Today kicked my ass

Today was intense. I had trouble waking up this morning - I had kind of an uneasy sleep since the other older gentleman in the place was in control of the TV remote (men the world around apparently enjoy this small pleasure in life), and I guess he's a little hard of hearing. I lucked out in a big way though; since there was no one really there, all the sauna rooms weren't operating, so I claimed one all to myself, dragged in two bed mats and shut the door in complete bliss. I could still hear him, but for the most part he was drowned out. Same went for this morning when it was s t i l l going at 9am, so I put in my headphones and kind of just laid there lethargically until close to 11am. I had a breakfast of champions (bought a small milk and alternated spoonfulls of dry cereal and swigs of milk, and a not so tasty can of peach slices.

After strapping my bag down to my bike (have I mentioned I dislike this part of my trip the most?), I hit the road with a bit of a dreamers goal to be in Mokpo by days end, and 100kms later, I made it there. Mind you, there was some stopping, climbing, photo taking, and curious motorists stopping to have a chat, or people yelling "Fighting!" out there car windows, or sometimes just a thumbs up and a "Number 1!" yelled as they were passing by. One of my small victories in life yesterday, was that the tractor behind me could not catch me for the few exits he was on the road for. Booyah. You take what you can get. haha.

The last 20kms into Mokpo was so intense. It was through a hilly range to get to the coastline, and it was a struggle after two such big days, but I made it through. I stopped on the last apex  before my final decent to get some water at a resturant, and ended up having a conversation with the older family sitting around the table, and was even fed for free!

I head out just as the sun was setting, and by the time I got down into the valley, the darkness was quickly setting in, and I managed to blow not one, but TWO tires. I haven't ever blown a tire in the whole time I've had this bike (for a few years), and have even hardly had a flat, so this was a bit of a bummer, but a really awesome biker who happened to be passing right then helped me out to make it go faster. Thank God, because I was really worn out by this point. He ended up showing me where I could sleep that night, and since my front tire was ruined , he said he would bring me a spare in the morning since 700c's are hard to come by here in Korea. So true to his word, he came by at 11am the next day and gave me his repair tire, and then even offered to bike me to the ship where I was going to head to Jeju Island. So off we went, and he showed me around Mokpo, which the shoreline of is completely beautiful - slightly milky blue-green water with old sail boats and fishing boats moored and gently lulling back and forth.

After finding the ship, and getting a ticket, this awesome boy had run off to go get some food for us - I realised later how smart that was, since I was about to get on a boat for 4 hours and hadn't even thought about food. So we ate, said a quick goodbye, and off my boat went!