Braking Boundaries

Traffic & cities are overrated.

Last night my good friend Jasmine took me out for dinner in Busan to an upscale seafood buffet and made sure that I gorged myself until I couldn’t eat anything more. Fantastic food! She also informed me that the closest bus terminal happened to be the one that I passed (and had marked with GPS) on the way into the city and was about 15km back the way I came directly through the city.

Bummer, as if yesterday riding through the city wasn’t difficult enough, I had to do it again, so I decided that it would be best to get up really early and beat the majority of the city traffic. At 6am I departed Haeundae beach with what was shaping up to be the 5th gorgeous day in a row, talk about lucking out with the weather.

There’s nothing like inhaling copious amounts of exhaust at 6 in the morning from the hundreds of cars and buses to encourage a fast ride through the city, and that’s just what I did.

I rolled into the bus terminal at 7.45am and to my luck there was a bus leaving for Seongnam-Si (성남시my area of Seoul) at 8.30am. I now had 45 min to figure out how to get my bike into my new ground effect bike bag by dismantling various parts. Turns out it was a piece of cake and I had all my bags packed and loaded on the bus a whole 10 minutes before leaving time.

On the road again, this time in a very comfortable first class bus with 3 big chairs all to myself watching the countryside whiz by. It’s a strange feeling seeing what had taken me 5 days to cycle, through tunnels, over mountains and along coast roads, be condensed into one short 4 and a half hour ride up an expressway, but satisfying nonetheless.

Back home now and it’s 3pm. Not more than 9 hours ago I was battling cars through the city of Busan.

The whole experience seems surreal as I sit here looking out the window at the city of Bundang wondering what the next adventure on my bike will be.