Rides #6 and #7

Well, six and a half anyway.  Maybe I can round it up to 7.  No choice, as I am NOT going to keep track of fractions on this thing.

We only had school for three days this week:  Monday was a national holiday, and Tuesday was a holiday for our school.  Wednesday was a normal ride (#5).  Thursday I rode to school normally, but rode home via the mountainside road.  It's not any longer, maybe even shorter.  Hard to tell as I need to replace the batteries in my odometer.  But it's a lot hillier, that's for sure.

Friday's are an odd ride day for me: Our work day finishes early, at 3:00 instead of 4:30.  But I have an, um... "standing appointment" from 3:30 until 4:30 every Friday at school, so it's pretty much the same for me.  Then I have another appointment at 5:30 across town in Haeundae.  It's a solid 40 minutes by subway, plus 20 minutes of walking altogether, so my schedule is tight.  Last week I took my bike on the subway, then rode home from the appointment.  This week I had the same intention, but screwed it up rather badly.  As I entered the subway station I remembered that my Hanaro Card (electronic debit card good for all buses and subways in Busan, fantastic invention, they introduced it shortly after I moved here in '97, but I digress) did not have enough money on it to ride.  So I rode through the station (not many people around, I figured why not?), charged my card, and went down to the tracks.

The wrong tracks.  Didn't realize it at the time, because it was crazy getting a bike on the subway car, and holding it still while we were moving, and trying to avoid bumping people with it.  After 20 minutes I looked up to check what station we were at.  I didn't recognize it, so I figured I was getting close to my destination.  I'm not familiar with the stations out past where I live.  I took a look at the map above the car door, and tried to find where I was.  When I finally found it, my mind refused to accept where I was.  There was a nasty little bit of cognitive dissonance followed by a little bit of cursing, and the plan to get off at the next stop and get on the train going the opposite way.  I followed through on the plan, then called my wife and my appointment.  Horyon also had an appointment to teach in the evening, so I could not start mine late.  I had to skip it.  Which means not getting paid for it.  I was not happy with myself, and had a good hour of subway riding during which I could think about exactly how unhappy I was with myself.

So the only afternoon riding I did was from the school to the subway station (downhill), inside the subway station (maybe 200 meters of smooth, level floor) and from my subway station home (all of two minutes).  Not much of a ride.

On the bright side, if I count it as a full ride, I have ridden seven out of eight possible days since starting.  88% is not too bad, and I'm feeling pretty good about it.