A Republic of Korea Bike Trip

Tom Butler: 0:04

This is the Cycling Over 60 Podcast, season 2, episode 14, a Republic of Korea bike trip, and I'm your host, tom Bumman. I'm not very happy right now about my cycling at all. I am very anxious to get prepared for this season's challenge. However, my life has become very focused on trying to get more control over my bullet glucose and ends up being the major thing that happens on a day to day basis. As I mentioned last week, wearing a continuous glucose monitor, or CGM, is giving me some very important data. I can't believe that it will be too long before anybody with an elevated A1C will have access to a CGM. I just see it as that valuable for anybody beginning to struggle with blood glucose issues. I definitely don't think it should be held back just for people that have already seen some significant insulin resistance.

Tom Butler: 1:10

It has been so valuable to see how my body is reacting to what I eat, but there are a couple things that are interfering with me getting out on the bike. First, I am not eating very many calories, so I am not sure from that perspective what going out for a decent bike ride would mean. Since getting the monitor, I have done a couple of rides and they actually spiked my blood glucose. Coach Lisa and I have come up with a ride that we think won't have that impact, as a way of testing what I can do and making some modification as time goes on. I hope to try that very soon. There's a timing issue about when I exercise. I'm eating in a way specifically designed to slow digestion. That in turn, slows absorption of glucose, so I need to wait the right amount of time after eating in order to have anything in my bloodstream to power the ride. Right now I am riding an exercise bike 10 or 11 times a day. That strategy is to burn glucose without triggering a rise in blood sugar. The major impact so far with having the CGM is that the close monitoring has allowed me to consistently lose weight. I am now down to 212 pounds. Since insulin resistance is closely linked to body fat, I am hoping that losing a few more pounds will start to give me some flexibility with my activity and my food intake. I am also doing modified fasting. Again, I am hoping that resets my response to insulin. Overall, I have a lot of hope that I am taking the right steps to turn things around. I do truly wish I would have been doing this five years ago and heading things off before they perguss this far.

Tom Butler: 3:00

A couple of months ago, during the episode on the Great Cycle Challenge, I had the privilege of meeting Charlie Manzoni, a board member of the Children's Cancer Research Fund. He mentioned that he was doing a unique ride for this year's Great Cycle Challenge. That took place in September. I am really pleased that he came back on the podcast to share about that trip. Here is my interview with Charlie and Steve Looney, who joined him on his journey. During the October 24th episode on the Great Cycle Challenge, charlie Manzoni shared that he was going to be doing a ride in Korea. We are fortunate that he has come back to share about the trip with us. Thanks, charlie, for coming back.

Charlie Manzoni: 3:38

Oh, great to be here, Tom. Thanks for having me.

Tom Butler: 3:41

Yeah, charlie is joined by someone who did the ride with him, steve Looney. Thank you for coming on as well, steve.

Steve Looney: 3:47

Oh, it's my pleasure. I had to come on because of the photos that Charlie took on the ride, but it's nice to be here any event.

Tom Butler: 3:55

All right, good. Before we talk about the trip, I'm wondering, charlie, if you have any information you can share about how this year's Great Cycle Challenge ended up, sure, I mean.

Charlie Manzoni: 4:06

We raised a total of a little over $9 million. This was the ninth year of the Great Cycle Challenge. During that nine years, we've raised over $72 million.

Tom Butler: 4:20

Wow.

Charlie Manzoni: 4:21

Next year being the 10th anniversary, we're looking to make it even more of a significant event. I'm not quite sure what that means, but there'll be extra effort put into it. So anyway, overall it was good. We're very happy with the results.

Tom Butler: 4:40

Well, I feel like I'm going to have to think about something special today, since it's the 10th anniversary. I wasn't thinking about that, so, yeah, that's a good thing to be thinking about for next year.

Charlie Manzoni: 4:51

Maybe you can talk Steve into participating.

Tom Butler: 4:55

I think he has somebody.

Steve Looney: 4:57

Extra benefit by mile.

Tom Butler: 4:59

Okay, well, I think he has somebody pretty close to him that can probably talk him into that. Just a reminder, people, you can go to the August 24th episode and learn a lot about the Great Cycling Challenge. You guys did such a great job of breaking it down. But just a reminder about where that money goes, the organization and the focus of the organization.

Charlie Manzoni: 5:21

Sure. The RIDE is sponsored by the Children's Cancer Research Fund. That fund has been around for many years. Its focus is raising money to invest with or to grant mainly to, up-and-coming scientists that are looking for cures for childhood cancer. The organization also provides social support to families whose children are suffering from cancer.

Tom Butler: 5:50

Awesome work. It's just so good to hear those numbers and know that there's going to fund some work that wouldn't otherwise get funded. That's fantastic. You guys did this what I think is an epic trip. The thing that I'm first curious about is how did the idea of cycling in Korea come about and what motivated you to take on this adventure?

