Braking Boundaries

Finally the day had come, a chance to ride a fully loaded bike and tour around Korea. Gone are the days of cruising at 30km/hr and being able to stop on a whim. Riding a fully loaded bike is a different experience altogether. Think of it like being in a sports car and trading it in for a semi-trailer. Needless to say it has been a learning curve.

So after a late start due to the weather it was on the road with only a rough plan of where I’d be heading. Not more than 2 hours in and I had my first “riding with panniers” experience. It turns out that having front panniers on the bike makes it wider and therefore getting too close to gutters can be detrimental to my health. I almost came off as the front right pannier scraped the gutter.

Other than this little hiccup it was pretty much smooth sailing, at a faster pace than I first thought - That was until the rain started.

Just outside of Chungju (중주) the heavens opened and down the rain came, so I sought refuge in a fishing supplies shop (낚지) and had a conversation about fishing in Korea and New Zealand, well at least I think that was was it was about as I didn’t really understand any of it. As a side note, it turns out that these fishing supply shops are a great place to stop for camping food, fuel and gear.

A short while later the rain had subsided enough for riding to continue and it was on the road again with Suanbo (수안보온천) a small hot springs resort about 25km out of Chungju the destination for the night. I spent the night here in a nice little hotel and watched Korea beat Cuba for the gold medal at the Olympics. Great game.