I don’t know how many times I’ve said it, and certainly not how many times I’ve felt it, but you just can’t get much better than the early mornings of Korean summers. I know the other seasons are pretty good in their own respects, but I think the angles, the lighting and the colors are just right, even if the temperatures get a bit uncomfortable as the day wears on.
Saturdays are riding days…but the setup for this ride was a bit loopy. Even as late as yesterday, I wasn’t quite sure what I’d be doing. I was on the fence. Do a D2R (Drive to Ride) and spend my first hour on the road in a car before ever getting on the bike, or leave from home and reclaim that hour by starting even earlier…on the bike? Which would it be. I wasn’t sure as late as yesterday after work.
But I’ve been here before. I’m always trying to think it through. Planning the ride is a good part of the fun for me. It allows me to dream a bit. Like, the D2R would have taken me to the route I couldn’t do two Saturdays ago because of a flat tire on my car. I still want to explore the area, and since Albert told me he couldn’t make it this weekend, I could catch back up to him…with some variations. Like reversing the route and putting the big climb near the beginning where I would be doing it around sunrise instead of 10 am.
Still, starting from home at 4 (instead of driving at 4 and riding at 5) and finishing around 1130 sounded very good too. Especially since the temperatures had been hitting triple digits all week long. And today especially — it was supposed to feel like 100 by 8 am, so being 40 miles into ride by then had its appeal.
And then the changes. Albert told me late yesterday that he could make it today, so no need to repeat the route he did two weeks ago. I had a 66-miler planned into the east (I base a good part of my routes on wind direction actually, and there was supposed to be a bit of a breeze out of the east). But as I rolled out the door at 0357 and started waiting, something happened that hadn’t before — Albert was not only not waiting for me, he wasn’t even out of bed.
Let’s throw that route out the window then.
“I’ll meet you at the outdoor restroom.” We have a certain code when it comes to routes, locations, and even maneuvers while we ride. So when I say “outdoor restroom” — even though there are several outdoor restrooms from which he could choose — Albert knows exactly where I’ll be (and the funny thing is, this one is not even a restroom…technically). He got there about 5 minutes before I did.
So it all worked out. Mainly, because my 66-mile route broke the rule I wrote about here — until the temperatures drop down to a reasonable level, no more 60 (or 50) -plus mile rides. Albert oversleeping put us on a slightly different schedule going in an entirely different direction (although we did go east today, but started out much farther to the south). We also just made it up as we went. I usually make the routes, he usually loads them and navigates. We were in familiar territory, so we didn’t need any routes. I knew where we were going, and whenever Albert got his bearings, he did too. The ride (for me) came out to about 46 and a half miles, and I was home before 0830.
And of course I got some beautiful pictures of the Korean summer morning along the way…
I don’t like Korean summers. They’re hot and humid. But I’ve lived through nearly 30 of them, and I’m still finding things about them that redeem them a little bit. You’ve just got to know where to look.