Charlie Manzoni: 6:15

I'm going to turn that one over to Steve, because the origins of the trip came from him.

Steve Looney: 6:21

Yeah, I'm involved with a group of guys a lot of ill-repeat, including my brother. We have cycled around various places in the US all credit card cycling, with sag wagons and nought. We put together a trip to Taiwan several years ago the six guys in McCulloch, the Taiwan Six. We had a wonderful time there. The origins of that are back in the alleged mind of one of the guys there named Peter Jones. I picked up on this through some friends that have been to Korea and thought this would be interesting and pitched it to that group. They shot me down for the fall. The timing was just right for me. Charlie was able to do it as well. It came from them. Then, as we were getting ready to launch it, Charlie did the lion's share of the background work and how to do it and how to organize it and all of that.

Tom Butler: 7:26

Had you been familiar very much with Korea or with cycling in Korea, or was it pretty open?

Steve Looney: 7:34

No, not at all. One friend, particularly here in New York, is involved in foreign affairs and so on. It goes there a lot. She's Korean descent. She had mentioned to me that there was a lot of cycling over there. I sort of scratched my head and said, if you had too much soju or something, charlie got into it instead of realizing that it's really developed. It's amazing he got on it and it came through. But I'll pass to Charlie.

Charlie Manzoni: 8:05

Tom, I think when Steve first suggested it, I thought I don't Korea, it's crowded. I can't imagine trying to navigate my way through a country where we don't speak the language. Then I found this website I think I sent it to you. It's Koreabybikecom. I was blown away. I mean it was just. There's so much information on there, these curated routes that are in various parts of the country, all sorts of information about how to rent bikes, how to get around public transportation with bikes. Once I saw that, I was convinced that this would really be a cool trip to do and it wouldn't be all that difficult to plan it because it was already planned on this website. You just you had different places to call to check out what you could do in the way of renting bikes and the like it was, so it made it easy.

Charlie Manzoni: 9:07

The routes I didn't know what to expect because there's a bunch of different routes. The one we did was the called the cross country route. We talked about trails. I mean, I thought before going over there yeah, there'll be a trail here and a trail there, but it's going to be connecting you to roads and I don't know. See, I think 80% of the trip was on trails, if not more. It was unbelievable. Nice trails, nice trails, yeah very well maintained yeah.

Tom Butler: 9:39

Now, when you talk about nice trails like the pavement, integrity and stuff is part of that. There's a lot of facilities along the trail, that they have restrooms and things like that.

Steve Looney: 9:50

Yeah, except for when you're really around in the country. But, yeah, plenty of places to stop, and beyond that there were these different areas. There were trees and bushes planted to make it a pleasant place to ride.

Tom Butler: 10:04

Gotcha.

Steve Looney: 10:05

Yeah, it was just like way, way over the top.

Tom Butler: 10:08

The route that you did. I think I pulled up the website and I can imagine as you started thinking about how do I plan this out, and then you saw that how in depth that information was. I can imagine that making a big difference as far as you have to do a lot of work. I think the route that you did covered pretty much all of Korea, north to south. Is that right?

Steve Looney: 10:32

Well, all of South Korea, we did not go north.

Charlie Manzoni: 10:36

That's right.

Steve Looney: 10:37

Yeah, but it sort of went to the center of the country and it went along the Han River and the I can never say it neck two major rivers with mountains in between. So it was pretty obvious as to where you were going.

Charlie Manzoni: 10:51

The route is made up of four different paths that connect with each other. And the other thing we ought to mention Steve and I didn't do this, but there's a whole concept there of going to these certification booths and having a biking passport and getting your passport stamped, and then if you've done all of the route, you get some recognition, and if you do all of the routes and you get super recognition. We did not do the certification, so the cross country route was made up of these four different paths. The first one was from Ishaan to Seoul. We did not do that because the Seoul International Airport is actually in Ishaan, if I'm pronouncing that right, and we were renting our bikes in Seoul and we just didn't want to bother to go back just to do that. I think it's probably about 30 miles. And then the second leg of the trip, as Steve was mentioning, is all along the Han River, starting in Seoul and ending in a place called Cheongju City, and then the next leg is the mountain passes.

Charlie Manzoni: 12:07

There's two mountain passes that you go over, and that's called the Sajeh path. Again, I'm probably butchering the pronunciation. When you get done with that segment, you actually end up at the Nakdong River. There's the Nakdong Gang Path, which takes you all the way into Busan from there, so much of the route is along the river.

Tom Butler: 12:35

And it was just the two of you, or did you have people join you for part of it, or how did that go?

Charlie Manzoni: 12:42

Well, it was just the two of us riding together. We did have some opportunity to meet people, and one particular couple we rode with pretty much a whole day and then met up with them in Busan. We can elaborate a little bit on them because they were pretty fascinating. They were from Australia and England. They were on a ride around the world. They'd already done Eastern Europe, western Europe, india, thailand, mongolia.

