A Pinoy Biker’s Philippine Rural Adventures

The Firefly Brigade booth at last Saturday’s MOA exhibit won the Best Booth Activity,
Best Environmental Cause, and the 3rd prize beneficiary. Students who visited the exhibits chose the Fireflies over nine other participating environmental advocacy group.

The gates opened at 10 am and a presentation by a cheer leading team from UP inaugurated the day’s activities. Aside from the booths, students from different universities and colleges were participating in an adventure race, scheduled in the afternoon. The emcee announced that there would be some celebrities visiting but during the time I was there, no celebrity that I knew came. But the US ambassador, Kristie A. Kenney, was there. Some of the Parplays wanted to have a picture taken with her, but we couldn’t find Fara who had the camera.

The CMR group arrived at around 11:00 am after less than 2 hours of pedaling from UP. According to some Parplays who went with the group, there were about 35 participants, hardly a critical mass, but a mini mass nonetheless. I guess that would be a contradiction in terms. The route was about 24 kilometers.

For my part, I woke up at 5 am after having a generous 4 hours of sleep. Ihad a breakfast of pandesal with blueberry jam and native chocolate. I wanted to leave at 5:30 but in the end, I was able to leave at 5:45. I arrived at the MOA at around 7 am. I texted Mia and Fara asking them where they were. From afar, we saw each other and I signaled that I will park my bike in the nearest bike parking rack. I looked for one and left my bike there, but not before noticing that the rear tire was losing air. I left it there anyway, thinking that I will deal with it later when I go home.

When I was near the entrance of the venue, my wife’s cellphone rang (I borrowed it because I wasn’t sure how to meet with the other parplays here). It was Mia asking me to bring in my bike to be displayed as part of our exhibit. I told her that’s perfect, as I didn’t want to leave my bike in the parking rack in the first place. So off I went back to get the bike and went in with it to the exhibit venue.

Mia, Fara and Inoy were already there and have set up the booth. Only a few banners needed to be hung and other things straightened up and cut to complete the task. “Manos a la obra” as soon as I came in.

The students were allowed to enter even before the formal opening of the exhibits and so we were swamped with them sooner that we expected. As part of the Firefly Brigade’s efforts to promote cycling and clean air, we asked them to sign a sheet with their name and email address. The winner of the raffle we were having would be picked from these names and we promised them that we will inform them through their email in case they win.

Part of our promotion was the “say it with a snap”. “It’s an on-the-spot slogan contest highlighting the importance of cycling and it’s connection to clean air and the communities well-being. The objective of the competition is to involve the youth in making conscious statements and decisions to saving the environment.” - from the mechanics of the contest.

See the pictures here. I voted for the one that said: “Hindi patok and kotseng mausok”. Roughly translated as: ” a smoke belching car is not in” (or not a winner).

After distributing flyers and explaining our advocacy to some students, I felt tired. My breakfast is gone and I need more nutrition to get through the day. I went around the Mall to look for something to eat but I couldn’t find something that I like. When I came back to our booth, I saw that the CMR group just arrived. After exchanging pleasantries, some of them went home but the Parplays of course remained.

I was getting really hungry and was ready to go home. I told Rosar about this and he said that he also wanted to home but said we should go somewhere to eat first. Some of the Parplays expressed the same thought and so I suggested we go to Chinatown, which was about 4 kilometers away, and have a bowl of noodles. They thought it was a good idea and so after saying our goodbyes to the next batch of Parplays who were going to man the booth, we went off, but not before fixing the flat tire of my bike.

I went ahead to the bike parking area and waited for them there. But as soon as they came, it started to rain. We sought shelter in one of the nearby buildings and waited for the rain to stop. It did stop after about 10 minutes and we started to pedal our way to Chinatown. I wanted to bring them to the noodle house we went to with the PMTB guys, but when we arrived at the place, it was full of patrons. It was 1:00 pm and we were getting hungry. Rosar knew of another place and he suggested we go there instead. It is so much different from the first one. It had no aircon, but we did not need one because all of us were soaked in sweat and cold air would not be good for us. One thing I appreciated though was the speed they served our orders but then I noticed that they were not fresh noodles, unlike the one in the other place where you could see the noodles being pulled in front of you.

We finished at about 2:00 pm. Rosar wanted to pass by a bike shop in Quiapo and so off again we pedaled. He bought a pair of inner tubes and then we went home.

Pictures courtesy of Parplay Fara Manuel.