Off Road and Off Track

When we reached Daegu, about 200 kilometers from our departure in Busan, our route took a turn.  The bike path had carried us along the river reliably to this point (except for the mountains), but now we had to find another path; the Nakdonggang wound another 200 kilometers north to Andong dam.  Fortunately, the city of Daegu is well-suited for biking as well, provided of course you don't need to actually go anywhere in the city itself: the river that forms its border on three sides has a very familiar-looking bike path running along familiar-looking tennis courts and abandoned public toilets.  We took a well-deserved break in Daegu for a day, then hit the road again, having to backtrack a few kilometers just to get to the bike path.

Not to get off on too much of a tangent, but such is really the problem with bike paths.  Sure, not having to compete with cars is pretty pimpin', but the fact of the matter is that a bike path can take you to a very limited set of destinations (Point A, Point B, or riding around in circles (not recommended)).  For we who are trying to make actual distance across a country, this means we often have the choice of going wildly out of our way to get on a dedicated bike path or taking a more direct route that could be unsafe for cyclists.  As a touring cyclist, it's pretty maddening that the people who plan these bike paths don't seem to understand that anyone will use their roads for actual transportation rather than weekend recreation.  Hence the Four Major Rivers Project's tendency to have 50 kilometers of beautiful, well-maintained bike path bordered by 30 kilometers of nigh-impassable mountains and forest.  "Surely," these architects declare, their feet up on mahogany tables, "anyone who wants to ride our bike path can ride the good parts, then when they're finished, they can turn around and ride back to their car, which they'll use to actually get around."  Bastards.

Anyway, we skirted Daegu, spending six hours or so dodging lycra-clad racing cyclists and ajimas in visors, masks, and arm covers shuffling down the road.  The old ladies in East Asia sure are careful not to get a single second of sun while they're outside.

By sunset, we were, as usual, not where we expected we would be.  The path stretched for miles in either direction, propped up on a steep green hill with no shoulder on either side.  Below us, along the river, there was a broad, dusty flood plain spotted with ancient, ruined concrete and determined verdant shoots.  Our visibility would be high for this, our last night camping on this adventure, but there seemed to be little alternative, as another city (and thus, even less cover) seemed to be ahead of us.  We decided to take our chances at being spotted from the bike path, banking yet again on the sympathy or apathy of our fellow cyclists.  Laboriously, we rolled our bikes down the hill, crushing meter-high yellow flowers and collecting spiderwebs on our panniers, then sat to drink the beers we'd saved from the last convenience store.

As we waited for the sun to finish coming down, a soft whirring noise in the distance grew louder.  We spotted a colorful shape in the distance, and it headed towards us at a pace almost as lazy as our own.  Eventually we figured out what we were looking at: a man suspended from a parachute with an enormous fan strapped to his back.  I mean, obviously, right?  Man, I dunno how we didn't guess that immediately.  Duh.

The man passed over our heads, then circled around and passed again, waving to us and smiling the smile of a man who's realizing his childhood fantasy (indeed, every boy's childhood fantasy).  We waved back, happy for the man's gleeful greeting, though a bit dismayed that bike touring was clearly not the best way to travel anymore.

Jenn and Harry Go to Hell (Again)

We panted, pushing our bikes up and up and up.  Surely we had traveled more vertical miles than horizontal ones by now.  I looked back: the road stretched dizzyingly far behind us.  If I dropped a bowling ball, it could have demolished a city (not that there were many cities around here, anyway).  The bike path had turned on us, transforming from a pacifically flat, perfectly-maintained bikes-only thoroughfare into a crumbling red stain on one edge of a highway, a suggestion to passing cars that there might be some cyclists about.  Our clothes were perpetually drenched with sweat, except when they were dry and crunchy.  Road grit had mixed with sweat and chain lube on our legs, making us look even more comically dirty than usual (imagine a Victorian street urchin crossed with Pig Pen from "Peanuts").  Implausibly, we were walking by what I can only assume was a manure factory: the stench of industrial-strength dung filled the air and poisoned every breath we took, sweat mixing with tears and rolling dirty, salty water down our faces.  Eventually, we passed a sign helpfully informing us that we were crawling up a 13% grade.  This, then, was hell.