Steve Looney: 13:16

Together they were over. If you added together they were over 60 too, so they sort of relate to the Gotcha. They have a site called. It's got a lot of followers. It's YouTube called we Ride Bikes. The pictures in Mongolia were amazing and maybe for some of your viewers they might want to look at that as well. They were riding a little fatter tire sort of stuff, but they were very geared up to do it and had not done any biking three years ago. They planned this and saved up, quit their jobs. They were. We met a Chinese. That Japanese guy was pretty amazing up on the past.

Charlie Manzoni: 14:03

We didn't get to know him, but I thought this was fascinating. Going into Busan I saw a bike with a little child seat in front and it had its own pedals and it was fully loaded with a camping gear and everything. So I'm riding along the path. I saw it on the side. But then along the path a woman passes me on that bike with a little kid in front and I wanted to talk to her but she was up ahead and I couldn't. But then I noticed maybe 10, 15 minutes later there was the identical setup behind me with a man and a kid on it. They were from, he said. I was able to talk with him, but they were from Switzerland and France. I think they'd been the kids look like they, I don't know nine, 10 years old. They'd been on the road for over a year.

Tom Butler: 15:04

Wow, that's quite in a family adventure, for sure. That sounds awesome. Now, did you fly your bikes over, or did you? You talked about rental. Is that the way that you rent?

Charlie Manzoni: 15:17

Yeah, Steve. Steve did most of the work on that. I'll let him talk about that. Yeah.

Steve Looney: 15:23

I think they were. They were touted through the connection and then I picked up on it because I had a very interesting experience getting. But flying the bikes to Asia is I don't, you know, I wouldn't do it, you know, I just think it gets a little too complicated. But if you had a good bike shop, you know, you land them in there and maybe, maybe also rape buys. But in Taiwan it was run by giant bicycles and very well run, but the communications was very difficult. This one, the communication for very difficult. There were some language issues but this bike rental shop in Seoul was very well organized but the cultural differences were something to you know to to get through things like we wanted to bring our own pedals and for some reason there there was an insurance charge to put the pedals on the take the pedals off and put the pedals on, yeah, and there were some things like that. You know it was sort of getting it lined up.

Steve Looney: 16:26

Was was sketchy and then how the money flowed was a little bit sketchy but it was. It ended up being all quite ordinary in a Korean sense. But you know being both of us have been accused of being lawyers in prior lives and you know we're kind of trying to nail things down. But the top of the top was when you get to the guy and you say you know, we're coming to Seoul, this is a decent trip, coming out. He must have been laying over there and getting in and so on, and we'll be in and we find out he's not going to be at the bike shop. In fact he's hardly ever at the bike shop.

Tom Butler: 17:10

Interesting.

Charlie Manzoni: 17:13

And we had to pay the full price before we left, before we left.

Tom Butler: 17:17

Wow, okay.

Steve Looney: 17:19

But he's got good reviews and so, in any event, what he was doing, tom, was he was handling the bike shop remotely, probably had another job, and it was a nice bike shop, and so you come to the door and you wave, and the door opened and there were our bikes.

Tom Butler: 17:39

That is interesting. So the door just unlocks.

Steve Looney: 17:42

Yeah, remotely, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tom Butler: 17:45

Well, there you go. Anybody can do that. I would imagine that there's. You know, there must be a bit of a volume. You know, you think about Seoul being a pretty good sized place. It seems like there'd be a bit of a volume, of a need for rental bikes there.

Steve Looney: 18:03

Yeah, they had their bike service like City Bike for getting around. You know they had the similar thing. It was hard to tell I think he was specializing in people who toured.

Tom Butler: 18:13

Right, okay.

Steve Looney: 18:14

Our bicycles were brand new.

Tom Butler: 18:17

Oh, okay.

Steve Looney: 18:18

Outfitted very nicely. You know, we didn't see any people there. I think he was mostly the foreigners. What do you think, John?

Charlie Manzoni: 18:26

Yeah, because the other thing when you get to the shop because one of the questions that you have is we've got our luggage right, but we aren't bringing our own panniers, we're renting those from him so we're going to wonder what do we do with our luggage, and he says, oh, you just leave it in the back room. So when we got to the shop we loaded our panniers, had our whatever we left in the bag and go to the back room, and in the back room there's a whole bunch of other bags. So it's a pretty common process. I know, steve, you must have been a little concerned because you left a computer in your bag, right? Yeah, computer, yeah.

Steve Looney: 19:07

But what we learned and we didn't have it as nearly as good a feel that was day two or three, but Korea is extremely safe.

Tom Butler: 19:17

Gotcha.

Steve Looney: 19:18

And the incidence of crime is very low. You could leave. I wouldn't recommend it, but you could leave a cell phone on a table at a restaurant and not even call them and come back three weeks later and be 90% sure that they had it Just very reliable and really wonderful people to interact with top to bottom, but very safe, and so for us leaving our stuff there was kind of like there's somebody from Sweden and that looks like a nice. Yeah, it was not.

