Gapcheon 2012!

Thank you for your interest in the
3rd Annual Gapcheon Charity Race!

Over the past two years, this event has raised over 4,000,000Won for KMSS, the Korean Multiple Sclerosis Society. We hope that this year’s race will be our best year yet, and that we will be able to give a wonderful donation to this amazing organization. 

This document serves to give you the information that you need in order to register and participate in the race. Please read this document in its entirety!

Here are the basics:

Date: Saturday, December 15^th

Time: Race starts at 3pm

Dinner from 6-8pm

After-party from 8pm

Distance: 5k and 10k

Race location: Begins and ends in Gung-dong, near the big Yuseong Homeplus (specific directions and maps to follow)

All proceeds from this race will be donated to KMSS, the Korean Multiple Sclerosis Society. Check them out at http://kmss.or.kr/.

How do I register?

We encourage everyone to pre-register for this event (discounted rates!)!

Pre-registration prices:

5k: 20,000Won

10k: 25,000Won

Registration on the day of the race:

5k: 25,000Won

10k: 30,000Won

To pre-register, simply deposit your money into the Daejeon Diablos bank account:

KB (Kookmin) Bank

478102-04-219681 - Petra Glithero

Once you have paid, please EMAIL PETRA at dr_petra@yahoo.com. Tell her what your payment is for (how many people, distance of race, if you are paying for the dinner (see below)).

We will also be accepting registrations on the race day. Please come with the exact change!

Show me the routes!

10K race route (There will be one water station around 6-7km.) 

***CLICK FOR LARGER IMAGE***

5K race route (There will be no drink stations, sorry! Please plan accordingly!)

***CLICK FOR LARGER IMAGE***

Basic snacks will be provided after the race.

How do I get there?

Race Location: Coordinates: 36.363164,  127.360440

Both routes start near the big Homeplus in Yuseong. (Taxi drivers should know this landmark.)

By KTX

Daejeon Station: Follow signs in the KTX station to the subway. Take a Banseok-bound train to Gapcheon Station. Follow the directions from Gapcheon Station.

Seodaejeon Station: Exit Seodaejeon station. Walk 10-15 minutes to the subway. Take a Banseok-bound train to Gapcheon Station. Follow the directions from Gapcheon Station.

By Bus

Most intercity bus terminals are not conveniently located near the subway or the race site. (The Yuseong bus terminal is about a 20 minute walk from the race.) If you arrive by bus, please consider taking a taxi to the race start. (Ask to go to Yuseong Homeplus)

From Gapcheon Station

Use Exit 3. You will see the river on your left. Walk down to the river and take the stone footbridge across. Once you cross the river, turn right and follow the river path (Homeplus will be on your left). Follow the river around the bend, and soon you will see the race site. It will take you 15-20 minutes to walk from Gapcheon Station.

Local Buses

Local buses that serve the race location are:

104, 121, 5: Yuseong-gu District Office 유성구청

102, 106, 108, 113, 706: Yurim Park / Homeplus (Yuseong Branch) 유림공원

Red dot: Race start/finish. ; Blue circle: Love motels ; Orange circle: Dinner and after-party

What will happen on December 15^th?

2pm-2:45pm: Check In and Registration

3pm: 5k and 10k races begin

3pm-4:30pm: Races (1:30 time cap)

6pm: Dinner at Ali Baba’s Treasure in Gung-dong. Presentation of awards and prizes.

8pm: Relocation to Santa Clause for the after-party. Party will include foosball, darts, and poker tournaments.

Tell me about this dinner…

We have arranged to have our post-race feast at Ali Baba’s Treasure in Gung-dong. Expect delicious Middle Eastern, North African, and European food.

Dinner will be served buffet style. (Drinks cost extra)

Cost for runners is 12,000Won

Cost for non-runners is 15,000Won

PLEASE NOTE: There is limited seating at Ali Baba’s! Please reserve and pay for your dinner in advance. Pre-pay when you pay for your race registration (same payment details, just let Petra know that you are also paying for the dinner!).

