paul vincent

this is inspired by selvo’s touching post.

eight years ago today, our firstborn was a stillbirth. it was the most painful experience i have ever encountered in my life. more painful because i attribute the tragedy to my wrong decision.

two months after we got married in november 1998, wifey had two lines. as short as the waiting time before the baby was conceived, it was a D & C going on the third month.

when she conceived the second time, we have paul vincent as a name if its a boy (from the lolo’s of both sides–fulgencio and vicente) or berna isabelle if its a girl (from the lola’s–bernardita and isabel).

the motions we went all through them–regular check-ups, walks, petition at the monastery for safe pregnancy, lab work-ups, etc.

her ob-gyne went for induced labor but it turned out, like in mikee cojuangco’s case, she’s good under C-section. the transfer to another hospital proved a little, but critically, too late.

he went six feet under with my name in his grave marker.

a golfer missing his putt in the last hole in a championship game by an inch, a haggard traveler a second too late for his connecting flight out of a war zone, a rookie cager splitting charities–different scenarios, practically the same sense of loss.

while wifey had her way of coping–she relates the ordeal with detail to anybody who cares to listen–i would

motorcycle road trip to davao city

 

 

I had been to Davao City four times in the past, all for official trips—visiting model cooperatives in 2002, joining the 2003 PEARLS Olympics, attending the 8^th FOCCUS Awarding ceremony, and participating in the CU-TE Batch 8 Trainors’ Training in 2005. The first one was via the ordinary Bachelor trip, the next two were in a chartered Bachelor bus, while the last one was in the Coop service vehicle.

 

But going there on a motorcycle had always been an exciting idea. Reading the stories of Iron Butt riders gets me drooling in awe and envy. Scaling down their adventures to fit my budget, physical capacity and hardware was an option if only to have a peek into this kind of trip.

 

A random call to Homer, my behemoth of a riding buddy, brought me close to that trip. He was a newly accepted member of KARANCHO, and together with other members from different chapters in Southern Leyte, they were scheduled to attend the 12^th Annual Convention of KABABAYAN RIDERS FOR NEW CULTURAL HARMONY AND ORDER (KARANCHO) in Almendras Gym, Davao City in January 25-26, 2008.

 

Without thinking twice about it, I signed up for the trip.

 

The ride would be more than 1,000 kms to and from Davao City. Wow! The longest I had before that was only 300 kms two-way from Kananga to Silago and back.

 

I picked up some tips from this website on group long distance riding. this was also helpful

 

My travel checklist has the following items:

 

TRAVEL CHECKLIST

1. tools (c/o 61)
2. tube
3. spark plug
4. rain gear (c/o reynold)
5. shorts
6. one pair pants (baggy)
7. five t-shirts
8. one pair of socks
9. face towels
10. handkerchief
11. mineral water
12. biscuits
13. or/cr
14. money
15. mp4
16. sandals
17. large cellophanes (at least 3)
18. luggage support (c/o 61)
19. cp charger

I was to meet homer and anching with the rest of the group in lilo-an at around 7am on January 25. this quaint little town has a port terminal for ferry boats servicing lilo-an to lipata route. lilo-an for a long time has been the jump-off point to surigao city.

only on the night before did homer tell me that his wife erlyn would be with us for the trip, and that she will ride pinion with me to lilo-an. That’s more than 150 kms of driving with a back rider in an early morning trip!

 

Excitement with a dose of anxiety is a sure formula to rob you of a deep sound sleep. A minute before 4 am I was at homer’s doorstep to pick up erlyn. ( had this an official meeting I would have been late for a good one hour, I amusingly told myself)

 

 

season of the bike

There is cold, and there is cold on a motorcycle. Cold on a motorcycle is like being beaten with cold hammers while being kicked with cold boots, a bone bruising cold. The wind’s big hands squeeze the heat out of my body and whisk it away; caught in a cold October rain, the drops don’t even feel like water. They feel like shards of bone fallen from the skies of Hell to pock my face. I expect to arrive with my cheeks and forehead streaked with blood, but that’s just an illusion, just the misery of nerves not designed for highway speeds.

ut when warm weather finally does come around all those cold snaps and rainstorms are paid in full because a motorcycle summer is worth any price. A motorcycle is not just a two-wheeled car; the difference between driving a car and climbing onto a motorcycle is the difference between watching TV and actually living your life. We spend all our time sealed in boxes and cars are just the rolling boxes that shuffle us languidly from home-box to work-box to store-box and back, the whole time entombed in stale air, temperature regulated, sound insulated, and smelling of carpets.

On a motorcycle I know I’m alive. When I ride, even the familiar seems strange and glorious. The air has weight and substance as I push through it and its touch is as intimate as water to a swimmer. I feel the cool wells of air that pool under trees and the warm spokes of sunlight that fall through them. I can see everything in a sweeping 360 degrees, up, down and around, wider than PanaVision and higher than IMAX and unrestricted by ceiling or dashboard.

Sometimes I even hear music. It’s like hearing phantom telephones in the shower or false doorbells when vacuuming; the pattern-loving brain, seeking signals in the noise, raises acoustic ghosts out of the wind’s roar. But on a motorcycle I hear whole songs: rock ‘n roll, dark orchestras, women’s voices, all hidden in the air and released by speed.

At 30 miles an hour and up, smells become uncannily vivid. All the individual tree-smells and flower-smells and grass-smells flit by like chemical notes in a great plant symphony. Sometimes the smells evoke memories so strongly that it’s as though the past hangs invisible in the air around me, wanting only the most casual of rumbling time machines to unlock it.

A ride on a summer afternoon can border on the rapturous. The sheer volume and variety of stimuli is like a bath for my nervous system, an electrical massage for my brain, a systems check for my soul. It tears smiles out of me: a minute ago I was dour, depressed, apathetic, numb, but now, on two wheels, big, ragged, windy smiles flap against the side of my face, billowing out of me like air from a decompressing plane. Transportation is only a secondary function. A motorcycle is a joy machine. It’s a machine of wonders, a metal bird, a motorized prosthetic. It’s light and dark and shiny and dirty and warm and cold lapping over each other; it’s a conduit of grace, it’s a catalyst for bonding the gritty and the holy.

Learning to ride was one of the best things I’ve done.

thank’s to Dave Karlotski

ironbutt

Reprinted from Roy Ayres’ “Against the Wind”:
“The Iron Butt is an endurance rally, and it’s about getting on the machine and staying on for eleven days. The riders see a good portion of the contiguous U.S. They see it in the ever-brightening dawn of day, the blazing afternoon sunshine, the golden haze of sunset, and the cold darkness of night. They experience the Rocky Mountains, and turn up their electric gear as temperatures drop. They experience the reds and browns of the southwestern desert and survive 115-degree temperatures as blasts of hot air envelopes their leather or gore-Tex-clad bodies. They sip fluids from tubes from packs on their backs in an attempt to stay hydrated and to keep their attention on their ever-changing environment. They wipe face shields clear of driving rain and brace themselves against persistent winds as they ride the fringes of hurricanes threatening to alter their course to the next checkpoint. What is the mystique that surrounds the Iron Butt Rally??”

indeed, what is it about riding motorcycle for long distances? 11,000 miles in eleven days!!

i’ve been reading about ironbutt rally since 2004. these are crazy people, and i mean it in a good way. they ride hard, but more importantly, they must ride smart.

check their web site. happy reading, and enjoy the ride.