Tom Butler: 19:57

So you get to Busan and then you need to get back to Seoul and get the bikes, but did you leave the bikes there in Busan? Was there a way to do that, or how did that work out?

Steve Looney: 20:09

That was a. We arranged a pickup, so we had a kind of the whole package. The package evolved over a while.

Steve Looney: 20:16

The communications weren't so well, but they had a pickup there. They started off having us pick up at some inn or restaurant drop off I'm sorry, drop off there and be having a pickup and then that moved and it turned out he had some service or knew someone that could go back basically any place to pick your bike up. We were pretty careful about that, but they picked it up very right on time. All of that worked great and then we got on the train, which was there was sort of a movie implication of this. We recommend the last train to Busan for those of you who like zombies. Okay, and this was, this is the reverse trip. That's kind of. It's kind of brings you down, tom, because you know you you and you will try to get into this.

Steve Looney: 21:08

You sweat, you toil, you know, for all these days and then you go back and about. It seemed like an hour. That's awesome.

Tom Butler: 21:15

And a luxurious ride. I mean, it was unbelievable.

Charlie Manzoni: 21:20

I don't. Well, it was a nonstop from Busan to Seoul. I think we were going 150 miles an hour or more. Wow. And it was. You felt like you were on an airplane. So high speed rail, obviously, but on these pickups it's you know, you could, you can do that you can rent it.

Steve Looney: 21:40

We recommend it and then land and drop it off and just arrange with that rental agency. It was good the whole thing and then they arranged. It made it all that I think there might be a couple of others.

Charlie Manzoni: 21:56

Yeah, there were two or three of them mentioned in that Korea by bikes website. Yeah, the other thing Steve was talking about the pedals. I mean, the charge that we had for using our pedals was not for them to put them on and take them off because we were going to have to do it. We had to put them on and take them off because we had to put them on since there's no one at the shop and we had to take them off because we wanted them. We needed them to go home with, since they were picking up the bike. So the charge, he told us eventually the charge was in his experience. He had worked in other bike shops and he just actually just opened this this year and his experience with the other bike shops in Korea is that the people who chose to use clip-on pedals brought the bikes back with more damage on the bikes than people with flat pedals. That was the reason for the charge.

Tom Butler: 22:47

That's interesting. I have a lot of questions about that. What's going on there? Or is that just an explanation for an insurance charge?

Charlie Manzoni: 22:57

I would say on the trails. Just making an observation of other riders, I'd say most riders were on flat pedals.

Tom Butler: 23:05

Okay, did you know what to carry with you just from previous experience? Or had you had talked to somebody who had done this trip, or how did you figure that out?

Charlie Manzoni: 23:15

I'll tell you what I did. We didn't coordinate. I mean, I looked at the weather and going out those days and made sure I brought at least one thing that was warm, in case the predictions were wrong, and brought a rain jacket, which I didn't need, and other than that, I mean it's just, you know, cycling shorts and a shirt and something to wear around town at night. It's pretty easy. I mean, the panniers that we rented at the shop probably, at least in my case, would have held another 50% of clothing that I brought.

Steve Looney: 23:44

Yeah, I've done it a few times and exactly it. I didn't think as carefully as Charlie did on this and a lot of things. So I went. I had a little bit more on the warm side, thinking it's cold in Korea. Well, it was, you know, 100 degrees. You get that, just the layers, and I'm sure a lot of your listeners know this. But yeah, you had to carry things that you can rinse out of it when you get it in the afternoon and they'll dry out, so that quick dry stuff is helpful.

Charlie Manzoni: 24:16

Steve is also operating on the principle that if it's really hot and sunny, the best color to wear is black.

Steve Looney: 24:24

Okay, I don't want to get into the whole fashion argument, Charlie. He wears all this mic stuff and so on. Look at Tom.

Charlie Manzoni: 24:37

He's all black, he's a fashion.

Steve Looney: 24:38

He knows what he's doing.

Tom Butler: 24:40

Well, it's not quite 100 degrees and sunny here, though, so lodging was it easy? Was that something that you had lined up in head of time, or were you kind of, as the miles went, you were thinking, here's where we're going to be, you know, and set it up on the road. How did that work?

Steve Looney: 25:00

That was quite interesting. We had a bracket at either end.

Tom Butler: 25:03

Okay.

Charlie Manzoni: 25:04

So we had arranged Airbnb stay in Seoul and an Airbnb stay in Busan and, in addition to that, korea by bike website the other very helpful piece of information there's a Facebook Group called I think it's called sold the Busan that I joined. Steve, I think you might have to at some point. Yeah, people would be talking about their trip and how it went and and they'd ask questions about having you. I need to book a hotel ahead of time and it was pretty universally Reported that there's no problem in finding a place to stay.

