Forum members Tat and Pong sent us this ride report about their “short” ride to the Summer Capital and back.

3:30am, my cellphone’s alarm clock broke the morning silence indicating it’s game time. Yes, today I will ride. Baguio Overday as I call this ride and it’ll be a fast paced ride knowing that I will ride with a biker who had been playing with motorcycles since the age of 13. Pong, a very skilled who rides a Honda CBR500F rides. Good thing I ride a bike that’s a little faster than his because if not, I’ll be nowhere near this guy. It’ll be like chasing something impossible to keep up with.

After eating my quick breakfast and taking a quick shower, a text message came. Pong will be a little late. Good for me, no need to hurry up. I arrived 15 minutes earlier at Shell Balintawak, refueled and checked my bike’s tire pressures. I know the sound of his bike’s growling engine from a far. I was right, my ride buddy arrived. He took a rest for a few minutes and we took off from Shell Balintawak at exactly 5:40 am.

It’s game time? No not yet because as we enter NLEX, an expressway patrol car was there ahead of us. We overtook it slowly. I think it’s following us as I observe it from my side mirrors so I took it easy. Pong, who was not aware of the situation was probably wondering why I’m keeping the pacing at 120kph only. Bored as I expected, he overtook me and got lost out of site. Little by little I lost the patrol car. I only managed to ride over 200kph once that morning. I encountered 3 patrol cars along the way. Suddenly, I saw Pong slowed down. When I got closer to him, he gave me the signal to slow down. There’s another patrol car infront of him. I laughed, it’s the 4th one. It’s about time he notice them. Whew! What is it with these NLEX guys? Ruining our morning game, I said to myself.

As we travel towards Baguio, the weather was perfect. We were only riding 80-100kph in the provincial roads. Then 120kph. Increased to 140kph. Before Pong knew it, we were hitting 160kph already, from time to time. I was the one keeping the pace up this time. We were riding as if there were no other vechicles on those 2-way provincial roads. No problem, I know he can keep up. Yes, we were insane.

Touchdown Baguio. Too bad both of us are not familiar with the place. This is the first time I’ve been there. My first impression? The place is crowded and traffic is so slow. There are a lot of white FX taxis around, the roads are tight, and it’s hard to be familiar with them if you don’t live there yourself. This is just an overday ride so we don’t expect to enjoy the places that Baguio’s bragging about. Our original plan was to simply gas up and go all the way to Halsema highway. We were also told to try Guerilla saddle. What the heck. Heavy rain poured just right after I called Boylit for direction to Halsema. We ended up eating our lunch in Jolibee at La Trinidad and waited for the rain to cease. As we go towards Halsema, it rained again. That’s it, we cancelled the plan. We will not enjoy the twisties anyway because the road will be very slippery by that time.

We headed home. This time via Marcos highway. This is where the real fun begun. No rain, just a heavy cloud that looks like only a few meters on top of us. We took a couple of ride videos and a lot of pictures. As we traverse the highway, we were in the clouds and I mean literally. I was right, that cloud is too low or rather, we were too high. This is the first time I’ve experienced that so I was totally amazed. It feels like you’re on top of the world. Visibility on the road was a little off so we took it easy in the first few kilometers. But as soon as it all cleared up, it’s time to play. We were doing 90kph in the twisties blasting to 120kph from time to time. It was awesome!

As we reached Urdaneta city, we already felt it’s going to rain and it’s going to be heavy as I smell and feel the strong wind coming from all directions. It happened and we got stranded in a waiting shed with a bunch of little girls who were enjoying the heavy rain shower. All drenched, we introduced ourselves as Jericho Rosales (me) and Manny Pacquiao (Pong). After we knew it, we were interviewing them, joking around with them and laughing with them as if there’s no more tomorrow.

It’s time to go again and I mean fast. We have to make up for the delay. Wait a minute, the road is all wet and we have to slow down. Nah! Screw it! We were doing 120-130kph with a few blasts up to 180kph whenever the road is clear. At NLEX, we kept a speed of 160-180kph despite of the dark. Yes, we were insane. We just wanna have fun.

Pong and I dedicate this ride to our fellow BIGBOYS buddies.

More stories and photos of this trip here.