Cross-Korea Cycling: Earned Slopes

November 28, 2014 • Blog, Travel

Written by: Khoi Truong

Day three began very much the same way it ended yet at the same time, extremely different.

Since we stayed at my friend Amanda’s the night before, we were able to start the day feeling refreshed, on schedule, and with clean clothes; things were looking up.

Chandler and I made our way to the top of the dam where we left off the night before and took a few photos.

After taking a few photos of the dam where we ended our previous day, our next step was decided based on what I call Earned-Slope Syndrome. Earned-Slope Syndrome (ESS), is when you work extremely hard to scale a hill, and the result of your efforts imbues you with a sense of entitlement to enjoy the downhill ride on the other side. This sense of entitlement blinded us to the fact that the other side of the dam, was the wrong direction.

We were driven by our ESS over the peak and down an exhilarating morning roller coaster descent along the riverside mountain. After about fifteen minutes of weaving past mountain-side homes and schools, I noticed that the trail signs which littered our path up to this point, have disappeared. Chandler and I stopped and, through creative use of our iPhones, realized that we just spent fifteen minutes charging in the wrong direction.

An interesting fact about mountains is that, they take an exponentially larger amount of time and energy to ride up than down. What followed was a demoralizing, dehydrating and exhausting three hour climb under the midday sun; a hefty price to pay for only fifteen minutes of fun. So once again, we were behind schedule.

Once we were back on the trial, the rest of the day went fairly well. Early in the afternoon, we stopped by a river-side rice-wine hut for an hour’s reprieve; a reward for not throwing in the towel after our horrendous start to day-three. We left the wine-hut a little inebriated.

After a bit of riding, Chandler spotted something; he stopped waved me down and then guided me through a small collection of trees to reveal a tiny section of river next to a mountain. A handful of Korean families were swimming under the overwhelming August sun. Beckoned by the once-in-a-lifetimeness of it all, we spent an hour swimming in what could only be described as the ultimate romanticization of East-Asian Country-Life. The sky was blue, the water was warm, the laughter of families echoing off the mountainside, and in the midst of it all were me and Chandler.

The rest of the day was spent scaling two extremely large mountains; it was imperative that they were behind us before the sun set since there were no spaces to pitch our tent on the narrow mountain roads. It took us roughly four hours of continuous peddling to finally reach the top of the second mountain.

I had accomplished something that I had not done before in my life: I had worked my body to exhaustion. When we reached the second peak, I was either being supported by my bike, or laying on the ground.

Chandler and I looked down at the mountain road ahead of us. Humbled by our earlier run-in with Earned Slope Syndrome, we asked for directions. Relieved to learn that continuing down the other side of the peak was the correct path, we savoured the exhilarating downhill rush that was to come. We also learned that our destination was at the other end of the descent. Through force of will, we somehow managed to bring ourselves back on schedule.

Like the beginning of day-three, we spent the end of it blazing down a Korean mountain-side; unlike that morning however, we were going the right way.

That night, we ran into Team Daddy and had dinner with them. The father was able to secure a large discount at a motel for us. To reward ourselves for a job well done, we booked a room.

Khoi is an artsy, bohemian, former-traveller in his late twenties. He enjoys adventure, feeling lost, being healthy, and looking good. An intellectual who relishes in frank discussion, his friends describe spending time with him as ‘refreshing.’ Despite a highly social existence during his university years and his early-to-late twenties, Khoi now focuses his attention on developing relationships with more strong-willed, and independent thinkers.

Cycling Korea LIFESTYLE