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…

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.…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…