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| Looking toward downtown Cheongna from the Lake Park on a drizzly afternoon, |
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| A convenient pagoda-like structure to shelter under (I'd better look up pagoda to make sure I'm not misspeaking). |
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| Looking back toward school from the pagoda-ish thing. |
The original title for this post (when I first started thinking about it earlier today) was going to be "A Fun Adventure" and I had planned to explain how it was fun (beautiful weather for a bike ride, me and Blackie feeling fine) and also an adventure because at one point I realized I didn't know where I was so I assumed a minor adventure would follow. But we know what happens when we assume!
Okay, I'll back up slightly: I had planned to ride on a bike trail I'd heard about along the canal which connects the Han River to the ocean near here all the way to the river. That's the green line on the map below. In the simplest case it would have been an out-and-back but I had some other possible goals in mind as well such as trying to find a way across the river (which would have made it pretty easy to ride my bike to Mr. Kim's house on Thursday morning instead of riding the subway since he lives pretty close on the other side of the river and to get there by subway you have to go way in toward Seoul before you can find a transfer station to get on the line which goes by his town. Plus I thought it would be cool). I also had picked out two museums more or less on the way that I'm considering for possible field trips for my 8th grade science (Children's Science Museum) and HS environmental science classes (Prehistory Museum for the Incheon area) next term. But I figured I'd do the main mission (summit the Han River) first and maybe knock off some of those side trips on the way back. That would give me a sense of how long it took so I could time my arrival at Mr. Kim's if I decided to do that which I can tell you now I'm definitely not!
Everything started out fine as I was able to get to the bike path which runs along the canal easily and was making good time on it. I stopped to take a picture of what I'm calling Sometimes Falls since there's only water rushing over it sometimes. I first noticed it from the subway (which also runs along the canal for the first half of the way to the Han) when I made my first solo trip on the subway a couple weeks back (and which I haven't found time to detail in this blog yet). Then a couple weeks later I was going back to the same area (Gimpo Int'l Airport) with some colleagues and I told them about the falls and got ready to point them out to when we passed by and they weren't running! Must be a big valve somewhere to turn them on and off. So far I'm the only one to have seen them running who I've asked about them. I feel like I've sighted Sasquatch and I was starting to doubt myself when I saw them running again on my way back in toward Seoul the day I went to get Blackie and then on the return trip they weren't running anymore so I understand now it's sporadic. Anyway today I got the visual proof.
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| Sometimes Falls, for lack of a better name |
So then I was cruising along, having planned my route using Google Maps and taken a picture on my phone to take with me (as I've recently mentioned, I don't have internet access when away from my room. I like it that way, remember?)
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| The picture of Google Maps on my computer which I'd set up and taken on my phone to take it with me. |
But I wasn't checking the map because I thought it was simple: just follow the canal! For some reason though I guess I didn't notice the little canal dangling down from the big one, and somehow I followed a trail that followed that one instead of continuing toward the Han River (big blue streak across upper right hand corner of picture above.
The picture below shows what was supposed to happen in green. The red loop is where I accidentally got off on the wrong path. I did notice that the path wasn't so nice and wide and maintained anymore and I was going to comment on that the next time I saw the colleague who told me about this trail but now I get the reason why.
At some point while I was still heading south on the wrong trail I had passed a local who was also biking. When we came to a road where we had to wait for traffic to clear before we could cross he caught up with me and when it was clear he motioned me to go first, which I did since I was riding faster than him. A little later the trail deteriorated more and I was trying to figure out which way to go, having passed the underpass which would have taken me under a road and instead ridden on up to the road looking to continue on my path on the other side. The reasons behind all this are subtle (there were multiple paths at different elevations ranging from dirt tracks to two-tracks (several times we had to make way for cars or service vehicles, even on the major path along the real canal) to paved tile paths like I'm used to the red/green artificial substrate which also crops up now and then. Suffice to say there was some picking-and-choosing to be done and I picked wrong this time. So I was looking back and I saw my "friend" take a right and go under the bridge I had thought to cross over at street level (I neglected to say we had had to cross the canal on a different bridge earlier because the path changed sides. But I looked back and saw my friend also crossed so I figured that was the right thing. This was farm country, by the way, and it was fun to look at all the plants and crops but I didn't stop to take any other pictures because I was on a mission. Too bad I was headed in the wrong direction!)
