), but if it's a choice between lying in bed all day with a hurt foot or going for a 26K walk, I'd rather walk while chemically enhanced. 

So I caught the 9303 and enjoyed a rapid ride because, at 6-something in the morning on a Saturday, there's not much traffic to contend with. Got off at Jamshil Station, walked to a taxi stand (I almost never catch taxis at taxi stands), and rode home. Blearily ate some snacks, fired off those previous blog posts, and went to sleep with my inflamed eye. 

So that's the story of my unanticipated adventure from Friday night to Saturday morning. I've got pictures with captions to show you now, so enjoy. 

Let's start off with some Friday-afternoon pics. I left work a bit earlier than usual, which allowed me to see and assess, in the daytime, a lot of the flood damage that I normally see only at night. Daylight makes a big difference in terms of visual impact.

(Click any pic to enlarge, then right-click and select "open in new tab" to see at full size.)

This is the turnoff point that transitions from the Yangjae Creek to the Tan Creek in the direction of Bundang to the south. Note how the wooden walkway terminates in a huge pile of mud—silt from the recent flood. You also see the leftward-curving sidewalk next to the bike path, and it's blocked by the same pile of mud, thus forcing us walkers to walk on the bike paths.

a pretty impressive pile of... what? garbage? other detritus that isn't typical garbage?

As we walk toward the ramp that leads to my neighborhood, we see this huge pile of wood, probably flotsam that got snagged along the banks of the creek and got pulled away from the water (by human action) for some mysterious purpose. I imagine all of this going through a bunch of wood chippers and being used in whatever way wood chips are normally used. The pile is blocking the bike path, so it's the bikers' turn to stray into the walking path. I ended up thinking that this pile would be a wood sculptor's wet dream: look at all the free material! I've also dreamed about becoming a wood sculptor.

I always love my straightaways.

Korean-style orb-weaver, not quite mature (they're huge when fully grown)

another spidery neighbor

I took this photo thinking the huge female I'd seen before had disappeared, but this was the wrong pylon.

a daytime view, looking east, of the Lotte World Tower in Jamshil

the smaller spidery neighbors of the big female, who was, in fact, still there

No, this isn't the big female I'm talking about. This is, I think, a smaller female.

There she is! Livin' large. These are also called Joro Spiders, it turns out.

And now for the night-walk pictures. I left my place at 11 p.m.

If I'm not mistaken, this is Olympic bridge. The tower in the middle is supposed to symbolize the Olympic flame or something. The bridge's brute, austere architecture always makes me think it looks Soviet.

a subtle hint that you're not supposed to go into the restroom

BMX at night

white roses (there were red ones, too)

the first raindrops—I should've realized something was up

The blur in this selfie comes from water on the camera lens: the phone had been in my pocket during the rain, and despite my efforts to protect the phone from wetness, it still got wet. Not to worry: the phone is fine, and everything dried out eventually.

On my walk blogs, I've talked about how these cartoon pictures of people suffering a disaster always tickle me (special love reserved for pics of drowning kids, like in this entry). I like the drama of this one; the sign says to be cautious of the slippery surface in snow or rain. What evil force could have pushed the biker so violently backward off his bike? I'm thinking he was about to hit Darth Vader, but Vader saw the danger and struck first telekinetically.

The trend for the past few years has been to use these special projectors to project ads or signs onto the pavement instead of painting on the ground. This allows multiple signs or ads to rotate through in the same spot, so I decided to hang here a moment and photograph each sign as it rotated through. This first sign shows the bike-path speed limit and says, literally, "Deceleration in operation," but more naturally, "Slow speed (i.e., slow-speed policy) in force," or even more naturally, "Slow down to below 20 kph." The word gamsok (감속) means "deceleration," and unhaeng (운행) means "operating" or "in operation." See why it's often hard to arrive at a natural translation? Saying deceleration in operation tells you nothing. A sensible translation conveys the intent of the words and not their literal import. Slow down; not above 20 kph.

The previous sign rotates out after about 15 seconds. In blue, it says "Han River Park." The white and yellow text says, "Safe speed." And there's the big 20 again. Even if you don't speak or read Korean, you easily get the import of the sign.

Be careful of pedestrians. Absolutely go slowly.

Han River Park

I decided to start taking spooky "the path ahead" pictures. This one's sort of chiaroscuro.

I always think of this as "the fairy bridge," with its eldritch blue lighting.

fairy-bridge straightaway pic

By this point in my walk, it was so late it was early, and yet there were still bikers on the path. A lot of these bikers were young folks, many dressed in their Spandex as if for a normal daytime session of cycling. I'm used to seeing random old folks out at weird hours; these people can't sleep (they want to meet death with open eyes, I guess). But seeing so many young folks tooling along was just weird. Oh, yeah—and everyone was heading out of Seoul east toward Hanam; almost no one was coming from Hanam west into Seoul. Go figure.

the alternate route that I will probably never explore

spooky straightaway

one of many bridges I crossed under

or in this case, am crossing under (double bridge)

the place where I sat down to rest, eat some snacks, drink some water, and tend to my bloodshot left eye

another spooky straightaway

Water-source protection area, says Google translate. I thought sangsuweon (상수원) meant Upper Suweon. I was, as always with these things, wrong.

the official notice that you're now entering the Hanam city limits

a wide straightaway

Because this is a water-source protected area and managed as such, there is to be no fishing, swimming, camping, cooking, throwing of garbage, crop cultivation(!!), polluting of water, etc.

