Sometimes, it is better not to make plan for a ride. Just like this one.
The ride started when BIGBOYS member Reybetsy told me that he will ride to NLEX with 2 newbie bikers two days before this ride happened. I was interested to join but I’m still hesitant because I need to ask my wife’s permission first. Especially after knowing about what happened to MGee, she’s kinda nervous to allow me to ride.
I told Reybetsy’s plan to Cesar when we talked in the phone about the planned Ride and Trekking in one to Mt. Maculot. He immediately confirmed that he can join the ride so I asked him to contact Reybetsy about it. He also informed the other members of the group. Unfortunately, the others couldn’t come to such a short notice. The only ones who responded was Payon Hunter. Cesar also thought that visiting his fiance’s family and take our lunch at their house was a good idea since Bulacan, Mei’s place, is along the way. When I was able to confirm that I can join this ride, I immediately contacted our friends from Nueva Ecija to come along, and they did!
Before the day of the ride, Reybetsy texted me that AMDG is riding there too and he will ride with them to Clark and meet us there. When everybody saw each other at Shell Balintawak before taking off, Cesar suggested that we ride with them as one big group. As for Payon Hunter, he arrived early at Shell Balintawak with his whole family in their car. They went ahead of the group because they might get left behind. Before taking off, I told Cesar that I’ll be a little ahead of the main train along NLEX because our Nueva Ecija friends are already waiting at San Simon exit.
The baloons are already off the ground when we reached Clark. We were kinda disappointed about it. Everybody’s hungry so we all decided to join AMDG for a breakfast at their favorite restaurant in Clark, the famous Rumpa. Me, Cesar, and our Nueva Ecija friends followed the first group of AMDG thinking that they are going to Rumpa. We were surprised when we found ourselves in NLEX! We made a mistake of following the group that was already heading home. Tess, the wife of our good friend Richard Parker (the English guy who joined the Freedom Ride 2), asked the NLEX patrols if we could just make a U-turn to the other side of NLEX to go back to Clark. This would save us a lot of toll money and to our surprise, they agreed! Good thing it was a lady who asked them because if not, they might have not allowed us to.
We called Reybetsy and told them that we made a mistake of following the wrong guys and asked for directions going to Rumpa. When we got there, the others already started their breakfast.
After that, our group decided to go back to the Baloon Festival to check out the other events. AMDG decided to go home except for Fast Eddie who rides a 2006 Fazer 1000.
We enjoyed ourselves taking pictures with guns, bazookas, jet fighter, and helicopter. Then we decided to go to Mei’s house for lunch. Our group along with our Nueva Ecija friends enjoyed meeting Mei’s parents. We stayed for about 2 hours in their place talking and laughing.
At around 2pm, we decided to go home. I reached my house at around 3:40pm.
It was a great ride!
More photos in the thread here.
