Outdoor Travel Geek

Category: biking

  • cycling across Korea day 8: Yangsan to Busan

    I woke up this morning and opened up the Naver Maps app to see how much riding I had left. It looks like just under 2 hours left until the finish. Busan is a pretty big city, and Yangsan is essentially a suburb of Busan, so pretty much the whole two hours of riding looked…

  • cycling across Korea day 7: Daegu to Yangsan

    It’s a good thing I stopped where I did yesterday, because the morning started out with a fairly big climb and it was nice to tackle it on fresh legs. I still needed to walk a fair amount, though in my defense it was because I found myself on my first patch of dirt road.…

  • cycling across Korea day 6: Gumi to Daegu

    Gumi is part of the industrial heartland of Korea. Riding into town yesterday and riding out of town today I passed a ton of factories where things like LCD panels and car batteries are manufactured. The skies here are kind of gray, and I’m not sure if it’s cloudy or smoggy. In any case I…

  • cycling across Korea day 5: Mungyeong to Gumi

    It rained pretty much all day yesterday so I decided to take a rest and relaxation day. Thankfully I was in a town famous for its hot springs, so I spent the better part of the day relaxing in the hot spring. Normally Korean hot springs are a bit awkward for this Americanized prude. I’m…

  • cycling across Korea day 4: Chungju to Mungyeong

    Today’s riding started on a road with sort of narrow shoulders. It’s hard to complain when the scenery looks like this though. Most of the riding today was on country roads. There weren’t a lot of cars though. Some sections were still icy even though it wasn’t actually that cold. There’s a couple of hills…

  • cycling across Korea day 3: Yeoju to Chungju

    Today I felt like I was really in the rural heart of Korea. I don’t think I saw another cyclist all day. I did see some tanks though. I think the bicycle path passes through a military training area. There are some big guns here, though thankfully none were aimed at me. Today’s riding had…

  • cycling across Korea day 2: Seoul to Yeoju

    I started the day super excited because I’d be leaving Seoul and venturing into more rural areas of Korea that I’ve never seen before. At the same time that brought some apprehension because I thought the cycling infrastructure would get worse as I left the urban areas. But I was pleasantly surprised by how good…

  • cycling across Korea day 1: Incheon & Seoul

    And so my journey across Korea begins. The start of the ride is in Incheon. If you search for ‘Ara West Sea Lock’ on Google Maps you can find it. There’s actually a little tourist kiosk there where you can buy a passport book. Along the route apparently there are little phone booths where you…

  • the pandemic pivot

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    After nearly a dozen years working for the state of CA, I quit state service in September of 2019. My plan was to return to school and finish my bachelor’s degree. I had filed for readmission and was accepted back into school at UC Davis for winter quarter, but upon talking to an academic advisor…

  • the agony

    The Agony ride is an annual charity bicycle ride and fundraising event for Christian Encounter Ministries, a home and school for troubled youth. My friend Zoya invited me to ride the Agony every year for the past few years, but I’ve always had an excuse to not ride. Last year I ran (ok more like…

  • davis to san francisco

    One of my biking buddies, Jiro, will be leaving Davis soon. We’ve done quite a lot of biking together over the few years that I’ve known him– probably more than a dozen century rides and even a few overnight bike trips. As sort of a bucket list item, he wanted to bike from Davis to…

  • south FART

    It’s been a while since I’ve written a bike trail post. I bought a new mountain bike as a sort of birthday/Christmas present to myself at the beginning of winter, but haven’t really ridden it much. Now that spring’s here it’s time to come out of hibernation and start biking again. So today I took…

  • the anthem

    Recently I added a new bike to my stable. I’ve been looking at full suspension 29ers for a while. When I rode the Slickrock trail earlier this year, I had rented a Giant Trance 29er, and I found I liked it a lot. I had ridden the same bike at a Giant demo day about…

  • foxy’s. finished. finally.

    The Foxy’s Fall Classic Century is my hometown ride. I’ve signed up for it numerous times, but for some reason or other I’ve never finished the 100 mile course. The last time I attempted it, it was a bent rear wheel that prevented me from finishing the long course. Other times I ended up riding…

  • jaoquin miller / redwood park

    Today I had plans to grab dinner with my friend Jason near Berkeley. Since I didn’t have anything planned for the afternoon, I decided to take my mountain bike for a spin in the nearby Oakland Hills. My original plan was to ride in Jaoquin Miller park, but I ended up riding mostly in the…