I’ve often commented that no matter how poorly I feel about riding when I set out, I’m cured of that feeling 9 times out of 10 within just a few miles of starting the ride. Well, this week’s long ride was looking to be that one time I’d have to struggle, and I constantly found I was having to convince myself to go on. I nearly turned back after about twenty miles. and a good portion of the ride could count as “suffering,” but I pressed on, and the rewards were plentiful and great — as is usually the case.
Last weekend’s ride to Yi-ch’eon reminded me that there were still a couple of stories out to the east. When I first knew about them, I plotted a route that neared 80 miles and I said, “No way. Too far.” And then last year happened, and it turns out an 80-mile ride doesn’t intimidate me anymore. But of course, by then I’d forgotten about those stories.
So last week, when I planned a route to see them both and it came to 75 miles, I was ready to go.
In the end, I was only successful at finding one story though. Trees are usually easy find because they’re close to roads. Once a tree is venerated at some time in its past (long before the story signs went up), people go to them. They’re often village trees or guardians, so people like to visit them often and sit in their shade. Yesterday, the tree I visited was planted near the grave of an important official. And last week, I found the lost story just down the street from where the book said it would be. It was just a matter of me going there myself and taking a look.
But other stories are a bit harder to find. There is one up near Suwon that required me to actually hike to the ridge of a hill and follow that path for a while. And I suspect that’s the case with the story I couldn’t find yesterday. The map showed it just north of a temple, but I scouted the area pretty thoroughly and couldn’t find it. I’m pretty sure that it’s actually up the mountain behind the temple, and so someday I hope to go there for a hike as I did with the Suwon story.
Actually, yesterday when I got past the 20-mile mark, I had completely abandoned all thoughts of turning around or cutting my ride short. Things were looking up. As I was moving along a road on which I’d traveled once before, I glanced to my right at just the right time and saw a stone Buddhist statue that I’d missed the first time. It was quite impressive, at over 5 meters tall. Yesterday’s sky was also beautifully blue, and the light was very good, so I got some decent pictures during the ride. The biggest problem I think was that I still don’t have my climbing legs (or weight — I still need to lose 20 pounds for that), and the ride to the story tree had a bit of a hill to it. So here I was, less than 40 miles into the ride, knowing I had about 35 to go, and I was struggling a little. Perhaps it was also a mental thing. The beautiful blue sky was also a cloudless sky for the first 50 miles, which meant that by 9 o’clock, it was already getting into the high 80s with extreme humidity. Feeling hot and struggling through a climb knowing that I was only about halfway through the ride took a bit of a toll on my mental state. Knowing that I had a bit more climbing to do too — one fairly good hill at mile 55 — certainly didn’t help.
But it all worked out. I actually got a second wind in there, and the last 15 miles weren’t bad. Not a mistake after all.
What are the things that look like giant cocoons?
That is the visitor’s center for the Yi-ch’eon Agricultural Theme Park…I’m assuming meant to look like grains of rice.
It looks like silk worm cocoons after metamorphosis is complete