Mt. Makiling (11-25-12)

I was finally able to climb Mt. Makiling after dreaming about it and pestering my friends to go with me up the mountain. This is my first hike that is higher than 1,000 MASL and I'm so glad I went through with it even if I had to do it alone since my buddies did a climb a week earlier. My brother-in-law lives in Calamba and I was able to commute from his place to UPLB via the jeep terminal in the market near Calamba crossing. What does this have to do with bikes? Well, I also thought about riding my bike from Calamba to the jump off but thought twice since climbing a mountain is strenuous by itself and I would be doing it alone.

I started my hike up the mountain at 7:35 AM and paid 10 pesos at the gate. (Super cheap!) Can you bike up Mt. Makiling? I saw and chatted with mountain bikers up until Agila Base (around midway point of the 1,090 MASL mountain) and the trail going up there would be around 4kms from the jump off point at the UPLB Forestry gate. The trail is a wide dirt road that keeps narrowing down to an almost single track road. There's even a fallen tree trunk just before the Agila Base site. After Agila Base, I don't recommend going up since it's not mountain bike friendly but perfect for hikers.

Hiking up the mountain, there are stores you can get refreshments from like coconut and softdrinks, and you can visit the Flatrocks and the Mudspring but I wasn't able to visit these sites when I went up there. YOU HAVE TO WATCH OUT FOR LEECHES! One bit me and fortunately it wasn't able to get past my socks and I felt it immediately before it got to eat lunch at my expense :P I had a salt shaker in my pocket for exactly this situation and I sprinkled the little guy with salt til it squirmed and i was able to pinch it off with a leaf. This is one of the dangers of the mountain and there's also a plant there that is itchy when you touch it. Like my other hiking trips, I used Pinoymountaineer's entry to guide my trip and you should too :)

I left my brother-in-law's place very early! Makiling was still covered in clouds here.

Coconut! Nature's Gatorade!

The trail's wide enough for cars, this is near the mudspring junction

Sweet, sweet water... These are the things that I absolutely love when hiking!

Yep, still rideable

oh sweet!

The fallen tree just before Agila Base

See? They made it up to this point! :D

After Agila Base, this is what the trail looks like, NOT rideable and please, let's keep it pristine :D

These *might* be leeches

summit! Finally :D

No view at the summit, I had to climb up a tree to see some views :D

More views up a tree

14th Tour of the Fireflies (2012)

The 14th Tour of the Fireflies is coming up! This year's tour has been rescheduled twice already, it was originally scheduled last April 15, 2012 then moved to September 16, 2012 and again to November 18, 2012. According to their FAQs page, you can participate in the tour for free but you can also make a minimum donation of Php 100 (highly recommended) and you can register online. OR you can also do a walk in registration at their headquarters in Cubao Expo.

This year's theme is BEST which stands for Bicycles for Environmentally Sustainable Transportation and the tour will start and end in Tiendesitas, Pasig (like previous tours) and assembly starts at 5:00 AM and the ride off will start at 7:00 AM. Riders of all ages are welcome but the kids should of course be accompanied by their guardians.

They always come up with great looking posters and this year is no exception! The cartoony pic also adorns this year's shirt and jersey which you could get for Php300 and Php450 respectively. Get more info on this tour from their official site and their Facebook page.

Mt. Sembrano Bike & Hike (October 27, 2012)

We just had another long weekend here in the Philippines and I HAD to go somewhere because A: It's a long weekend and B: My birthday is coming up. So a week before I was able to convince my friends to bike and hike to Mt. Sembrano in Malaya, Pililla. The plan was for the three of us to leave from my friend's place in Quezon City and bike to Antipolo, down to Teresa, and left towards Tanay from Morong last Friday (October 26, 2012). One of my buddy had to beg off since his daughter was sick so the trio was down to a duo and with the storm Ofel having just exited the country, I had to also cancel because it was raining.