Charlie Manzoni: 25:41

Well there's an issue about the quality of some of these places, but we had a wide range of. We range from these things called love motels, which are designed for Men that are cheating on their wives and girlfriends, and there's no credit cards, there's no check-in, you just pay cash and get a key and gone in the morning.

Steve Looney: 26:06

I would say there, and it's more like pursuing multiple relationships. Charlie, do you have to have such a charge?

Charlie Manzoni: 26:16

So there there are a couple of those. Well, the first one we stayed in was Motel 7, and that was, that was right off the trail that.

Charlie Manzoni: 26:24

I'd say the heart. The hardest thing I think we experienced at least, I feel I don't. We haven't talked about this was that there are a couple of times when we were looking to get to a particular part of a town and stay in an area that had some culture or something in it, and when we did that and got off the trail, that was the hardest part of the day. I mean, we might, we might, have ridden 50 miles, but the last two were the hardest.

Steve Looney: 26:50

Yeah, I think that at Tana Gumi it was. It was a quite a ride and I would say in my defense as big navigation officer that it's interesting that Google Maps is pretty reliable in Europe and around in Korea and some of the listeners may you know more about this. Somehow they've shut down some of the features of Google Maps and so you can kind of know where you are in the town or in an area, but things, certain things aren't on there, that certain things are blocked and they're trying to drive you, I think, to a, a Korean owned Map, which is it was surprised me for Korea, which had a lot of their characters on it and you. It was hard to translate, so I was operating with two maps you know to work with In, particularly the cities. That was ended up being a little bit difficult. And then you kind of know that it's a hotel on the Korean version, but you don't, you know, finding exactly how to know is something available.

Steve Looney: 27:55

There were lots of. There's an interaction of that which also affected us a bit on the roads. You know I'm a type of a road of less and so on. So for for listeners are going over there, I would not rely on just Google Maps. The overall work fine, but to make a decision, you might spend, you know, ten minutes at it on the fly and then make the wrong decision. We have a little bit of that, and but that was all that off the trip, yeah the app that we relied on most was called never.

Charlie Manzoni: 28:24

There's a couple of Korean map apps they talk about in these on these websites, but never seems to be one of the most most used, and they have an English version but for some reason the Steve was saying some of it's in English but but a lot of it isn't, so it makes it very difficult.

Tom Butler: 28:42

Now, you had mentioned that the trails were in nice shape. It seems like I saw a picture of a lot of debris at some place. What was the story there?

Charlie Manzoni: 28:53

Earlier in the summer there was a major typhoon that hit South Korea, and we saw along the route.

Steve Looney: 28:59

I mean there were.

Charlie Manzoni: 29:00

There was one area where Bridges must have been, I don't know 30, 40 feet above the river, but there was debris that was stuck in the bridge that had had been the force through because of the water levels went up. So why and At this one part of the trail, I can't remember what part that was was that? That was on name, that was on neck.

Steve Looney: 29:24

Yeah, so we gone over the that it was it was on higher in the neckton river. Yeah, it was. It was wiped out and so we, we were routed. Weirdly, it kind of the trail kind of ended and we don't quite know what happened, but it happened to the people behind us, the couple that we ride bikes couple, and so we got off on the side for a day, but that that area it was a little further south, maybe half of the way down to Busan.

Steve Looney: 29:52

Yeah, something like that it was probably it must have been wiped out for 20, 30 miles in both Soul and it was on.

Tom Butler: 30:00

Did you get a feeling like they're very bikeable cities? Do you think there's there's a focus on that?

Steve Looney: 30:06

No, no, not really not by along the river. There are a lot of cycle, but not within the city. As opposed to a lot of us cities, we didn't see much of the way by place. We may have missed some areas.

Charlie Manzoni: 30:18

I don't think I saw any bike lanes. I mean, we were on sidewalks a lot of the time because there wasn't even a lot of room between the the curb lane and and in the sidewalk.

Steve Looney: 30:30

Busan being the second largest city, had, you know, some bike lanes running, all you know, running along Rivers and so on. That went and then out by the beach, but nothing, you know, not it. You wouldn't see someone riding around in most of the most of the cities there. They would all be at the park if they weren't biking. They'd be playing something like golf. What is that game? Truck gate golf interesting.

Charlie Manzoni: 30:55

We saw these all along the way along the river Flat areas. There'd be like an 18 hole golf course, but pretty short holes, and there'd be people walking out there, each of them holding a single club and a bigger ball than a golf Ball more like a wiffle ball and you tee it off and then you hit the next shot onto the green. There's a flag and you put it, but you did this whole thing with one club.

Steve Looney: 31:21

Interesting. Okay, you can take any little park and turn it into a golf course and then and then the cyclists would be going by and Charlie stopped for about 40 pictures of that sport.

Tom Butler: 31:36

Well, maybe need to import that to Minnesota, huh.

