The Farm, Cambaol Alicia, Bohol, February 11 (PIA)--If one knows the essential features of a trail bike, one would have second thoughts with this one assignment.
That night, the only available ride was a stock Kawasaki KMX 125, stripped to the bare and now converted into a lightweight dirt bike.
Driven by extreme adventure riders with nerves of steel and guts as rigid as the bike's extended front forks, the extreme motor bikes of Bohol East Trail Bikers are stock 125 dirt bikes.
Under the engine head however is a different story.
The pistons are oversized and the chassis is lifted higher, fitted with dirt wheels that sport huge spikes which assure the riders to get them to peak the notoriously steep climbs of Binabaje.
For trails riders here where crashes are as ordinary as skipping over to the dismount, the bike's stock headlights often do not survive. They are useless anyway for day trails, and these bikes seldom come out the streets.
Foot rests, although necessary to afford comfortable ride for backriders, these can snag in the undergrowths and deep rain-rutted trails, so they too have to go.
In the same trails that forest and fire rangers traverse to the bunkhouse peak some 350 meters above sea level, The Alicia Panoramic Park Trail (TAPP) Run 2018 runners need to follow.
Runners have to heave their bodies up the 5th kilometer marker where the bunkhouse towers over the panoramic landscape towards the end of the 21 kilometer run. Somebody has to get at the bunkhouse to document the event for LGU Alicia.
Organizers have set the runners to be let off at 5:00, at The Farm. If the civerage team leaves early morning, there is practically no material time anymore to hit the trails hiking to the peak on race day.
The PIA, the government's leading information dissemination agency keeps a mandate to help NGAs and LGUs bring their programs to the communities.
As Alicia has picked sports tourism as a key economic driver and in empowering its communities to use sports events as venue for income generation, this has to be known.
What is unique with Alicia's trails is that the grass-covered hills also draw fog that would at times be good marketing add-on for the event: the sea of clouds run.
With PIA in an engagement in another town until 5 pm Friday February 9, we arrived at the Farm in Alicia at 8:30, too late for a solo trek. The peak is some 5 kilometers through thick canopies, a crisscross of pasture trails past creeks and into the open ridges which characterize the last two kilometer scramble to the over 45 degree slopes to the bunkhouse where the PIA has to pitch tent.
Braaap in, Bohol East Trail Riders, to the rescue.
Riders Benjie Gundaya with his Kawasaki KMX 125, Romulo Basalo Dasigan on his Rusi KR150 and Jojo Duetes on his KMX 125, distributed my payload. In no time, they strapped on battery-powered headlamps and with minimal gear, kicked on the starter and were set to go.
I started to doubt if this was sane.
Basalo and Gundaya would be escorts.
"Nobody goes up alone," Duetes said.
When a rider is alone and has problems, he will have no one to the rescue.
I lugged a sizable backpack for two nights provision, a set of cameras, a small tent and my motorbike helmet. (I have to admit, I was aware of the risks having seen these riders in 2016 when we did the ocular inspection of the trails before the first Alicia MTB Festival. The bike trek to one of the mid-height hills was brutal then, when I used my hardtail bike as trekking pole to balance so I'd stay on course and not backslide. I also happen to drive dirtbikes and somehow, the anticipated thrill had me the moment the wheels churned loose gravel to Purok 7 Binabaje before the we go off road)
We stopped by a roadside store, woke up the owner to get us provisions and a few bottles of beer to drive the cold at the peak.
I was to camp solo, on top of the ridges, the nearest neighbor would be five kilometers away.
Then, the briefing.
I was to ride with Gundaya, Basalo has my bag and Duetes shouldered my tent.
"Use my footrest, hold on tight and we need to lean forward to stop a wheelie," Gundaya instructed.
"Yes, I heard him say wheelie," and I said, "whaaat?"
Everyone laughed and I started to blink, unsure now.
"Not every rider here is authorized to carry passengers up the trail," Basalo pressed on.
That, in a way, assured me a bit, just a little bit.
I can still remember that trail then.