I focus on the word "waste material" because...

...as always, there's something there to undermine the sign—garbage, in this case. It's like a pile of cigarette butts under a "No Smoking" sign, or that thing about kickboards I'd photographed the other night.

Hanam Misa District Water Intake Facility Construction Information

The penultimate part of the path to Hanam is this packed-earth trail exclusively for walkers and topped with a thin layer of gravel that somehow always ends up inside my shoes, forcing me to pause, un-shoe myself, and get rid of the tiny-but-irritating pebbles. Han River off to the left, and the city lights belong to the city of Guri on the north bank; Guri sits opposite Hanam, which is on the south bank of the Han.

This is probably my favorite part of the walk, nuisance pebbles aside.

Hanam City proper in the distance—a part I never visit as it's mostly residential.

A sign about ice-freezer operation.

Air-quality meter saying all is well, as is always the case after a rain.

Voluntary self-quarantine: healthy and safe!

A restaurant or something with its lights still on. You can't see the text of the bright sign, but it says, bizarrely, "Farmacia," which sounds like a Spanish or Italian word for a pharmacy. Why would the place be named that? Do they sell something medicinal or medicine-like?

now entering the gay section of the path (just kidding—I don't think Koreans get rainbow symbolism)

The right side of the path is a weird mixture of restaurants, utility buildings, tourist spots, and farms.

More chiaroscuro straightaways.

By this point, it's past 4 a.m., so the old people who take super-early-morning walks are out in force. They pass by me in various states of wakefulness; some look deadly serious and alert as they tromp along straight-backed like energetic soldiers; others hobble like zombies, slack-jawed and seemingly unaware of what they're doing. Even stranger is that the interval between individuals is always about 200-300 meters. There are occasional pairs of people: male-female couples (obviously married) as well as friends of the same sex, walking and talking. Part of me resents the presence of these other walkers because I want to enjoy this part of the path in total silence. But in a city of 12 million people, the math is against you: probabilities are that some other weird motherfucker is going to be out at this hour, with the same idea as you of taking a nice stroll. That said, I seriously doubt any of these people are walking 26K.

I wish the pic had come out crisper, but I found another American-style orb-weaver and had to take the shot in memory of the lady we lost close to my neighborhood.

Ease on down, ease on down the road.

I'm guessing the flower's a bit crumpled because it's still nighttime.

Actually, dawn is here. Those are mountains across the river.

A first distant look at Starfield, the huge mall where my bus stop is located. 2 or 3 km off.

the ice freezer that that sign was referring to

The last part of this portion of the trail features some very nice parkland that I keep telling myself I should visit later, but I somehow never get around to visiting it. I should take the subway to Hanam, walk over to the park, and just stroll around it sometime. I wonder if it has any picnic spots. If yes, I might suggest a picnic to my Korean buddy JW and his family.

a double whammy of Starfield and parkland

footbridge inside the park

This water fountain is pregnant with symbolism for me because it indicates the psychological end of the path to Hanam City. It's not the actual end of the path (1-2 km to go), but it's the first water source in a while, and everything after this point feels like icing on the cake, which is why I call this the psychological endpoint. When I hit this point early Saturday morning, I filled my empty 500-cc water bottle, guzzled the water down, then refilled the bottle so I could have something to sip in a leisurely manner while I waited for my bus on the opposite side of Starfield.

 

the final shwimteo on this path

the final restroom before crossing a stream and going to Starfield

another happy AQI indicator

restroom: front (note the stag shadow)

a look down at the area where I cross a stream and head up a ramp to go to Starfield

Before crossing that stream, I took this dawn shot.

up the ramp

Sadly, we're fully back in civilization. That tower is a big Hanam landmark.

Every city has to have an erect dick.

A very paved straightaway.

A sidewalk that takes you alongside Starfield. The bus stop is at Starfield's front.

A glimpse of the "Starfield" sign on the back of the mall as I cross toward the front.

almost done crossing

Here's the Shinsegae store's entrance at the front of Starfield. Shinsegae ("new world") is both old and posh.

moving along the front of Starfield toward my bus stop

saw a glove along the way and took a pic by reflex

not sure why this is a "bus drop" and not a "bus stop"

a bit of weirdness to cap off an adventurous night

the stop itself

I needed to take the 9303 to Jamshil Station, then a cab from Jamshil to my place.

Lost dog. The sign says, "Looking for lost kid."

I'd waited for nearly 20 minutes before taking the above shot. Saturday-morning 9303s don't come frequently.

closing my infected eye so you don't see the huge globs of mucus

Whew... at last on the bus and headed toward home.

whipping by the Olympic Bridge

off the bus and passing a sculpture on the way to a taxi stand

another sculpture in front of the old Lotte Department Store

I'm on Olympic-daero, a street with lots of Olympic sculptures.

Final pic of the trip. What sport is that? Reminds me of Pyramid in "Battlestar Galactica."

So I got a bit more excitement than I bargained for. A TV drama I couldn't photograph, a 30-minute deluge, and a big ol' orb-weaving spider. What more can a man ask for?