Brain Dump - Issue #1

This will be the first of hopefully a series of brain dumps that I will be throwing in the site - because I just want to dump everything under one post. Maybe in the future I can find the time to elaborate more on each topic on separate posts, but that's wishful thinking. Let's start!

First RCC Ride and Gravel Ride

I joined my first RCC Manila ride last May 13, months after I joined RCC. It also happened to be my first gravel ride (yes, I owned a gravel bike primarily to conquer PH roads, but this is the first time that I did a proper gravel ride). I met John-John Torres for the first time and I was ecstatic. He is so cool in personal.

My weird showing of admiration for him and the route was memorialized in JJT's YouTube video:

I have been training for weeks now after signing up for the Unrstrktd Gravel Race at Nueva Ecija this coming June 10. There are two events - a 220-km route and an 80-km one. Since this is my first time to join a race (and a gravel one, mind you), I opted to stay conservative and go with the 80-km one.

Even with the shorter route, I am still happy I registered.

I hope that I'd survive. Although I think I would, as long as I stay on my pace. The problem is if I start to get carried away by the pace of other more experienced cyclists - which is something that I should avoid.

SunLife Fun Ride

It was our first time to ride at Vermosa in Cavite. My wife and I joined the 45km leg of the event. It's basically a loop through Vermosa and in our case we had to do the loop 3 times because one loop is only 15km in distance. This is my second fun ride after the PCF Night Ride which we joined a few months back.

We get to see Piolo Pascual; so, there.

PruRide 2023

Over 3000 cyclists joined this ride. We joined the 60km leg of the event, together with my wife and nephew. The route was almost familiar because I get to see them from YouTube videos of Pampanga-based vloggers like Cycling Chef and Aira Lopez, but it was still fun to get to ride through that climb to Aqua Planet, the New Sacobia Bridge and its "budol" climb after U-turn, and that fantastic descent in The Wall - which I think is named as such because it's almost the boundary of Clark City (don't quote me on that, I was just assuming). It's mostly a good heat training because it was sunny all morning (it should have been cloudy according to the weather forecast!).

Learning to Drive

Through the love, patience, and support of my loving wife, she has been helping and guiding me as I get more acquainted with driving a car on public roads. Yes, because for a married guy in his late 30s - it's about darn time.

I am still not too eager to drive though - I'd still let my wife decide when it's time for me to drive on longer distances (because so far I have been only driving on errands like from our house to Nuvali and back via CALAX). But lately she's been allowing me to drive on some of the places we've been to in the past couple of months:

• NLEX to Bagac, Bataan and back - which is a 100-km drive one-way (I think). At this point she would take over from NLEX back to our house.
• Home to UP Diliman - this is when we visited the bike expo and demo event in UP Diliman. It was my first time to drive along QC Memorial Circle. That place is indeed a true and ultimate driving test location.
• Home to Clark via Marikina and back - this was to join the PruRide 2023 (see previous section)

I still need to learn how to be more predictable to others when driving (using lights to indicate intent, etc.), but I love it (mostly - excluding EDSA and QC Memorial Circle).

See you again, sometime soon?

Lots of cycling updates this time. I will see if there's something to write for next week. But that's all for now. Please subscribe for more? Babu.