So here we are in our second week, The house is slowwwwwly coming together. We bought a sofa at the weekend and both the bedroom and kitchen are done. That only leaves the other 20 or so rooms to do. Fortunately while I'm at work Milly is doing a great job of being the interior decorator. I'll post some photo's of the house soon.
So I went on my second ride in Santa Rosa on Saturday. Leo, a guy I met on one of the MTB boards lives in the same village. He picked me up in the morning, drove me to the trails and showed me around. What a dude! Leo is super fit and not a bad bike rider so the riding was a lot faster than last week. A lot more fun!
I'm finally accepting that the riding in The Philippines won't be the same as Malaysia but that doesn't mean that its worse, just different. The singletrack on Santa Rosa is pretty much off limits at the moment due to the weather. We had the back end of a typhoon pass us over the weekend and its been raining very hard for a few hours every day.
The singletrack we did ride was the equivalent of a greasy pole in a Manila girly bar. It was a lottery if you got any grip at all, which meant line choice was key to staying on the bike. If you went even slightly off line you'd be off the trail and in a rut. This was OK if your rear tyre went in but not nice if its your front tyre and the bars get crossed. Unfortunately the mud had a tendency to send you where it wanted you to go, not where you wanted to be going so losing your line and then trying to correct it while completely out of control became the common theme. The entire experience became a real challenge.
It was very technical riding, in a completely different way to Malaysia's Bukit Kiara, and heaps of fun. In the end we rode for almost 4 hours (with stops) and covered 40k. Max elevation was 400m.
Next week I'm hoping to get out to Taal ridge where there are some downhill runs. I've been told you can ride for 10k downhill, then once at the bottom put your bike in a jeepney, go back up to do it all again. I'm thinking of taking the VP Free....yeah baby....
2 comments:
welcome to the country fungus
we got great spot here in the country, but outside manila.
the nearset would be San Mateo Maarat. it offers a lot of techy
trails that you can go all out if you're into that kind of ridin'.
We use to have a north shore type of bridges there but some locals took all the woods and put it on their houses.
so we stick with the natural obstacle to make it more fun.
If you want to really enjoy your riding, go out of the city.
You can also visit our website at
www.43bikes-cjb.net
Hey scandal, I think your site address is wrong. Would be good to meet up and ride though....
Fungus
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