The Great Jeju 1-day Circumnav, Part 4

-12:30 p.m. McDonald's in Jeju City, 104 km
The only thing there is to do in Jeju City is go to McDonald's. I told that shit-eating dream cow I'd see it at McDonald's. It didn't believe me, and laughed, but who's laughing now? Me. I am. Also, who doesn't love a good nugget made of chicken lips, assholes, elbows and armpits? I'm glad there are no western chain restaurants in Seogwipo (unless you count Baskin 31 Robins). My love handles are gladder. It's a word. Really though, Jeju City is just another big-ish Korean city, and I always get the heebie-jeebies when I'm there. At this point in the trip, we were starting to get a bit road-numb. Half way through. Throughout the trip, I couldn't get two songs of my head: 'Hold the Heathen Hammer High', by Faroese viking-metallers Tyr, and everyone's favorite gag song about condiments, 'Asereje (The Ketchup Song)' by Las Ketchup. If you YouTube those 2 songs in rapid succession, you'll see that this is most likely the soundtrack in Hell.

-12:55 p.m. Gas 2, 106 km
The whole way around the northwest coast and into JC, I kept asking Cobain 'How's your gas?', in the hopes he'd get the hint and realize I was pushing bingo fuel. I was too cool to start ringing the panic button, so I'm glad the Daelim Forte has a deceptively innacurate fuel gauge, and/or can ride on fumes for a while. Across the street was the ferry terminal where we had a stupid misadventure a few weeks back. Blessed with a rare Monday off, we bussed it all the way up to the Jeju City ferry terminal at an ungodly hour, intent on heading to the Island of Chuja-do for the day. The woman at the 'help' desk knew we wanted to go, and told us when the ferry was sceduled to arrive. I don't know when she found out the damn thing was cancelled, but she sure as hell sat there and watched us for over an hour, smiling and thinking to herself 'God, make them go away'. When we finally went up and asked her if we could get on the boat now, she pointed to a piece of paper that read 'cancellation due to high winds', and gave us a raised-eyebrow smile like we were the stupid ones. Clenched fists.

-1:16 p.m. Samyang black sand beach, 110 km
Another blah whatever beach.

-1:36 p.m. Hamdeok Beach, 120 km
A gorgeous beach, with clear water and white sand.

-1:57 p.m. Gimnyeong Beach, 129 km
A dumpy little poo-poo beach.

-2:34 p.m. Hado, 146 km
A super-duper place to see birds, and another forgettable beach. Couldn't find the fabulous 'Shit-Eating Wall', for the second time. 'They' want to put a speedboat track there. Well done, more sarcastic claps from me. The Spoonbills are back, but were too far for good pictures. Might not be any left in a couple of decades.

-2:58 p.m. Seongsan, 159 km
Seongsan is a nice spot, in spite of being well over-touristed. The bathroom in the parking lot offers THE best Jeju view from a bathroom window.

-3:01 p.m. Parking lot coffee, 160 km
I'm not a big coffee person. In fact, my home town is such a coffee mecca that I just raged against the idea of coffee for so long. If everyone tells me I should check something out, I make an effort not to. Anyways, these days I drink one 'coffee' a day - in reality a pre-packaged tube filled with crack. Every 5 p.m. like tragic clockwork. Anyways again, the parking lot coffee machine makes a solid cup of 25 cent dixie cup coffee, and it hit the spot. The fatigue was really starting to affect our ride at this point, and we tended to drive on through as opposed to stopping and oohing. Heading back south round the east coast now.

-3:12 p.m. Seopjikoji/Sinyang Beaches, 164 km
Spot of the infamous 'soju in hair' camping mayhem of May. Read all about it. A thin neck of land with a beach on both sides. Like a double-edged viking longsword. Hold it high!

-3:40 p.m. Pyeoson Beach, 179 km
Heading west along the south coast. Pyeoson is a shit-hole. I spent 20 minutes there waiting for a bus once, watching the same angry old man ride by on a bicycle every 4 minutes. Almost slit both our wrists. There's an interesting beach here, with huge, Incheon-like tides.

-4:17 p.m. Gas 3, Wimi, 197 km
Passed Haevichi Resort, where Dubaya stayed when he was here. I can just hear him making 'I have ichi balls' jokes. Wimi is a dirty old town, but in a much less depressing way than Pyeoson. The first gas station in Wimi was apparently our of gas (racists!), so we went to the second one. Riveting narrative. Rode past the Film Museum in Namwon. I'm tempted to go, just to see how much it sucks, and then I can make fun of it and feel superior, and better about myself.

-4:34 p.m. Seogwipo Family Mart, 210 km (give or take)
Home, with hot happy tires. Some douche in a Tico (ugliest little pregnant Lego car of all time) tried to cut me off, but I honked and made confused/confusing hand gestures at him. Went to the Family Mart a couple of blocks from my hovel and had 'one beer'. High fives! We congratulated ourselves and told each other again and again how awesome and cool we were for having finished TGJ1DC. As we often do over tall cans of goodness, we plotted our next Jej-venture, this time one so ill-advised and ridiculous that we may actually have to do it.