inklingfair It’s 6AM and I’m supposed to be working on a proposal while it’s still quiet, but Daniel woke up so I’m letting him play with Amy’s Legos while I catch up on things I let fall by the wayside.
We were in Bayombong for the long weekend. We took the Malico route (never again on a rainy day!) and got there on Friday afternoon. Nanay missed the first couple of days because she was in Davao, and I thought I could sit down with Tatay over beer to talk about the checkup he missed, but I’d forgotten how good he was at stopping a conversation at its tracks. He smoothly led the talk back to Josh, to the kids, to the bikes, and it felt awkward to bring it up again. Well, I tried.
We did get to bike a lot while we were there: Saturday, we made it past Cafe Juan, past Pisay, up to one of the paragliding landing zones, but had to stop and go back because I had forgotten to charge my battery the night before. Sunday, we were determined to get to the jump off site. People on motorcycles and cars didn’t honk at us going up—they seemed to be used to cyclists slowly pedaling up this road. We met only one tito biker going up, who turned out to be Ruel, an office friend of Nanay. He bumped into her on campus while we were out exploring Bangan Hill the next day and asked her if the tall guy on a bike was her son-in-law.
Other bikers on jerseys were already speeding down as we were struggling up. They rang their bells and we exchanged good mornings. We made a dozen stops and Josh had to push his bike up some ascents. At a roadside cafe, we had coffee and ice cream then pushed on. The vehicles started to thin. All we could see for several hundred meters were trees, moss-covered rocks, little springs trickling down the mountain face, landslide warnings, and an occasional dog sunning itself. The road wound up and up, and fatigue set. We barely spoke. After rounding one corner, Josh was overjoyed to see a camping site. People, finally! They said the jump off point was just 50 meters away.
At the peak, families milled about enjoying the view and taking pictures. A woman offered to take our photos on the deck. We didn’t see anyone paragliding, but perhaps it was because Egay had another typhoon on its tail and they weren’t taking chances. From the deck we could see other peaks in the distance—but we were tired and had promised Nanay and Tatay brunch at Cafe Juan, so we called it a day. It was almost noon, four hours after we rode out. The cruise down took us less than an hour.
Returning to rainy QC, we marveled at the almost four days of sunny cycling we had in Bayombong. Tatay said that Egay brought them barely any rain, just gusty wind for a day or so.
