I recently began participating in a great online group called 30 Days of Biking. The goal, to ride your bike every day during the month of April. So far I’ve only missed one day, and it was because I was at a wedding in Incheon all day and had no time to get out on the bike. Sad, I know. I’ve been doing well so far though, and contacted the folks running the blog to see about being a guest writer and they were thrilled. This morning, Seoul time, my piece was published. I talk about my recurring dream of showing Lance Armstrong around Ilsan, and try to give readers some idea of what it’s like to be on the road out here.
In Korea, especially in the bigger cities, traffic can be a bit intimidating. Drivers on the mean streets of Ilsan are erratic at best and inattentive at their worst. Because biking is so popular here and traffic laws are a bit looser, drivers are used to sharing the road with smaller, slow-moving, non-motorized vehicles, which sometimes makes biking on the streets easy. The problems then, tend to be more with regard to people parking on corners, stopping in the middle of intersections, and being impatient at stoplights. It could be worse, but it’s the best option available.
You can read the whole thing on the 30 Days of Biking website. The group has gotten quite a bit of media attention, and they are welcoming riders from around the world. They are tracking miles on DailyMile, and keeping up a healthy conversation on Twitter. I’ll be writing more about biking in Ilsan for this blog soon.