So, the trip was moved to the next day and me and my buddy left his home around 7:30 AM, had some breakfast and pushed on towards Antipolo first but not before he got a punctured tire. Having fixed it, we pushed on up to Antipolo then down to Teresa where we got this beautiful view of Morong.

The downhill portion was great going down to Morong but our tummies grumbled and so we stopped at a store for buko juice and some biscuits before rolling out to Baras for lunch but not before taking some more pics of Laguna De Bay.

I swear a bunch of fish were jumping up from the water

We finally got to Malaya, Pililla in Rizal at around 1:15 PM (I know, we won't win any medals for speed) and registered at their Brgy. Hall and asked them kindly if we can leave our bikes as we hike up the mountain. They let us park our bikes in their stock room/ kitchen and they even took note of what we left in their log books so we know the bikes are safe there. 

Saaaafe!!!

We paid 20 pesos each and got their number (09192282804) in case of emergencies. We were told the hike would take an hour and a half since we looked fast but this was not the case as you'll learn later. So we started on up for the hike portion of our trip, I bought just a liter of water from a store and two biscuits. The first km or so was a concrete road that then cuts off to a rocky portion. Bikeable? Maybe, but not really. There's a fork somewhere and we stupidly picked the wrong side (three times in the whole trip) even though we've been told at the registration to ALWAYS choose the path to the right at the Brgy. hall. I stacked some rocks (as a cairn) to the right path since no one thought of doing so.

I've always been worried about the time since we started the hike late already (1:20 PM) and getting lost in those forks took some time too. Up and up, we were able to cool ourselves from the brooks that intersect the path. We got to the manggahan (Mango farm) portion where we paid another 10 pesos to the caretaker (we were told at the Brgy. hall that they forbade this already though) and continued up to this portion. Bikeable? Definitely not.

No, you can't ride your bike here

The problem was my buddy's water ran out and he didn't have any food so I had to share my water and cookies with him when we got tired plus my bum knee started to get sore again going up. We were only able to reach the first camp site near the summit because we were so darn tired/ out of water/ out of food but what a sight! We laid on the grass in exhaustion until we got the energy to take a look around and take pics.

Hey! We biked that road!

The Malaya power plant

There's the summit! We didn't quite reach it, but there's always next time :)

We reached this point around 4 PM (3 hours 40 minutes) and it's not even the summit! We had to go back down and fortunately, the caretakers at the manggahan portion sold buko juice for 10 pesos each and we refueled on that before running down the mountain as the light faded fast. By the time we reached the concrete portion, it was really dark and we logged out at the brgy. hall and got our bikes to get some chow at a nearby carinderia (small cantina). We pushed on back to Manila (Mandaluyong for me, QC for my friend) at 6:45 and I got home almost 1 AM. Phew. what a tiring, tiring, but happy day.

Tips and tricks portion!
1) Yes, you can bike all the way to Malaya, Pillila Rizal which is the jump off to Mt. Sembrano and leave your bikes there. The registration is 20 pesos.

2) Mt. Sembrano is 745 MASL according to its PinoyMountaineer entry which I also used as reference for this trip.

3) Distance from QC to Malaya, Pililla is around 50 kms when i measured it with Wikimapia but God how I wish I have a GPS or cyclocomp to give you guys a more accurate info.
4) We were told that the jeep fare from Crossing Shaw in Mandaluyong to Tanay is 53 pesos and the jeep from Tanay to Malaya is another 20 pesos. If you've been there, let us know your travel time in the comments.
5) Yes, yes, yes you can do Mt. Sembrano as a day hike or a bike and hike a day but you have to be extra tough just bring lots of water and munchies. Use a road bike or use skinny tires on your mountain bike.
6) Bring blinkers and headlamps (you can use it on your way down the mountain and as you ride back home most probably at night)
6) No, you can't ride your MTB up to Mt. Sembrano.