So I went back a little bit and turned and went under the bridge and when I came up on the other side my friend was waiting at yet another branch in the path and I pulled up and stopped and he said something I didn't understand and I said I didn't understand it and he said something else (or maybe it was the same thing) and I said I didn't understand again and smiled and shrugged my shoulders. This is when I realized that when two people don't speak the same language it doesn't help to keep repeating yourself over and over again louder and louder but that's what we did. Strangely it didn't help. But I got the idea he might be asking me where I was going (because that's what I'd be asking someone like me, especially at a fork in the road) so I started saying I was going to the Han River, and pointing at the canal next to us, saying "River" and making wavy moving motions with my hand. I figured he ought to at least recognize the word "Han" since that's the Korean name of the river, and we were headed in that direction, right? In fact, by my calculations I should have been pretty darn close at that point. So then he kept saying something and I still didn't understand it but I saw he was turning off the trail along the canal so I smiled again, wished him well, and continued on my way. I now suspect that what he was saying was probably Korean for "You can't get there from here, dipsh&t!".
Okay, time for the map. As I said, I thought I was following the green line. Instead I accidentally got off on the red line, doing that loop in a clockwise direction. By the time I got to the 7 o'clock position on the loop I was sure I was only inches from the river and would spot it any moment now. Instead I came to a subway stop which I didn't recognize (not that I would) but I remembered: Bupyeon-gu (gu means city). I had just gone through a pretty hip and cosmopolitan area with some schools and shops and I was thinking how maybe I'd get a little something to eat and possibly a beer after I found the river and then head back. I went down into the subway station to look for additional maps that might show me where I was relative to the river because by now I had noticed that the sun wasn't in the right place in the sky based on what I was expecting. I was expecting the sun to be in the south, duh (even though it was about 1:00 by now I should be able to detect that: I'd left at 11:00) and I knew I was supposed to be heading east. But it seemed like the sun was in the north and I was heading west. How could that be? Unfortunately the maps in the subway were no help and I cursed them because they didn't show far enough out for me to be able to see where the river was and I was sure if they'd just had the foresight to make the scale a little bit smaller they could have shown the edge of the river at least and that would have been so helpful in resolving my confusion and figuring out which way I should go. Because I was bound and determined to make it to the river!
After some time studying maps, including the one on my phone, but somehow failing to hypothesize what had actually happened, perhaps because it was hard to make out details on the small picture on my phone, and I remembered crossing over one feeder stream to the main canal (I now see there are two, and I had gotten off track following the second one) and chugging some more water since I was pretty hot and thirsty by now I calmly and coolly reasoned that the river HAD to be to the northeast. And since I could tell which way was northeast from the sun I just had to zig and zag in that direction until I found it. How long could it take? I was certain I was almost there. I decided to chalk up the fact that it seemed I'd been going south and west just previously to unexplained mystery that would have to wait until I got home and looked up where Bupyeong-gu station was.
So I zigged and I zagged on main commercial streets until I found another canal. (What? Another canal? Oh well, it must go toward the river) So I followed that until I got to a pretty major looking river though I questioned whether it was big enough to be the Han since I'd seen the Han once on my first (and so far only) trip to the city center for escape-room teambuilding. But there were some bridges, that was good. I knew there were supposed to be some bridges. And since I'd thought I'd crossed the major canal at some point I thought I was on the north side of the major canal so I thought I'd head further east and eventually connect with the path on my side of the river and take that back.
