Cross-Korea Cycling: Nah We’re Good
Written by: Khoi Truong
We awoke on the fourth day with half of the country behind us. By this time on the trip, we realized that every single day exuded a distinct flavour with differing challenges and lessons. I woke up that day and asked Chandler, “What do you suppose today has in store for us?” He responded with a chuckle and a shrug; soon after, we left the suite.
Life on the trail had endowed us with a very specific life-skill: tying our supplies and, for that week, our entire lives onto the back of a bicycle. Every single day on the trail up until day four, saw us experimenting with a variety of styles and knots and by day four we had perfected the arrangement for ultimate comfort and efficacy; what originally took us a thirty minutes, now took ten.
Our goal for day four was simple: make it to the next big city, Gumi. There was no falling short of the goal since we were scheduled to meet up with Chandler’s Korean boyfriend later that night for dinner.
With hearts full of confidence we set off to tackle the 80 km we needed to cover before it got dark.
Not soon after our start, we reached a quaint roadside village where I asked Chandler if we should stop and search for a water supply to refill our reserves. Since we had a non-negotiable goal that day and every minute was precious, Chandler replied:
“Nah, we’re good.”
And as if to say: “You chose poorly,” the rest of the day found the harsh Korean sun exhorting us to guzzle our water so fast, you’d be forgiven to assume that the supply was leaking. To add insult to injury, the trail on day four supplied us with significantly less opportunities to refill our tanks, adding an air of disparity and pressure.
We biked through multiple forests and farmland, searching desperately to find water. At one point we even ventured into a hill-side village to request some from its residents. Eerily enough, the village was completely vacant; no sign of life anywhere.
We left the creepy village and caught up with a few other cyclists that they were facing the same water problem. All we could do was encourage each other and stay on the trail.
We cut through rural villages and gorgeous emerald grasslands before running into what looked like a convenience store. Excited that we finally found a water source, we scrambled in only to discover that they only sold cigarettes, and that if we wanted to refill our water we could use the hose that supplied the fish tanks.
Since Chandler and I had only half a cup left between the two of us, we begrudgingly took the fish-water as a precaution and prayed to run into a more viable source before thirst overwhelmed us.
It didn’t take us long before we sincerely considered drinking the seducingly available fish-water. Right as we reached wit’s end, Chandler spotted salvation in the form of an actual convenience store.
He went in to refill our supplies while I stayed near the trail to lead water-starved cyclists to the shop. Cyclists on the trail looked out for one another; we ran into each other so often we were basically good friends.
The last leg of day-four was difficult yet rewarding; the path itself was fairly straight forward, however our bodies were still recovering from the previous day’s mountain scaling.
As we approached our goal, Gumi, we started to see joggers and cyclists out and about; the city’s health-minded fitness buffs. It was a relieving sign that assured us that the finish line was fast approaching.
Before long we we met up with Chandler’s boyfriend, booked into a hotel, ordered in some Chinese food, and then watched the 2012 Olympics before retiring to bed.
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.
[…] to our earlier run-in with water scarcity, (See day 4, ‘Nah We’re Good), I felt it necessary to dismount and run after the bottle. I spent fifteen minutes under […]