Of course, we'd already been to a hell, but this mountain was the Hell.

Also, this Hell was a lot less whimsical than Beppu.  Though it did smell just as bad.

Up ahead, at what couldn't possibly be the top of the hill, two Korean cyclists plunged towards us at mach speed.  One of them whooped in excitement.  They smiled and waved to us, and we somehow mustered the energy for a weak thumbs-up.  If, as I've heard, the most popular activity in heaven is watching the suffering of the damned, then the most barbaric punishment in hell is surely the damned watching the saved watch them.

It was 5:30, already getting to be dark.  Under ideal circumstances, we would have already staked out a camping spot by this time, but as it was, we had no choice but to keep going; each free camping site poses its unique set of dangers, but "sleeping on a 13% grade" was one too far.  We rested, we pushed, we rested some more, at least as much as holding up an enormously heavy bike can be called "resting."  We were too tired to complain, too tired to curse.  We were even too tired, somehow, to talk about "Game of Thrones."

Somehow, the farther we got from the city (and all of the weekend riders whose taxes paid for the trail, no doubt), the more the trail started to fizzle into nothingness, becoming vague signposts and cracked blue lines that carried us onto tiny country roads, steering us past stooped old women working in their rice paddies who stared at us.  "Hey, we're as confused as you are, believe me," I thought at them.  We'd even been directed up another mountain earlier that day, which made this one more impossible.

Of course, with each successful mountain climbed, no matter how difficult the journey, come the twin joys of perseverance and oxygen deprivation. 

That was hours ago, and this mountain, this steep, crumbly, empty, stinky mountain wasn't going anywhere in a hurry.  Much like us.

At last, inevitably, we did make it to the top of the mountain, just as it was getting too dark to push on.  What awaited us there, apart from some very unimpressed-looking sport cyclists in electric-white lycra, was the tiniest of rest areas, a scant few square meters of wooden planks and bolted-down benches.  The prospect of camping on such a tiny spot filled us with apprehension.  Perhaps it would be best to push onward?  The bottom of the mountain might provide some green space, maybe even somewhere we could stake down our tent without being seen by every passing car?

As we considered, I felt an odd nagging feeling.  The dread worsened as I tried to puzzle it out.  Had I forgotten something?  I scratched my back, noticing that it was drier than usual, and then it hit me.

"Shit.  Shit.  Jenn?"

"Yeah?"

"I forgot my uke again."

We sat on the benches and thought it over, trying not to panic.  There would be no hopping on the subway to pick it up in a safely locked apartment.  Neither of us could remember if I had left it at the store where we stopped for instant ramen, on top of the mountain, or at our free campsite that morning.  At the latter two, it would almost assuredly be gone by now, taken by thieves, turned in to the police by well-meaning passersby, or stolen by crows (I wasn't ruling it out).

Then I had an idea.  I checked the photos we'd taken on the last mountaintop:

Why must I insist on wearing a T-shirt under my T-shirt?
Oh, wait, that's my pasty white flesh.

Sure enough, there it was, strapped to my back.  That means it must have been left behind at the strange little general store.  Which was, naturally, back down the mountain a ways.

There was nothing else for it.  There would be no climbing that mountain with all of our stuff again, so I had no choice but to unstrap everything, leave it in Jenn's capable hands, and fly back down the mountain, stuffless.  I tore down the asphalt, passing the sports cyclists who'd scoffed at us going the other way, and before long, I was at the bottom, pedaling madly along the riverside path.

Meanwhile, Jenn took photos of the mountains.

