Gunsan-si

There are 3 weird events/coincidences which have occurred both in this trip and in my previous bike trip.

The first is that I will get an expression of interest from a Korean publisher for one of my books. Which happened again just before I caught the plane.

Second, I will meet an artist who is showing her paintings- which happened again in Yeoju.

Third, I will meet an old guy on the last day :-) Today's gentleman was Shin Mu-un. He is 81 years old.

I passed him on the trail and said my usual 'anyeong haseo'. About 20 minutes later, I stopped at a little gazebo and he pulled in too. He was very chatty so we probably sat for about 20 minutes talking.

After that, it was only 600m to the final checkpoint. After getting my stamp, he suggested we have lunch together, so we rode off to a local restaurant and had a shellfish udon soup. It was delicious. There was so much shellfish in the soup that we actually didn't eat it all. Price? $10 each!! (Which, of course, I was not allowed to pay.)

My next stop was the Gunsan museum, so Mr Shin lead me there and we said our final goodbye.

It was a pretty hilarious experience overall. Our initial conversation on the bike trail was just done in Korean. But, by the time we got to the restaurant , our conversation was getting in-depth enough that I pulled out the translator app to help me understand his replies.

However, Mr Shin is not very adept with technology (he does not even use KakaoTalk... surely the only Korean who doesn't!). So, he would give very long answers with pauses. After the first pause, the app would think he was done, and stop listening. Because, I was sitting across the table, I couldn't see the screen to alert him this was happening.

I am sure he told me lots of interesting things :-)

One thing I did get is that although his wife also rides a bike, she prefers riding the subway :-)Read more