Charlie Manzoni: 31:39

Well, I think we have a short golf season. What?

Tom Butler: 31:44

do you get you like three weeks a year. So then the terrain. You talked about riding across the river or along the rivers. It sounds like, from what I read, that there's a pretty significant hill about halfway, and online someone described it as atrocious. So do you know what they're talking about when they're talking about the atrocious ill? Well, it's the.

Charlie Manzoni: 32:07

it's that the one pay. I mentioned that, say, she path which crosses two mountain passes. When you look at the graphic, when you look at the graphic, when they show the vertical and it looks horrible, I don't know, it's just a long, I don't know what degree it was. It wasn't horrible, he's just, it was just a grind.

Tom Butler: 32:26

Gotcha.

Charlie Manzoni: 32:28

You know, I don't know. See, what do you think it's?

Steve Looney: 32:30

Well it's, I found it very walkable. No, I agree, had I been biking for I hadn't been biking for months before we did it. Oh, no, that's right, I was up in Up in Canada, in BC, but early in the summer, but it really was not in shape. But but overall, you know, when they were, they were not tough, they were two, two in the same day, but you know, if you yeah, I've done a little bit over in In Central Washington, washington state, you know some of those. And then we didn't get the same grade, but it was. You know it was up, you know, a hot day as it was, it it's good enough, yeah, of course. Then we. Then we saw the couple that went up up the thing we did down the other side and we're coming back up. I.

Tom Butler: 33:20

Hate that. So maybe not atrocious but but challenging, especially if you're not used to doing a lot of times.

Charlie Manzoni: 33:28

Maybe the rest of the route which is along the river, I mean, that's the only. The only elevation Was was crossing bridges and in wears and I mean. But you know, those are just short little.

Steve Looney: 33:43

You know they were a couple climbs over over the mountains at the river, but not not the bed, and we missed whether at the washout we missed the other, the other little client.

Charlie Manzoni: 33:53

Yeah. I thought one of the most enjoyable parts of the trip was the tunnels. You know it's on a repurposed railroad track and you just go through. I make eight tunnels in one day and it's spectacular, well lit. Some of them have artwork in them.

Tom Butler: 34:13

That's fun. Yeah, and you're not sharing with cars, so that's awesome.

Steve Looney: 34:17

Right, yeah, they spent a lot of time and effort and made the tunnels very pleasant.

Tom Butler: 34:24

You talked about the cultural or language barriers. Looking back at it, was it actually pretty easy to navigate. Is there anything you would do differently about that?

Charlie Manzoni: 34:34

I don't think I'd do anything differently. I sort of got what I expected. Outside of Seoul and Busan, there's very little English spoken. We were lucky. We were talking about the kinds of places we stayed in. One of the places we stayed in was a Korean guest house. This was basically a man and a wife who ran this mainly for cyclists. They don't speak any English at all. We were looking for a place to stay. It came across.

Charlie Manzoni: 35:06

Stephen, using his navigation, got us to this guest house. We weren't even sure it was a guest house because there was just a bunch of Korean characters, but a bunch of people were hanging outside. It turned out that among those bunch of people were some cyclists that we had seen earlier in the day. Steve, you must have engaged with them. I didn't. One of them was born and raised in Skokie, Illinois, but she's Korean and lives in Seoul. The others were from places like Malaysia, Singapore, Canada. A few of them spoke English. The woman from Skokie saw us and knew we were helpless. She negotiated with us on getting us a room. It wasn't helpless.

Steve Looney: 35:53

It was hopeless. She said Hopeless right.

Charlie Manzoni: 35:57

We started out by saying we need two rooms. Then you go what? No, this is not that kind of place. We'll give you one room. It's got a mat on it. You get the room and it comes with the room dinner, breakfast and the hostess washes your bike clothes. That came to a total of $45 each. They only took cash. The only cash we had were dollars. All I had was a hundred. I gave them a hundred for $90 cost, but then they threw in as much beer as we wanted.

Steve Looney: 36:36

They were actually a delightful couple. The couple was delightful but you couldn't see no communication. I would say that in the cities it's very English friendly. It's what you use in a lot of places I've been out for the Balkans and so on. Very good, as opposed to Japan which I have never found quite as English friendly. Signs and all kinds of things in English and announcements and that sort of thing. More out in the country, almost no English that we ran into.

Charlie Manzoni: 37:12

Steve stayed in Seoul a few more days than I did. I had very limited experience in Seoul. I had more time in Busan. Did you think the two were comparable in terms of their English?

Steve Looney: 37:26

speaking abilities or not. Yeah, I think so. I think probably. I'm just thinking of the public, more of the public transportation.

Charlie Manzoni: 37:34

Signage and so on.

Steve Looney: 37:37

You don't have to get just the congy characters. You get an English thing as well and announcements in English catering to Europeans and to the US that are all able to handle that language.