I tore down the gravel-strewn path, screeching to a stop at the odd picket fence that surrounded the store/restaurant/house.  Out of breath, I stumbled up to the door, where the curly-headed ajima who ran the place walked to the screen door, dangling the ukulele by its strap with one finger.  I thanked her profusely, using one of the four words of Korean I happened to know, then grunted back to my bike.  I checked the time: it had taken 10 minutes to retrieve the ukulele, where it had taken over an hour to climb that mountain.  I sighed deeply, trying to ignore the cramps in my calves.

I did make it back to the top, ultimately, just as it was definitely too dark to move on.  We cooked a quick meal of canned fish (for the fourth time in three days) and set up in the far corner of the shelter, hoping that our reflective tent surface wouldn't attract too much attention.  Where there's no grass, we're unable to stake down our tent, making the structure quiver with every toss and turn.  Every now and then a truck blew by, its lights growing brighter, its engine growing louder until it seemed right on top of our heads, then passing perhaps 10 feet by us.  If any of those trucks spotted us, I have no way of knowing, but we were uninterrupted for the night.

And Harry never left his ukulele behind again.  Ever.

In the morning, we had just enough water to make the last of our oatmeal for breakfast.  The steep hillside was covered in wild raspberry bushes, a few of which I harvested for the oatmeal.  We packed up and left just as our need for a bathroom became intolerable, and we barreled down the mountain to the next town just as the rain started to pour down.  There were definitely no camping spots anywhere past where we'd stopped for the night.

Korea: A Whole New World (Please Don't Sue Us, Disney)

Fresh (on) the boat.

We'd been off the boat for five days now.  Busan was...well, we hadn't gotten out much in those five days, really.  After a laborious trip across the city with all of our gear to get to our Couchhost's place, we didn't feel up to much in the way of exploration.  Nor did we feel particularly game for planning out our next three weeks before we had to report to our employer in Seoul.  Let's just say we were...biding our time.

We were studying the effects of whitewashing on bike travel.

Though three weeks was far too short a time to bike the whole of Korea (for us, anyway), after a few weeks of struggle with WWOOF Korea, we found a WWOOF host in the nearby city of Gyeongju.  Incredibly, Google Maps refuses to give any walking, biking, or driving directions in Korea (I blame tachyon interference), but as near as we could deduce, Gyeongju was just two cities away, maybe a hundred kilometers at most.  So, naturally, we decided to go through Daegu, a route that would be about three hundred kilometers.

The reason for our detour was Korea's "Four Major Rivers Project" (not to be confused with the other Four Major Rivers: Cuomo, Phoenix, Joan, and Tam).  The project is a recently-completed multi-trillion-won series of bike and walking trails that follows all of the major rivers in South Korea.  It's possible to travel directly from Busan to Seoul via these paths; according to some internet guides, it's even possible to do so in about 10 days, presumably if you're a mad, sleepless robot who's not carrying any camping gear or musical instruments.  Three hundred kilometers along bike paths sounded considerably better than a hundred kilometers of schlepping our bikes across sidewalks and busy city streets, that was for sure.  Plus, as the Katy Trail taught us, it's pretty hard to get lost on a bike path (though we did make some valiant efforts).

When at last, we had done the bare minimum of preparations (buying groceries and a road atlas that we would never open), we bid farewell to our spectacularly generous host and hit the road.  After an hour of dodging potholes and pedestrians, I had the feeling that something was wrong.  It was hard to identify just what it was, but it was as though I were missing something, like some vital part of bike travel was...

"Shit!" I exclaimed.  "I forgot my uke at Anne's!"

In this instance, our usual one-legged-tortoise pace did us some good: after all of our riding, we were still in Busan proper, and only seven subway stops away from our host's place.  I ran back, picked up my uke using the magical reality of Korea that is keypad locks, and made it back to the bikes.

Finally, we made it to the bike path, an elevated, tree-lined road that stretched far off into the distance, past the cloned, Inception-like apartment blocks that make up every horizon in Korea.  The bike path ran along the Nakdonggang River (and occasionally right on top of it) through endless unused parks and wildlife areas, affording us ample opportunities for free camping.

