All right, so I know what you’re probably thinking what a post entitled “Bicycle races are coming your way” is doing with a photo of someone (namely me) having a grand old time sitting on the edge of a stream.

Well, if you’re a friend you’ve probably heard me talk endlessly about biking. All the bruises and bumps I’ve collected from a sport I’ve been at for two months, or about my incredible burger bell (which has yet to be installed back on the handlebars of my bike) or the incredibly fun times I’ve had rolling around trails in the nearby mountains and fields.

But really, let me confess.

Mountain biking is not a zen sport. This is one of those rare moments where you have the chance to catch your breath and enjoy where you’ve gone. It is not something you do if you want to roll gently along and chill. It is a test of your physical strength, your agility, and your will to persevere. It is strenuous, dangerous and extremely exhausting. I have never felt more tired than I’ve been during these four to six hour intervals of pedaling, going through mud and rocks, and sometimes carrying your whole bike through a river to get to the other side.

It is not in any way glamorous. Prepare yourself to be muddier than you’ve ever been, sweatier than sitting in a sauna, and having your hair plastered to your head like a helmet. You will be tossed, turned and battered to a state where you’re almost unrecognizable to people you love. You will become five shades darker in a matter of hours from biking under the hot sun, and weirdly colored because of the difference in exposure.

You will be thirstier than a camel going through a desert, hungrier than a woman three days into her no-carb diet. You will not care if the water has been through five different people, when you’re out and you have 10 kilometers of uphill biking to go, you take what you can get.

Your legs will ache, your wrist sore, your hands more callused than if you spent your day woodworking, after clutching the handlebars and braking for dear life. You will fall face first into rocks if you brake without thinking, bruising places you never thought would turn purple and yellow.

You will forget to laugh, stop talking, breathe like you’ve been starved for oxygen for hours. You will curse, almost cry, feel ashamed for keeping up with the group, then get to a point where you’re beyond shame and just want to get there.

You will be tempted to quit midway. Feel like your vision is tunneling and your legs fall off. You will blame whoever thought of the route for not setting a more manageable pace. You will not be able to let your mind wander, because an errant rock can send you flying off your bike. Trails will be treacherously steep or too near the edge of a 100 foot drop. You will have to think about your shifting, your speed, your angles, your exertion at one point, because you can’t give your all and not have any energy to get back.

For me, mountain biking is an extreme sport. I have never pushed myself to limits that I have crossed, broken and unbelievably pushed to oblivion.

And I love it.

The feeling of the mountain wind going through your face at 40 km/ph as you go downhill is unmatched. The view of that peak after a grueling uphill ride never more beautiful. Food tastes better after biking 15 kilometers in rough terrain. Even the same trails do not get old, if you go through them so much faster, and without accident, it’s an accomplishment. Flowing water through your shoes feels much cooler and awakens your senses after sloshing through miles of mud and rocks. Every sense is heightened, every experience magnified because of all you had to go through to get there.

Biking pushes you to places you will never have thought you would get to, and you will be so much better for it.

Here’s hoping “better” gets here faster.

I have to admit, right until someone popped the question of forever, I wasn’t really the person who imagined what their wedding would look like. I wasn’t the girl who put the pillowcase over their head to mimic a veil, or had play weddings with a pretend husband. Sure, I loved sending ideas to my friends who were engaged as one of my favorite blogsites was a diy wedding site, but it was just because I loved the offbeat ideas that I saw on this site that a friend showed me.

I think it’s my addiction to research. I like heading over to a site, a forum, a blog and combing it through thoroughly for ideas. The ideas I see are automatically clicked, saved, and organized into folders. I send ideas over to a friend that was engaged a month before I did almost everyday, and keep a folder for her stuff as well.

Right now, everything is still a bit overwhelming since there is so much to think about, from top to bottom, all the expenses, the choices, the ideas, well, it can almost make you keel over. Unless you’re planning your own wedding, you really don’t know about all the work, stress and money that pours into that one day. Even now, when I’m just in the “information gathering” stage, i’m already imagining all the things that might and will go wrong when the wedding takes place. (If you know me, you’d know that I’m the girl always with one thing wrong, the bag strap broken, the sneaker going into the mud puddle, the huge zit on graduation, and I am deathly afraid of what Murphy’s law is going to serve me.)

Anyway, as people all around me always tell me, I’m breathing and rebooting. I have the time and the resources to make it a day that’d be us.

Now does anyone know where to start?

 

I’m sure I’m not the only one in the metro (and all around the world wherever Filipinos are) singing this song right now, but after almost a whole week of scary, nonstop torrential rain, it feels so good to see that little flicker of sun between the leaves of our mango tree, the one that has been swaying precariously this whole ordeal.

It was a scary several days, with reports all around of streets impassable, of people needing rescue and friends stranded at their workplace or houses struggling to go to work or back home. This was all too horribly familiar to our 2009 experience with Ondoy, when floods ruined houses and lives in a sweep of dirty, garbage ridden water.

What’s worse is that this was just rain. That’s what news reports, and the weather bureau’s explanation to all of us. Normal rainfall aggravated by a storm in Japan’s area of responsibility. We couldn’t even put a name to the horror that befell the Metro, with people all around getting stuck at some point or another, and some getting worse fates.

My family and I have been lucky, and we thank our lucky stars for where we are, and how we’ve been shielded so far from the effects of really bad weather, even if we have been touched by fire far too many times. Fire we can control to a point, but the air and the sky? Not really.

Here’s hoping we all learn from these circumstances, and focus on not only disaster rescue and relief, but prevention and strengthening of our resources all around. We know things will only get worse as our world deals with the effects of global warming and climate change, somehow, we hope we’re prepared for things to come.

But just for this moment, let’s just smile at the sun.

(and help out in any way you can)