Today was a special ride. It’s been a long time since I’ve done a tree hunt. I’ve gotten most of the story trees south of the Han River. Last year, Eric Sutalo and I did a few rides along the river to several trees, including one ride in September through Gimpo where we visited five of them.
But this was before I found a book with all of the trees listed, and it turns out there are 10 of these trees in Gimpo, so we’ve been planning a second Gimpo run for quite some time. Of course with Seoul being off-limits to me for a good portion of this year, that wasn’t happening…until we got word that Seoul was open again beginning Monday.
So I put together a route that would scoop up the remaining five trees with the bonus of taking us right up to the fence on the Han River after it had merged with the Imjin…meaning we were within a mile of North Korea on the opposite bank.
We saw all five of the trees, but one was on the grounds of a company and, while we convinced the security guard to let us go see it, we got in under the condition that we wouldn’t take pictures. So I’ve only got pictures of the four others. We did stop by two from last year’s ride, too.
It was an overall fantastic day. Which is usually how it turns out when I don’t feel like getting up at 4 and driving up to Seoul to get started by 7. The excuses ran through my mind — i just got a flu shot yesterday. I wasn’t feeling well. It was too cold (38 degrees at the start of the ride) and windy (right in our faces for the first half of the ride — but a great tail wind on the way home). But I never feel bad about a ride like that after I’m done.
I’ll sleep well tonight, that’s for sure…
Looks like a gorgeous day. The high here today is only 38° and there is no sun but I think I’ll take a ride anyway. Like you say the excuses are really no excuse and you always feel better afterwards. Nice to see the trees again.