First Hike of the Year

 Since early December the majority of my thoughts, efforts, writing, talking, texting, chatting, and stress have been about the whole work situation. Because it is not, as yet, resolved I STILL can't get into it in any detail here. 

Instead, I'll tell you about something I did today that was good. A few things. We'll start this year off on a bright note. I'll do what everybody says I should do: I'll say "Yay," though I walk through the valley of death. But I will fear no evil though I have no rod, staff, or shillelagh to comfort me. I shall hike and it may restoreth my soul. And lo (and high) I didst hike and it was good.  

I have been getting my steps every day since moving into my capsule abode, not just because I need to go out for food, but to keep my sugar down and my spirits up. I haven't hiked anywhere that would get me fresh air or allow me to commune with nature though. And, to be honest, no stairs, no grade, 6000 steps is a cinch. It hasn't really been challenging. Aside from getting me out of the hotel and giving me seen time instead of screen time, the walking has not done a world of good. I have seen a little bit of Incheon but a lot less than I'd like to because I've been so caught up in research, rules, and legalities. During one or two of my outings I noticed a little green on the GPS not far from where I am staying. Today after watching the US get knocked out of the World Jr. Hockey Tournament and watching the Canadian boys dispatch the Slovaks with aplomb, I decided to take a shower and then go for a better walk than usual. 

I almost walked right past it but found what was called Moonlight Park on Naver Maps. I know it 

doesn't look like much but that's what I wanted. I haven't hiked for a long time and it wasn't long before my body was screaming that at me. 

It was just a puny hill with some exercise equipment and I saw a few adults and a few kids playing on swings and exercising on equipment. It was pretty easy to tell that there was a path up one side of the hill that looped over to the other side and came back down again. The side I was on had stairs and as I am always saying, I said today with the whiniest tone I could get away with in public, "Stairs..." But luck was mine and there was a path right beside the stairs. I took that right up to the top. 

At the top I was confronted with my first choice of the day. If you had heard how I was wheezing, coughing, spitting, and sputtering all the way up the puny, little hill you might have suggested I turn around and go back down to the road where there is a hospital. St. Mary's Hospital I think it is. 

Truth be told I had expected to make it a lot farther before hitting the wall than a hill that had about 50 stairs. So although everything in my pudgy, soft, sedentary body was telling me to just pack it in before I cough up a lung or stroke out and die on a hill in Korea like so many of our fallen comrades, I pressed on. But this was no Heartbreak Ridge, this was no Pork Chop Hill, this was no Khe Sanh, Langdok, or Hill 364 where so many of Walter Sobchak's generation gave their lives to die face down in the muck, if this was skiing this wasn't even the bunny hill! I pressed on out of embarrassment not heroism. I chose not to loop back down and be done with it. I saw an opening in the fence and I went through it.

This was what awaited me. "Awwww stairs.... ;-(" I had to get to the top of these stairs without stopping because there was another hiker coming down and I didn't want his to see me stopping like a girl's blouse. I even held my breathing as much as I could as I passed acting like the hike wasn't destroying me like Anthony Joshua did to Jake Paul. My whole body was feeling like Jake Paul's jaw looked the next day. 

I almost felt like I was in prison or the military and I HAD to keep going or get KP or a longer sentence. Maybe it was the cheery barbed wire narrow enclosure. I dunno...

But eventually it DID open up and it started to look more like a hiking trail and less like a tour of Vietnam. 

Although Vietnam never gets this cold. Or has this type of foliage. Or Korean signage. Yeah, bad analogy. 

At any rate, if you notice, the hike leveled out too and I was able to catch my breath for the first time. This invigorated my aerobic ambitions and renewed my resolve. I kept plugging on.

It may sound like I'm well into this hike but I'm sure this was at like the thousand step point. I had a second decision to make. 

Although it has been a while I am an experienced hiker of the Korean hills and I pride myself on being able to follow the trail maps even if they don't have English and my Google Translate camera is not working.

Well, this map had no English and my Google Translate was not working. A lesser man might have turned around at this point being so close to where the hike had begun and almost (but not 100%) sure to find my way back the way I had come. 

But I read the word Byeongweon. That means hospital. It looked very much like I could keep going, get off the green where I was and onto the brown trail, go by the gazebo, then back onto the green trail and down to the hospital. That's pretty much where I started.

