This weekend I decided to go for a bicycle ride along the river with my son. Next to our house there are too many mountains so we went to a place toward the East side of Seoul that lets us use bicycles for free.
This is one of the last places in Korea that gives bikes for free. They are in good condition and we are allowed to use the bikes for three hours.
We left at 9am so we thought we would have a wonderful day ahead of us.
Go East
We decided to head east to get out of the city quick and we were surprised by how much ground we covered so fast. We felt like Olympic cyclists. Very few people passed us and the trail was pretty empty all morning.
Everything was great. It was a sunny day, but most of the sun was still low in the morning. Soon we found ourselves outside the city at a beautiful cafe. We stopped to have a bulgogi panini and some drinks.
This was some of the best father and son bonding times we had ever had. My son opened up and talked about middle school. He liked being outside in the open air with farms and forests around him. There were still a few apartment buildings in the distance, but the area near the cafe was rural.
He shared his dream of owning his own farm. He talked about having a big dog and some chickens. It sounds like a good idea, but I know his mom will never move. I told him that after he finishes school he can have his own place in the country. He laughed and said again how much he hates school.
I asked him why he hated school and he said because teachers can't spell his name. Most Korean kids have just three syllables but he has five syllables for his name. I told him that's kind of a dumb reason to hate school. He said that it's boring and his teacher can't stand it when he comes two minutes late. I guess his teacher isn't fashionable.
We were feeling even better after getting refreshed at the coffee shop. We were excited to ride back to the bike rental place and expected the ride back to be even easier that the ride up.
Head Wind
As you can guess, we were badly mistaken. The ride back was against the wind. We had to ride west directly into a dusty wind. I had wished we had brought masks and googles and padded pants. The seat began to hurt.
The whole way back we were fighting the wind. When large groups passed I tried to draft their back tire, but then my son couldn't draft me. He had a hard time sticking to my tire to block the wind and fell behind even more.
He is still in middle school and has large legs but not the kind of legs he needed to break the wind on that bike. He just learned to get out of his seat and ride. Now he was face to face with a strong wind that just got stronger.
Beating the wind was a lot of suffering. He kept asking me to stop and pull over and rest. We did that a couple times, but still there was nothing we could do about the wind that was just getting stronger.
Not only did we have the wind to contend with, but we also had a new factor of afternoon sun. The three hours already passed and the afternoon sun was beating on us. We put on sunscreen at 9am, but we didn't have any more. Now we were unprotected under the midday sun.
We had drinks at the coffee shop but we still felt dizzy and dehydrated. I gave my son what was left in the water bottle that we had refilled at the coffee shop.
We were almost one hour late when we returned the bicycles. We had no idea what we looked like. We had no idea that we smelled and had burnt skin. We just smiled and said,
"I didn't know it was going to take this long to come back from the countryside."
The manager smiled and said,
"No problem. Take your time and come again next week."
I don't know if I will be able to come back. That sunburn really stings.
If we do go again I will wear long sleeves and we will ride far east until we can find a train back to Seoul. I am not riding against that headwind again.
This post is for the weekend engagement topic 159 by @galenkp. All photos are my own including the goofy stick drawings. As you can guess all the writing here is also my own @mineopoly. I really need to do some push ups.