Remember, space is limited!

Check out Ali Baba’s on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/alibabastreasure?fref=ts

Any other questions?

Do you have any questions that were not answered in this document? If so, sorry! Please contact the race organizers on the Facebook event page. Alternately, you can email the race director, Robin, at rwillis2@gmail.com.

We look forward to running with you!

Real World

Wowzers, the real world is crazy. Cars, television, air-conditioning, beds with cushions on them, cabinets and refridgerators filled with delicasies (as compared to what you can carry in a sack) - it's all almost too much to handle.

Our hike ended a couple weeks ago, but our work has not. We have nine days left before the donation box disappears, so hopefully, we'll see a few more dollars dropping in for the Myelin Repair Foundation, who've just recently announced Phase 1 clinical trials, enrolling 24 people and counting.

These are the first steps towards a cure, so thank you for supporting their goal and ours - to end, once and for all, MS!

In other news, we recently sent out emails to all of our $25+ donors to collect addresses. We don't use the addresses for any purpose other than sending out one, solitary thing - a gift! We appreciate all sized donations, but especially nowadays, it was the larger amounts that really surprised us. Thank you.

Sigh, well, that's all from us for a bit. We're currently applying to various outdoor jobs and planning our next move. When we find a new homebase, though, we'll most certainly continue the drive to raise funds for an incredibly worthwhile cause.

Bye bye!
Maury and Shawn 

Trail Separation

Twinkletoes and I are finished with the trail ... for this year.  

The desicion is 85% financial, 15% exhaustion-based. We managed to eek out 1,500 miles (I still need to do the math), raised over $2,000, and collectively, we lost about 40 lbs on this fantastic voyage. I don't consider it a failure in all regards, but I do in some, and I'll get to that in a second. Still ...

We climbed the lower 48's tallest mountain, trudged through burning hot sands in the Mojave, lit part of our tent on fire, and encountered a whole slew of awesome wildlife (big, monstrous things like bears and mountain lions excluded), and saw things in America that not many people get to see outside of their television. The thousands of fish feeding on mosquito larvae - a veritable frenzy - in the Sierra lakes while the Sun peaked over the hillsides and a waterfall gushed just meters away - that was our life for three months, more or less.

It was a beautiful trip, one that I'll try to remember as long as I can.

The failure, however, of Making Miles' quest to finish the PCT in one season was this ... we wanted our cake and to eat it, too. In order to thru-hike a long trail, you have to go at it with a marathoner's mentality. You can't take the sidetrip; you can't spend two extra days in town. You have to keep walking.

Since we'd newly returned from South Korea only a week before starting this hike, we just weren't prepared to dedicate our bodies to that sort of masochism. Twinkle and I were hoping to both finish the trail and to enjoy America - the food, people, all of it - along the way. We missed this place. Living abroad for two years really hammered home to us just how beautiful our National Forests and Parks are - and just how lucky we should all consider ourselves to live here.

The only problem with enjoying America to the fullest extent was that we've spent far too much of our savings out here on necessities and libations. We've spent far more money on our hike than what has been donated to the Myelin Repair Foundation on our behalf, even. And that discrepancy became more and more apparent to me as time went on. Lately, I find myself disappointed that we just didn't skip the hike altogether and donate a $5,000 lump sum to the MRF ourselves.

I know ... this isn't the propaganda-ish, everyone wins all the time marketing-speak that you might be accustomed to. We should be touting the successes of the hike, not admitting defeat, pretending to be a politician in other words, but I'm not a fan. As we close this chapter of our fundraising efforts to end MS, I want each and every one of you to know this.