I soldiered on. The decision was not made lightly for you see there has seldom been a hiking trail, road, highway, track, subway tunnel, path, or any form of thoroughfare in Korea (in all of my experience) that ends up or comes out where you might expect it to. This could have meant for all the world that I was just making the half-way point farther away since I might have to just turn round and retrace my steps all the way back. Was I ready for that? Well, I actually felt like the worst was behind me. I had hit the wall, scaled it, and Humpty Dumptied down the other side without needing any of the King's men or horses to put me back together again. Nobody? Ever wonder what help the horses could have been putting a big egg back together? Just me? 

If you blow this pic WAAAY up you'll see a lady in full Korean hiking regalia like I described in a previous post. Even the guy in front of me had his fancy boots, pack, and titanium hiking stick. 

Another decision. Should I walk all the way up that graveyard hill or should I turn right where I think the hospital path is? Do I satisfy my curiosity or keep it simple? I bet I know what you think I did. But I was feeling the burn now. The rush of exercise that I hadn't felt since working out at the gym at the university I no longer work at. I also thought it might be a good view.

This was about half way up. It WAS, as it turned out, a good view. I can't tell you what those buildings are. I think the circular one is a coliseum where they take all the foreign workers who have disobeyed the Korean employers who ordered them to break Korean laws and make them fight lions, tigers, and ligers for the amusement of the ruling class. 

But I could be mistaken.

It was a 20% grade and I did it without stopping. Well except to take that picture above. But I wasn't breathing as hard as when I summited the bunny hill. So I was feeling proud. 

When I got to the top, this is what I saw. More graves. I don't know what I was expecting. 

Beyond the path continued and there were even more graves, but I looked back down the hill and saw something that made me turn around and go back down.

By golly it was the Gazebo!

20% downhill? It's a lot easier than 20% uphill.

So in no time I had reached the gazebo. 

Here's where I had to make another choice. Should I use some of the exercise equipment here and make this a full body workout?

There was bench press, curls, twists, sit-ups, pull-ups, flies, and of all things...

Yeah! This machine gives you all the exercise of hiking up a mountain without actually hiking up a mountain although you need to hike up an actual mountain to get that even better than the real thing feeling of the machine that makes you feel just like you are hiking up a mountain. 

It reminded me of those people who go to concerts and film the whole things on their phones looking at the phone screen version of the real thing they are capturing electronically. 

Maybe I should have just watched a few episodes of Hiking With Kevin Nealon. 

I left the gazebo area and immediately found another decision pole with three arrows on it, one of which had the word byengweon on it. I followed that trail.

It got thin and woody. Nobody else was on this trail. I started thinking that maybe this was a different hospital. Maybe it wasn't St. Mary's just down the road from my capsule hotel. Maybe I'd have to just turn around and go back.

Oh well, at least I was going downhill. 

This empty lot is where the trail came out. It was completely surrounded with fence. There were some signs in red that I couldn't understand and STILL Google Translate camera refused to translate for me. 

Luckily I found a hole in the fence and went out to the street.

This was the street. I just walked a little bit along this street and suddenly I saw the byeongweon. It was an angle I hadn't seen St. Mary from before but I was pretty sure it was her.

Before long I got to the main crossroad and saw an E-mart 24. It was the E-mart 24 at the end of my road! The one that's not open 24 hours but never mind. I had come off the mountain ON MY ROAD!

This NEVER happens! And I looked at my step count. Just below 7000. Pefectamundo!

So you can bet I'll be doing that hike again! 

The cherry on top was that I realized I had skipped lunch and I had been craving a sub with some soup for a while. There was a Subway right on the corner. I'd never noticed it before. 

But before I get too excited I noticed while buying my Italian cold cut combo that my alien card was missing from my wallet. I didn't panic because all my cards were there and so was the cash. Nobody would steal a person's alien card. I mean, unless they're lucky enough to look exactly like me.

I then remembered I had been to the pension office in Incheon the day before and the guy had kept my passport, bank book, and alien card. I had to ask him for them back just before leaving. I must have only got my passport and bank book back. So now I have to go back to that office on Monday. That's the kind of hiking I've been doing lately. It's not as healthy.

Hopefully they still have my card there. If not I could be in trouble. 

Tuesday I have a meeting in Gangneung during which I just might need that card. I have no doubt it will lead to some really great content for this blog too. 

Whether or not I'll be able to publish it remains to be seen...

As always, wish me luck.