Same Road, Twice a Day

Nine in the morning. Seven in the evening. The same stretch of river path, five days a week.

The footage is mixed together. Different mornings, different evenings, all from July, all on the same road at the same two hours. Nothing in it was planned. I wasn't riding out to find anything — I was going to work, and then I was going home.

That turned out to be the point. Same road, same hour, and it kept looking different.

A few things the video can't tell you:

July in Korea is hot. Properly hot, and humid with it. Nine and seven are the two windows that still work — early enough and late enough that the heat lets go a little. Midday is not a choice you make twice.

Even in those windows I didn't ride every day. Two or three times a week, most weeks. In this heat that's a pacing decision.

By nine in the morning it's already 30°C. There isn't much shade on a river path, but there is some — trees along the water on parts of it, enough that about a third of the ride in sits underneath them. After a few weeks you know exactly where they start and where they end.

The evenings are the stranger half. I set off around seven, and by the time I'm nearly home it's close to eight and the sun still hasn't started going anywhere. Summer days here run long. It's an evening ride that doesn't look like evening. Going the other direction those same trees are on the wrong side and give me nothing — but the sun isn't overhead anymore, it's somewhere off my shoulder, and that turns out to be the part that matters.

Being next to the river means there's usually wind. Mostly straight into my face — on the way out and on the way back, somehow.

None of this is a route recommendation. The path runs along the Anseongcheon (안성천), near Paengseong Bridge (팽성대교). Keep heading west and it carries on toward Pyeongtaek Port — the river opens out, and eventually it's the sea. I don't ride that far. My commute turns off well before any of that. But it's there, and it's connected, which is worth knowing.

This isn't what cycling in Korea looks like. It's what one ordinary road looks like, morning and evening, across one July.

Same hour, same road. It never looked the same twice — it just took me a while to start noticing.