A New Ride

It is getting colder, but I still go riding if I can. Last Sunday's(20th) ride was a bit of an adventure. I had really just planned on riding out to Yecheon (예천) and then riding back, mostly along the same route. Turns out I ended up making a rather large loop, about 85 km. or so.

When looking at the map before setting out, I assumed I could probably cut back south after riding northeast for a bit. Unfortunately, on the tourist map that I have, the mountains don't really show up very well. Out on the road there are a lot of hills and canyons and you can't really tell which way all the small little roads would head. In fact, a lot of the little roads end up going into a valley and then dead ending. Then you have to backtrack your way out to main road again. This was my first time in this area so I didn't want to spend too much time backtracking.

After reaching Yecheon I followed the largest road towards the north. I was looking for a good opportunity to turn back south, but I never found one. After a while, I just decided it would be easier to continue on to Yeongju (영주) since I knew the way home from there. But Yeongju was still over 30 km. from home. I had set out early, but it was getting late. It was dark when I rolled into Andong. I almost got smashed onto the pavement twice in the dark, but I made it home OK. I have a light on my bike, but drivers here just don't bother to look unless you are another car.

The colors on the route show the relative elevation. The red is the highest part, as you can see, when I was crossing from one river valley into another.
Here is a part of the elevation profile from the ride. It runs across the highest point. The colors here represent my speed. Obviously blue is the slowest when I was going up hill. The downhill part sure was fun.

I will add this ride and some others to the previous ones and then post a new compilation photo from Google Earth along with a new kmz file.