AHONtipolo

It feels like it’s been so long since I last blogged but in an attempt to start this year right for the blog…make way for the very first post this 2021 and also the very first ever cycling content here in the blog. Wohoo! 📢📢📢

Yes. You read it right. Thus the title of this entry. It’s actually a pun coined to refer to the uphill ride (ahon in English means go up) to Antipolo which I and my boyfriend, Ton, did last 28 December 2020.

Just a quick backstory, I and Ton bought our first ever bikes June of last year. Mine is a Keysto Ares folding bike and Ton’s is a Trinx Majes 100 mountain bike. In the past six months, we’ve tried our best to go out of Marikina to do city rides and discover other cities in the metro. I even made an attempt to vlog those but as of this moment, I have released three vlogs (+1) yet which you can visit (and subscribe 🙊, shameless plug 🤣) here.

Uhm. Yes. Emphasis on the city rides because we are not so much into long rides and trail rides yet. As mentioned, I use a folding bike and I am not that pro or well-trained enough yet to be like Dohc using a folding bike for long rides or trail rides.

Dohc is Mekaniko Martilyo on YouTube. He’s part of Team Apol (watch Ian How vlogs). Yep, I don’t mind promoting them because I am a fan and most of my very limited biking knowledge, I owe it to them.

Back to Dohc, the “mamaw” in him inspires me so much. That I consider the segment of Marikina/QC boundary (near Katipunan Avenue) as my “ensayo” to be like Dohc. I call it Bundok ng Katipunan. It’s like a mountain so tall for me but I challenge myself to not walk my bike every time I pass through there. For pros and long-time hobbyists, it’s not a hurdle for them anymore. But in my case, if I go out of Marikina either through Aurora Blvd or Bonny Serrano, there are two mountains waiting: Bundok ng Katipunan and Bundok ng Libis.

Somehow, I have managed to conquer those “mountains” pero shet, hirap na hirap and hingal na hingal but I still said to myself, maybe, just maybe, I can conquer also Antipolo (via Sumulong Highway).

It was just a question of when. Haha. Like when will the time be good so that we can allot a day or two post-ride to recuperate? Because we know it won’t be easy especially for first timers, we anticipated that “laspag” is real. Well, much for me as you know my bike isn’t the best for this kind of challenge.

We thought of doing it also on a weekday so that there are few people at Antipolo Cathedral as we wished to have our bikes blessed.

Fortunately (yeah, somehow we benefited), at work, we were required to use all of our vacation leave (VL) credits for the year and so we blocked 21st to 23rd and 28th to 29th of December 2021 as VL dates. We all know that the remaining days were either weekends or public holidays in the Philippines. Last working day was 18 December 2020. So two-week break was real!

We earlier set our ride 22 December 2020 but decided to make it on our monthsary. Ayiiii. 🥰 Actually, it almost got rescheduled/cancelled because that time, the weather was acting up. But glad the weather cooperated and the plan pushed through.

If you are curious on how our year-end ride went, you may watch the video on Youtube. Link is here or you may click the image below👇🏼.

Thank you.

🧡,

Fats