Charlie Manzoni: 37:48

Yeah, tom, the other thing, anyone that's thinking about doing this trip. In addition to those Korean navigation apps, there's an app called Google Translate, which I had never used before but was phenomenal. You could hold it up to a sign and it would tell you what the sign said in English. You could set it up for speaking, like I could be in a restaurant and ask the waitress what something was and it would print out in Korean, and then she would reply in Korean and it would print out back to me in English. It was pretty amazing.

Tom Butler: 38:27

That's an awesome tool, and did they seem pretty familiar with that tool, or was that something that you were introducing to them?

Charlie Manzoni: 38:34

I don't know, did you get the sense that they were familiar with it, steve?

Steve Looney: 38:38

In general, they're more advanced on internet all across the country, but they're using their own apps than we are in the most US. I don't want to speak for Seattle because they know that Microsoft, all this stuff, but people are pretty young world but they were pretty. That was pretty well-govered. The fact we use Google Translate didn't mean much to them, but most people were used to it.

Charlie Manzoni: 39:09

I will say that Android phones are much more popular there than iPhones.

Steve Looney: 39:16

It's the Samsung. It's the Samsung.

Tom Butler: 39:22

So you both have spent a lot of time on bikes, but I'm wondering if, on this trip, did you learn anything about, or change your perspective or get some perspective on aging and biking?

Charlie Manzoni: 39:36

I hadn't done a trip for years where I wasn't being supported by having people carry your stuff and having prearranged hotels and motels. So this was the first time in probably 40 or 50 years I rode a bike with my gear on it and that took a little getting used to. You're just not as mobile. If you want to go down a hill or something, you have to carry your bike. You can't carry your bike with that weight on the back. You've got to plan a little different way.

Steve Looney: 40:11

Yeah, I would say for me I had a physical challenge the first day. I hadn't worked out much of anything. I'm very dedicated to eating and dining and going out in New York, live in Brooklyn, so I got a little bit behind on things. My usual experience has been wherever I done anything, the first day is you don't want to have to be too hard, but you get through it. Then it builds during the trip. Well, the first day was a little bit of a challenge for me. I cramped up very seriously after maybe I don't know it was a pretty long trip. Maybe we did 80 miles something, 70, 80 miles something, but it was hot. It was hot from about 10 in the morning and I had never had that happen.

Steve Looney: 40:59

It wasn't just being out of shape. I didn't react. Yeah, I didn't react the next day. Fine, that cramping and having to paddle with one leg and all that kind of stuff was a little bit of experience, but it kept going John.

Tom Butler: 41:13

Well, yeah, fantastic. I think, that, yeah, to have that experience and get up the next day and go, okay, let's do this again, that's fantastic. What about the cuisine? Did you enjoy that? Was it experiencing new things? How did you find it?

Steve Looney: 41:27

Well, it's the first time I've eaten something that was moving in my mouth and may have moved down the intestinal tract. You get, they serve you, a live octopus that sort of been cut up and the octopus doesn't know it's whatever. That was the first Excellent fresh fish. We knew it was fresh, but I think excellent food Generally the spicier side, great fresh fish, particularly Busan, but all over, I'd say Charlie, we sort of gravitated towards barbecue places.

Charlie Manzoni: 42:05

We did a lot of Korean barbecues. That was safe. Every meal comes with kimchi and different types of kimchi, all in a bunch of other pickled vegetables and the like. But it was very, it was fun. It was probably the most traditional Korean meal we had was at the guesthouse. The morning breakfast started out with fish soup.

Steve Looney: 42:28

I think that we did learn sort of a local custom. We were pretty hungry Actually I'm usually pretty hungry but we're sitting down at dinner and we're at a barbecue place and we did somehow get beers and then we're waiting for the waitresses we're not that many people in there to come over and serve us and I'm kind of I'm used to being trained and not put your hand up, and that's starting to put my hand up and I know they're looking at me but they do nothing. So we go about 10 minutes and nobody comes by. And then Charlie says he's always ahead of things, says well, maybe what's this button for? And he pushes the button and in two seconds the same people I've been waving at are right there.

Tom Butler: 43:07

Okay, that's good to know that they have been trained to respond to the button.

Steve Looney: 43:12

If you don't know the button, you may starve, okay.

Tom Butler: 43:16

Do you have any moments a doubt during the journey, when you were climbing, or the heat or anything?

Steve Looney: 43:22

Charlie did the first day.

Charlie Manzoni: 43:26

But my doubts were are we going to have a day too?

Tom Butler: 43:33

Now, in that kind of heat, it seems like electrolytes and everything are pretty important. Did you feel like you planned well for that?

Steve Looney: 43:40

The answer would be no. I usually pioneered the Quad espresso, and I had two Quad espressos at six in the morning.