It was just a meter wide swatch of brown rain-rutted dirt trail cleared from a from a tall carpet of talahib. The trail follows the ridges and winds up to where a dirt bike assault to the top can be managed by the disguised 2-wheeled whining beasts. A crash here would be a long roll down the slopes. Or fatal. If the grasses you grab hold, you're lucky.
It was midnight, and nobody would see how we fall, if that was of any consolation.
The riders decided to go the short cut trail they call: Plan B.
It was a quick entry into the secondary forests, the path illuminated only by a thin illumination of a headlamp.
The dirtbike zipped over the trail carved by rain and feet, on the edge of a mild cliff, through oil palm plantations, past creeks where I have to alight because it was way too impossible for the bike to go up the slopes, over 2 kilometers at the base of the first hill.
There are accordingly 3 trails, this one is the shortest, Gundaya explained.
Now, I have to say, the shortest was probably the toughest. After about 15 minutes of agonizing ride, me trying my best to remain on the backseat, no matter how much the bike galloped into the hard trails, I had more than enough. But i had to get to the peak. Twice my feet fell off the shared footrest, but I recovered real quick.
"Let me just handle it," Gundaya reminded me in the tough sections of the trail.
A rider, will always be rider and he would know when it is time to bail out. Twice, I was on the verge of ejecting myself, but on the last microsecond, I stuck to the backseat.
Then we were at the base of the long climb. We waited for the escorts, checked on the bike and readied for the last sprint.
There is a portion where we have to walk, Gundaya finally told me. He shone the headlamp into the straight trail up and the night swallowed the light into its bosom.
When the escorts arrived, we hit the trail again.
I pressed my chest to the back of the rider and we flew into the trails, the bike, many times skipping past the deep ruts and swerving to the tall grasses before the driver corrects and foils a spill into nothingness.
I could only watch how this rider could keep on playing with the throttle and the clutch, gears churning as the wheels shuddered in strain, the engine shrieking the trademark wail of the KMX.
Midway, I could hear the engine at first gear and the bike slowing from the strain. It was the best it could do. A mistake in the gears would send the bike into neutral and we would backslide.
Expertly, Gundaya cut across the trail and we stopped in the middle of a 200 meter sprint as the engine stalled. The radiator boiled.
I decided to walk, while Gundaya started the bike and drove another 50 meters or so to a mild slope.
I walked, no half crawled on the next 50 meters or so, masking the hyperventillation by pausing to scan at the gorgeous view.
It was Ubay, Mabini and Candijay town centers like mini cities sprinkled in the vast nothingness of night. It was a view that was worth the climb.
I walked past the last assault trail and arrived at the waiting bike. I was about to walk past the bike when the rider said it was the last sprint to the bunkhouse.
It was also the longest minute of my life.
The rider revved one last time, let off the clutch and i pressed my body to his back, anticipating the wheelie. The bike ground to a good start, accelerated and shot off into the night, the headlamp painting s crisscross of light, as if it can erase the rain gutted canals in the trail.
I could have closed my eyes if it helped, that is so that I can keep the rider managing the climb without me burdening the driver's balance. But I could not, me making sure I could quickly bail out the moment the bike fails. It did not.
We topped the last obstacle hill and instinctively I looked back at the scenery.
It was perfect.
The riders have to go down after an hour of talk and brief rest from the challenging trek.
I pitched my tent aided by camp lights while we exchanged small talk. And then it was their time to go, leave me alone at the camp.
I expected them to get their engines gunning down hill. They did not. They free-wheeled down, the whir of tires were the last sound I heard and then it was silence broken by the comforting sound of night in camp.
Sleep was just there creeping and the adrenaline ebbed aided by the soothing calm of being alone way up in the hills, kilometers away from the nearest neighbor.
I woke up at dawn, light already filtering the clouds and bouncing off a glow that lends the hills a mystical image.
Then I looked back at the trail we traversed the previous night.
Riding downhill should be fun, but it was not for me.
Going up daytime astride a bike again? well maybe.
But I am perhaps not suited for the downhill ride in these hills. I'd leave that to these riders whose nerves are of steel. (rahc/PIA-7/Bohol)
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