Holy Thursday (April 5, 2012)
On Holy Thursday, I took my bike to San Pedro, Laguna.
I based this route on the Dept. of Tourism's April 9 Bike Ride
Thanks to Google Maps, I was able to plot a viable route from Quezon City to San Pedro, Laguna. It's also a good thing that Google allows the saving of plotted routes via its My Maps feature and I can access this in my phone so I can check my route from time to time.
The 38KM route I plotted is a combination of familiar and unfamiliar roads. In the past, in order to bike southwards from Quezon City, I'd go through familiar routes. I'd either pass through Roxas Blvd. or through C5-SLEX Service Road, the former is lengthy while the latter is dangerous (I have a scar along my right forearm to show for it). This time around, I intended to bike through the unfamiliar M.L. Quezon street that runs through Taguig from Pateros.
I was fortunate to be able to get my Knog NERD 12 cycle computer the night before. Without it, tracking my distance and travel time is very difficult.
After some pre-ride checks, I left New Manila a little before 6:00AM.
My strap-on cycle computer
Since it was a holiday, there were only a few vehicles. I also saw a lot of bikers around the Ortigas area. I guess they'll go pedaling along the trails of Rizal. Below are some of the photos I took along the way.
16KM at 6:35AM. Pasig and Pateros have smooth roads for biking.
25KM at 7:05AM. Brgy. Sucat is the boundary of Muntinlupa & Taguig.
30KM at 7:25AM - Brgy. Alabang
SM Center Muntinlupa
37.17KM at 7:50AM - The roosters of St. Peter
38.89KM in 1:58:28 - Touchdown!
The sumptuous breakfast Pau prepared for me - perfect after 2hrs of pedaling
An unfortunate occurrence: I lost the rubber stump found at the end of my kickstand. I guess it got scraped while I was on my way to Laguna.
Unfortunately, there's no replacement avaialable
Good Friday
I intended to spend Good Friday with my family in Paranaque so I woke up early to bike from San Pedro to Sucat. I didn't make a route map since I'll just need to backtrack using the route from the day before.
The bike ride was 16.06KM long. It took me 46 minutes. It could have been a shorter ride if not for the 11 sinakulo re-enactments that I passed along the way.
Black Saturday (April 6, 2012)
For my bike ride back to New Manila, I decided to try the C6 route.
View Sucat to Acacia in a larger map
My Dutch friend Mau told me that the C6 is a better, more scenic route. Biking is in the Dutch's DNA so I knew I had no choice but to believe him. And boy was he right! The C6 runs along the west bank of the Laguna bay. It was refreshing to bike along nature instead of the usual traffic and the buildings of concrete.
C6 at 7:00AM - Aside from a motorcycle caravan, there few vehicle sightings
A view of the Laguna de Bay
Taken on a bridge in Pateros: Where a Pasig River tributary meets the Bay
The ride was generally a smooth one except for a couple of things. First, after crossing Pateros, my phone couldn't get any data signal so I had to stop for a few minutes so that my Google Maps app can load. There were several intersections and the delay in the loading of the map resulted to a couple of wrong turns. Second, before I got to Ortigas, the magnet that my cycle computer uses to track the speed of my wheels rotation got misaligned. When that happens, the cycle computer cannot read the speed and the distance traveled by the bike. So I had to stop for a couple of minutes to fix it.
After 30KM of biking, going up Temple Drive can be tiring, so I decided to have an ice coffee break in UCC near Corinthian Hills.
Refreshing indeed!
While I was drinking my coffee, a woman came arrived while carrying a folding bike. Her GoGoBike's front wheel got punctured with a stray wire. I approached her to see if I can do anything to help her. Unfortunately, she didn't bring any spare inner tube for her bike. Fortunately, she lives in Corinthian Hills. So she ordered breakfast while she wait for whoever she talked to over the phone to come and pick her up. The incident was quite serendipitous because the night before, I was quite wary to go through the C6 route because I was afraid that if I get a flat tire, I won't be able to ride any public transportation to continue on my journey. I too didn't have a spare inner so a puncture that cannot be patched with my kit will be end of my bike ride home. Little did I know that it would be another person who would have to suffer through a punctured tire.
This 14-incher is small but surprisingly swift
I arrived in New Manila at 9:10AM. I pedaled 36.22KM for 1:35:52. The route was longer but it does seem to be faster.
In the afternoon, I went to Ateneo to bike around campus with a couple of my friends - Cands and Josh. Cands was on a Peerless Crescent and Josh was on a Giant Revel mountain bike. After about 5 trips around campus, we ventured outside. We were supposed to go to Camp Aguinaldo but the U-Turn in the Katipunan-Aurora Blvd. intersection proved to be challenging for us so we just went straight for Riverbanks then we went to Libis, and then up Greenmeadows and up to Temple Drive. We took a short coffee break in Starbacks-Corinthian Hills (do you see the pattern here?) then up Katipunan flyover before entering Ateneo again.
So how was the biking experience during those three days?
Obviously, I wanted more.
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