Charlie Manzoni: 43:51

I had some nuns Tablets and you know, the other thing that I thought was was a eye-opener for me was how Accessible water was. I mean, wherever you stayed, every hotel, even these these cheap love motels there's a refrigerator with free bottled water. You go to a restaurant. We stopped in one restaurant along the bike trail and the bottled water was just. The woman was so nice, she actually gave us frozen bottled water so that we could put them in the bike and and they Stayed cold nice, that was.

Charlie Manzoni: 44:25

that was a treasure, that spot yeah there were water places along these trails where you could fill up water jugs if you wanted to. I mean it was. They were very, just very bike friendly. Yeah, one time we came into town. You get across the river and Entire bridge is an order, order ordained with these bike sculptures, and you get to the end of the bridge and you're at the bike museum.

Tom Butler: 44:51

Oh wow, that's interesting. Do they have a big Manufacturer there? I'm not sure about Korean bikes.

Steve Looney: 45:00

I don't think so. I'm not like Taiwan, or or Jeff, we didn't stop reading about it. It's quite a museum. I think it's antique, you know as well as modern. But why it was there? It may be that there is a you know bicycle manufacturer. It's there.

Tom Butler: 45:16

Do you have other big rides planned or what? Where you out with that now?

Charlie Manzoni: 45:21

I've got nothing planned.

Steve Looney: 45:22

Yeah, the loosely Seattle based group has been discussing Arkansas. Yeah, and they may do Korea in the spring. Maybe I pioneered it. Yeah, they like it is, but nothing, nothing major on the radar. I thought the look of and of the ride in Mongolia looked like a pretty cool.

Charlie Manzoni: 45:45

You think you're ready to ride across lakes with your bike.

Steve Looney: 45:51

And I'm gonna bring, I'm gonna bring the lab to pull me along.

Tom Butler: 45:56

The environment there being along the river, that sounds really beautiful. Yes, do you see Places that would have that kind of beauty that that you might be interested in going? Do you think there was a particular kind of environment, or do you think you could find that other places?

Steve Looney: 46:12

in Korea. There there are. There's a coastal route that's supposed to be quite interesting. There these trails are. You'll go more east west or they say cross country was really more southeastern. It kind of angled the Busan you can go across. I'm pretty confident that you could have a very nice ride without a trail. Yeah, it's all just after the freeway. It looked to me like the east coast With their islands and so on. It was interesting and there is some trail over there too. So there are. I think there are a lot of opportunities there.

Charlie Manzoni: 46:47

Yeah for good cycling and it's beautiful.

Steve Looney: 46:50

Mountains are beautiful, yeah.

Charlie Manzoni: 46:53

That Facebook group there are a number of people I saw over the last several months have done the soul to Busan and Continue and come, instead of taking the bullet train back right up the east coast trails back into Seoul. So you do a loop that would be, you know, be a lot longer obviously.

Steve Looney: 47:12

Yeah, that one you probably with time off. You probably need two weeks to do. Yeah, yeah, this is probably. We were six nights out, charlie, I think five nights six days.

Steve Looney: 47:23

Yeah, this could be done in four, you know if you were ready to go, but but I would. I probably did it again. I'd probably take a couple more nights and, yeah, it planned a place to spend some time and we we were out in the country. I mean, biking is so wonderful because you're you're there and you can stop and see things. We had we got all that, but there were some country areas you probably could have spent a day or two at and just hung out and looked around right there.

Tom Butler: 47:50

Well, I really appreciate you guys coming on and sharing this experience and it sounds like you would if someone was considering it. You'd encourage them to do it.

Steve Looney: 48:00

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely yeah one of the best, best rides I've ever had nice except for ragdry, but that's another story.

Tom Butler: 48:11

Well again, thanks so much for coming on. Steve, nice to meet you. And Charlie, thanks for coming on again.

Charlie Manzoni: 48:16

Thanks for having us. It's a pleasure.

Tom Butler: 48:18

Take care now. See you later. I have never done a week long bike ride, but I hope to do one this season of the podcast. I certainly don't feel ready to work out the details of running a bike in a country where I don't speak the language. Hopefully, after I get a trip across the state of Washington behind me, I will be more open to that kind of cycling challenge. I think I would probably start with a bicycle tour group. I think I would probably start with a bicycle tour group. I think I would probably start with a bicycle tour group. Actually, the thing that attracts me most about a trip in a different country is the pace at which you move through an area Just seems like the right pace to really absorb the scenery and the culture.

Tom Butler: 48:57

I found an article online that I will link in the show notes. It is from a site called epicroadridescom. The title is best cycling holiday destinations in the world, 2023. The one place that I found most intriguing is Cyprus, but any place I've been to in the past is Cyprus. But any planning for biking abroad will have to wait for now. I still need to figure out a lot of things about how to get from one side of Washington state to the other. Please let me know where you have traveled with your bike. That was really captivating. You can find my email and the link to the show Instagram in the show notes. I would love to hear from you. I hope you are able to keep the pedals turning wherever you are this time of year, and remember age is just a gear change.