Wow, this is a long story, but believe it or not it took longer to live it. As I said, I left at 11:00 a.m. and by now it was about 2:00. So here I am going along the body of water and every so often you pass a little "roadside" (or "trailside") bike shop with various accessories, and where people stop to get flats fixed and stuff. I'd been stopping at those and asking if they had maps of bike trails in the Seoul area after I'd read on the internet one time that such a map exists and bike stores give them out for free. So far I have yet to find one. I'd have taken any map at this point though! But maybe those are a thing of the past like phone books because who would need a paper map when you've always got the internet at your fingertips? (ahem.)
By this time you can see from the map below (if I ever get around to inserting it) that I must have been on part of the same trail I'd already been on earlier in the day, since, (spoiler alert) I was back at the large canal. But I didn't know that and wouldn't have understood it if I did. At least I was able to communicate to the next bike shop guy I found (who didn't have a map) that I was trying to get to the Han River (after I asked him if I'd already found it and he told me I hadn't). Or else I realized I wasn't already on the Han when he pointed east and said "8 km". What? Eight more kilometers? How could that be? Okay, at least I'm on a good trail now (blue line on map which will eventually appear below), even if I'm pretty darn hot and out of water and starting to feel a little lightheaded. Sometime later I was nearing the locks which connect the canal to the Han and trying to negotiate the multitude of paths and highways (which I didn't want to get stuck on the wrong side of) and I finally made it to a little park where I could look out on the Han. Gone was any idea of trying to find a way across or do any side trips on the way back. I was feeling pretty dehydrated by now (water had been gone for a while). Of course I could have stopped and bought some water at any of the little convenience stores I constantly passed but I was still hoping to find a place to sit down and have a bite (since I was also pretty hungry) and maybe a beer. In fact, at this point I had already decided to bail on the ride all the way back (because I thought I'd have to basically retrace my entire path since I really didn't understand yet how I'd gotten there) and it was waaay to long to go back that way (not to mention to complicated. I doubt I could have done it without getting lost again). What I really wanted was a(nother) subway stop so I could ride back to my home station. But subway stops are apparently like cops! (never there when you want them). In fact, now that I finally knew where I was I knew there were no subway stops nearby (from previous research) and I still thought I would have an extremely long ride to return home by "the normal route" so I started trying to find a shortcut over to the Gimpo area (where I knew the location of some subway stops). The problem was that there were several major highways crisscrossing that area with all their on and off ramps and stuff and it wasn't bike friendly. I tried several dead ends which only made my trip longer as I had to go back to where I'd turned off the main path. I was starting to get a little concerned now because I was actually feeling dizzy and weak and there were now (of course) no more convenience stores. Long story short I finally made it to the subway (Gayaeng) which is only two stops from mine and was delighted to ride the subway home. Thank goodness I brought my wallet! I had also passed a 7-11 finally just before I got to the subway and I got a 2 liter bottle of water there and drank about half of it and used the rest to refill my water bottle. When I finally got home I took a shower to cool off and boiled some pot-stickers and reheated some black beans with chicken and hot peppers (got to tell you about these hot peppers I got yesterday sometime) and had some cheese and lay on the bed recuperating and using Google Maps to figure out what the heck had happened to me out there before getting up to set this all down. Now with no further teasing here's my map. I think it's about 20 km (around 13 miles) one way from my room to the river, so it should have been about 40 km (26 mi) there and back but I think I managed to add an additional (approximately) 10 km (6 miles) on that, even considering the subway ride home for the last part. That doesn't even take into account many of my little dead-ends trying to get across the highway to a subway stop on the way home. Plus those extra miles were much more demanding than the flat, consistent, cruising bike path. I had to weave and dodge and deal with traffic and stuff. If I'd realized what I'd done I probably could have just biked all the way back with no trouble. Finally got home about 5:00. So: an adventure, but not one I want to repeat.
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| Green line is intended route. Actual route was green line to red loop (clockwise) to blue path. |