At the end of the first day, we made camp in a small park somewhere an unknown distance from Busan (no Google, remember?).  We scarfed down our dinner of pan-fried noodles with tuna, careful to conserve as much of our water as possible, then set up behind a copse of trees to shield ourselves from passersby and the nearby love hotels.  We could have camped in one of the parks with water and without any people, but that's just how we roll.

Also, there were dragons (left).

Hamada to Shimonoseki: Adventures in Navigating

There was little doubt by this point that we had taken a wrong turn.


View Larger Map

Google Maps, our longtime navigator, had steered us up more than a few mountains in the past few weeks, but of late, its advice had gotten even more suspect (this could have something to do with the fact that Google has no data for bicycle travel in Japan, and the only way we can get directions from it is to pretend to be a car).  Supposedly it was avoiding any tolls or highways, but more than once it had directed us onto a "bypass," an elevated road that loomed over every town.  My feeble gaijin brain has some difficulty appreciating the subtle difference between these towering thoroughfares and "highways."  Whenever we'd encountered one of these monsters before, we had taken the designated detour, which usually pushed us up a tiny mountain road that added many miles and hours to our route.

Now, we thought, having just left Hagi, we thought we'd outfox the Google.  The middle road that we were directed to take seemed pretty straight, cutting through a handful of tunnels, but it was labeled "San-in Road," which in the past had meant anything from "quiet mountain road with wide shoulder" to "giant truck mating ground."  The Kitaura Highway to the south snaked back and forth across the map, a sure sign that it would be full of switchbacks and steep inclines.  So, we thought, we'd take the tiny, pale-yellow road along the coast.  Surely a coastal road would be pretty flat, right?

...Right?

After an hour of climbing up tiny, overgrown, 10%-grade mountain roads, we had gone too far to turn around and too tired to go on (without complaining).  Still, no matter how hard the road, we certainly got a welcome break from the endless parade of trucks and conbinis.  The forest on these little mountains was a thick, primeval jungle, with vines wound around thick, dark bamboo.  Wild raspberry bushes bursting with ripe berries and wicked thorns crowded us into the middle of the street; this wasn't a problem, as we saw only a single car in our hours of pushing.

Just off the coast, tiny spits of land dotted the calm, mirrorlike Sea of Japan.

Harry and Google seen arguing like an old married couple.

The scenery revived our spirits enough to continue onward.  Eventually, we did make it back to the designated route, just in time for more trucks and more conbinis.

Also, we met a frog at the conbini.  This frog is notable in that it was the third dirtiest creature in Shimane (after the two of us, of course).

We had literally been looking for these guys since first coming to Japan.

"I got crabs!"

And just like that, we were finished with Japan yet again, and this time we had no plans to return.  Strange to say, I was never really a Japanophile before coming to Japan.  Unlike some of my classmates, I was never into anime, never really dug Japanese movies or art, even in my three years of Japanese classes.  While living in Osaka, I was constantly told by impressed locals that I must really love Japan to stay so long.  I've always had good and bad things to say about Japan and about Japanese people.  But I think I can say, after leaving this time, after having seen rural Japan and met some amazing people, that I do love Japan.  I still don't want to settle there, and I'm not even sure I'd want to live there again, but I do know that Japan will always have a special place in my heart.

After three months to the day, our tourist visas were up.  We were shipping out the following day, off to another three weeks of cycling, but now in a country about which we knew almost nothing. My stomach sank at the prospect of biking through a place where we couldn't speak the language.  So many of the experiences we'd had seeing Japan's back roads -- the abandoned campsites, the kind passersby, the racist old guys -- we would be unable to appreciate in Korea.

So we enjoyed our last few hours in Japan, hoping to hang onto as much of this place as we could.

Karaoke prominently figured into these hopes.

Leaving Pasar

See you for next year's music festival, Natsu and Aki!