Ditching the car for a bike

The October 2012 issue of Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine has this article about a blogger who uses bikes to save more given that they spend $200 to $250 on gas per month plus more for insurance. They sold one car and now they have more cash to put to their savings! I know I'm preaching to the converted but if you need more motivation to use your cars less, then there you go :D.

Our family (meaning my father) has two cars that I get to use when my family (my wife and kids) needs to go anywhere but I use the public transpo to get to work daily and I occasionally ride the bike to work although I can't do it more than twice a week at the most since my office is over 10k away from our home and I have to ride the bike through a major highway to get to work :D

It's a good thing that the blogger's family featured in the article does not need to ride their bikes more than 3.5 miles. The full article can be read here.

Seo Young Deok's bicycle chain sculpture

Designboom is another one of the sites I keep track of through my email subscription and their latest blast includes Seo Young Deok's bicycle chain sculpture. Besides the choice of material that automatically draws me to the piece, the chains have acquired this interesting shade to it. A little more Google magic and I learn that this piece comes from the artist's Dystopia project which is touring the world according to the Huffington Post. I wish the artist more luck :) From Designboom's piece on Seo. 

Mt. Balagbag (Helipad) via Licao Licao

Me and my office buddies spent a long weekend riding our mountain bikes to camp at the summit of Mt. Balagbag in Rizal, Philippines. This is my first bike/camp adventure and this certainly won't be my last! The last 4 kms. near the summit was the most grueling since we had to push the bikes up through rocks the size of watermelons while our heavy packs weighed down the bikes. With the light fading fast and the rain starting to pour, we had to hurry up to the summit to set up camp and cook our food.

Lessons learned from this trip... a) learn how to tie your pack properly on the rack b) choose a grassy site when setting up the tent c) pack light(er).

Things I did right... a) packed everything in their own plastic bags since it rained going up the summit b) went up there with the most awesome people c) was super friendly to the locals. The interaction with the people along the way was a very welcome change from how I interact with others in the city. If I said 'good morning!' with a smile to someone I pass on the street here in the city they'd probably think I was up to no good! That's the great thing about hiking, you get to practice simple courtesies :)

Friendly lady along the way who said yes when I asked if I could take her pic :D

sweet, sweet dirt road!

My buddy cooling off from a hand pump along the way.

I told ya it rained! But this isn't the part near the summit.

My horse :)

Good morning Balagbag!

I have a crush on the student leader Camilla Vallejo and lo and behold I see a video of her on YouTube on her bike looking VERY pretty in a blue dress. I guess I'm attracted to her because she finds that balance between being beautiful and tough just like she is in this video right here. She's got the blue dress on with the delicate sandals and she's riding a rugged mountain bike with gnarly treads. Beautiful, simply, beautiful.

American Pickers' Mike Wolfe on antique bicycles

Mike Wolfe of American Pickers can be over the top some times but you gotta admire his passion for what he does. Another of his passions apparently is old bikes and I always look forward to seeing old bikes being featured on his show. He did an interview with Bicycling.com and it was accompanied by this picture of Wolfe and what looks like an old Schwinn bike. What a bad ass.

Bamboo bicycle

I read a news article about a Philippine company that makes bicycle frames made out of bamboo and had to check 'em out. They do make good looking bikes I should say, the news article said a mountain bike costs almost $500. Wishing them success in their endeavor! Check out Kawayan Tech's website here.

Bike infographics time

Bike infographics time! Credits to the artist whose name is on the pic :)

Manila!

I live in the Philippines, Manila actually and I happen to love this city very much too. I got some OC to post today from last weekend when we visited the Oceanarium and had dinner near the bay.

Vindata Night Sky

Here's a vid for today, I've had this on my YouTube favorites for a long time now and I thought I'd share it with you. Lots of fixie goodness on this vid :)

Another Sartorialist post

Got this pic from the /n/ board but I'm sure this came from the Sartorialist :P

TufRack

TufRacks make bicycle racks that look err... tough. I found an ad of theirs and followed it to their site only to see some of the bikes in their stable and I liked it :D Pics came from their site.