First off, I want to thank all of the people who donated money to the Myelin Repair Foundation on our behalf. You helped move us along, gave us strength and determination, and most importantly, your money is going to an incredible place that's doing the work necessary to end MS. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

If you were waiting for us to finish the trail, get halfway, or reach some particular point in the hike before chipping in, I ask that you make a donation before the October 1st deadline we've set. If we failed some expectation, don't allow that to prevent you from donating. Multiple Sclerosis continues, even if we do not.

And finally, if you followed us on Facebook and have yet to donate to the MRF via our ChipIn widget, what are you waiting for? We have 145 'likes,' but likes don't equate to research dollars. Likes have no meaning. With only 45 contributors, thus far, to our hike and cause - many of them donors who've contributed multiple times - our biggest sadness with this hike has been that. THAT.

Fix that. There's no better time than right now to pull out that credit card or PayPal ID and contribute a small amount to an insanely worthy cause. I'm writing this solely to the folks who haven't donated, yet. Get on it.

Like I said, I'm not a marketer. I'm just a dude who likes the outdoors and sees that as far as MS is concerned, there's still a whole lot more work to do. Expect some more Making Miles' info in the near future, and folks who donated, expect some emails concerning your sweet postcards, calendars, gifts. We'll be sending those out in a month's time.

Adios, muchachos.

On the Oregon Trail

Howdy folks! Just a small update. Twinkletoes and I are in Oregon ... we're beyond the halfway point of that state and resting in Bend. Currently, we're awaiting news of a forest fire that's broken out right north of where we're supposed to get back on.

There have been so many fires this year.

Anyway, we're resting nicely and looking forward to the rest of the state, which promises to be made even more awesome when we finish it up with special guest: Aaron. He was the best man at our wedding and is flying out at the end of August to see what this backpacking thing is all about. We'll take him through a 50 mile stretch that includes seven waterfalls and the infamous hotel from "The Shining." If you haven't seen that movie, yet, you don't know what you're missing.

To see the new photos from our long, LONG hike, check out our Facebook page, here - https://www.facebook.com/MMonthePCT .   Keep those donations up and let's put a real dent in MS.

- Shawn "Voodoo" Hudson 

By Leaps and Bounds

Hello everyone from Lake Tahoe, CA! When last we met, Maury was as sick as a sickly dog, taking meds the size of horse pills and found herself as my ferry-woman as I continued our hike and she stayed in small, overpriced hotels/campgrounds along Highway 365.

She also managed to meet a few other hikers along the way and helped them get around towns and to/from the trailheads while I walked and walked (one day doing 32 miles, no less), trying to find comfort in the random songs and conversations I had with ... myself.

Sadly, there are only so many hours one can spend talking to yourself before you run out of valuable things to say, and the last part of my solo-hike was spent in zombie mode, hiking well on into the nights and waking up early to leave.

I took no photos, because I'd left my camera with Maury (Twinkletoes), but somewhere before departing from her in Tuolomne - I knew - I simply wouldn't feel up to snapping pictures, because I'd just miss hiking with her ...

GOOD NEWS is that she's coming back! And though as a team we hike slower, we certainly have a lot more fun together than apart. And the second part to this news is that we're jumping ahead - from Tahoe to Ashland, Oregon (the beginning of that state), and from there, we plan on finishing Oregon in 24 days or so, before meeting our friend Aaron for a four-day jaunt through the Woods (probably not on the PCT, as he needs to arrive at some place with living, breathing human beings and road access), before continuing on through Washington and into Canada.

With this new skip-ahead, we'll give ourselves lots of time to finish before the snows hit in the North, and then we'll have one whole section to complete afterward (potentially next year, depending on our funds and weather).

So, there's the news as of now. More updates when we get to Oregon (taking a Greyhound tomorrow). Once we arrive in Medford at 3:45 am, we'll be getting picked up by one of my old high school friends who lives nearby and we'll stay with his family for a night or two before heading north again.

It's been a lot of time off these days (especially for Maury), so it'll be nice to strap full backpacks on again. Hiking is definitely a use-it or lose-it ability.