a foretaste of monsoon season

Normally, I'd put Korea's monsoon season (the jangma/장마) in July, trailing off in the first half of August. Summer isn't really over, here, until late September, which is when temperatures start to come down during the day and also cool down at night. Overall, September is the last truly hot month. Since I've timed many of my long walks to coincide with Chuseok, which (following the lunar calendar) occurs roughly around the mid-September-to-mid-October time frame (September 16-18 this year), I could normally "hide" part of the walk from the higher-ups by using those vacation days for a chunk of the trek. Last year, though, I started the walk after Chuseok and walked until November (which turned out to be surprisingly rainy), but it didn't matter: our team was on "freelancer" contracts by that point, which meant we were on salary but could determine our own schedules, so there was no longer anything to hide. I still don't talk with my Korean coworkers down the hall about my month-long treks, though: they'd get the wrong idea, and they'd probably be jealous.*

But the real reason I'm mentioning the monsoon season is that it's currently pissing down rain, and it's not even July. I'm at the office, and I'll be doing that 22K walk tonight, but yes, according to the local forecasts, it's going to be raining until around lunchtime tomorrow, so it's shaping up to be a soaking-wet night. I won't mind too much: summer rains don't bother me the way late-fall rains do, and I'll have the trail to myself because almost everyone else is a fair-weather pussy. The worst weather combination, for me at least, is cold plus wet. Very demoralizing to trudge through. Summer rains, by contrast, are almost comforting.

Since it's raining, it's doubtful I'll be taking (m)any pictures of the new route, but I'll report on the jaunt sometime tomorrow. Later.

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*I wear my walk tees to work all the time, though. Nobody ever asks me about those shirts, which is typical city behavior. Out on the trail, people are friendlier and more open with each other, randomly starting conversations, offering each other dried fruit and nutrient bars from their packs, and generally just bonding because, for that moment, they're part of the same fraternity of trailgoers, on a human-powered mission to end up somewhere, by bike or on foot. There's a weird, albeit temporary, sense of solidarity on the trail. My tee shirt is a frequent topic of conversation when I'm distance-walking, but whenever I'm in a city, people become more taciturn, minding their own business and only rarely reaching out to strangers.