Alrighty, as I meet people and do things I loose track of what's important. Like blogging. So once again, I'm taking the easy route, and posting lots of pictures with fewer words. But if a picture equals a 1000 words, then you'll have something like 80,000 words to pick through. That's like reading 1/7 of War and Peace.
Brace yourselves.
The reinterpretation of famous logos and brands continues. I actually like the Lion better.
A gal from Michigan/Texas named Leann organized a bike trip from Busan (the southernmost city on the east coast)
to points undetermined along the east coast. And Marlene, a gal from Virginia, did me an immense kindness by purchasing many clif bars and energy gels for me, and also buying our bus tickets. I, however, was completely usless.
We got there by bus and stashed our bikes in the hold.
We left at 10:30 pm, the bus ride takes 4.5 hours so you can do the math and figure out what time we got there.
Here's what I stared at for the entire bus trip...
We had a hard time sleeping on the bus, and then again on the floor of the bus station in Busan. So on maybe 2 or 3 hours of sleep we set off on two day, 170 mile ride.
Sunrise in northern Busan
This photo pretty well sums up the first day. The road between Busan and Pohang was mostly highway and traffic. Pohang is a steel town, fairly dirty and nasty. I can't recommend it as a vacation spot. But here are some highlights nonetheless.
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| The top of this mile-long climb, had a VD, CV, DD mobile selling unit. |
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| This was some sort of long term camping situation |
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Even corrugated roofs get the Asian peak and ridge treatments.
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| Tractor |
By the time we got to Pohang at 2:30, we were filthy and exhausted. Mostly from the lack of sleep. We found a love motel, ate, and bonked out early.
The next day we loaded up with Pocari Sweat, and DMZ H2O and set out by 8.
Day 2 was much more scenic and enjoyable. The Koreans are very pragmatic in a lot of ways. The main highway (at least the old one A.H.6 (asian highway 6)) runs right next to the ocean, which is great for riding and viewing the ocean, but it's no PCH.
Just about every little inlet is a small fishing community containing little minbachs (hostel type places) and Hajuma drying seaweed and generally going about their business.
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| Cute little motel, unfortunately it was across the street from a factory, which I seem to have forgotten to photograph. |
Interesting resort. On the hill back there. There's a closeup below. It's a strange collage of architectural themes.
And then there's this one... The love boat.
Then we headed into crab country, I didn't have enough room on my 32 gb SD card to take a photo of all of the fiberglass snow crabs (i think they're snow crabs) that I saw. So again the highlight real.
I did a little research, and it turns out that the fiberglass sea-creature industry is the fourth largest industry in the entire country.
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| Squid Jerkey! |
We rode through a huge crab market. This lady wanted us to buy some, but our bikes weren't equipped to carry many Kilos of crab in a refrigerated fashion.
This was a road side attraction that combined two of the most common themes on the trip. Light houses and crabs.
Faboo.
Reminds me of home somehow.
For lunch I had a fabulous fishy meal, however, this raw squid was foul.
The locals at the other table were loving it, and so we thought we'd try it. Never again. like eating a slimy dog toy, with Alpo stuffed inside, maybe Fancy Feast. But definitely not in my palate.
The picture does it justice.
Poseidon cults in Korea seem to congregate in towns along the SE coast. Here is the public alter in the Dolphin cult's town. We didn't really spend any time here. Nor did we spend any time in the villages of the Blue Whale or Herring. But I can assure you that they're equally weird.
Then there are these guys.....
Cockroach motel, or maybe a stag beetle. I'm not sure which.
We stayed in a motel just south of Uljin a cute little harbor town on the ocean. Here are a couple panoramas of the harbor.
Marlene in the foreground, Leann in the back.
Sun up on day 3
Game farm. As soon as we stopped watching they all turned and ran over the ridge.
These little plastic hot houses were cute, but not very eco friendly.
This thing was an automated aebelskiver machine that we saw at a rest stop. The hajuma monitoring it got a little wound up when I tried to video tape it in action.
It took 6 or more hours on the bus to bet back from Uljin, because of holiday traffic, it should have been 4.
