Since its the rainy season here and maybe around the world from what I've been reading from a few other riders in the Cafe, I headed back over to where I knew the dirt would be in top hookUp form... Found the item (D8)in the pic still there and the top ~1\2 mile lots wider and smoother than when I left there last month or so ...It was a micro-dailylife changer for me ... This gnarled piece of real estate is possibly gonna be wiped off the face of the earth for the betterment of the Filipino people in the coming month(s); my Huskies and I have got to be there to see this action or I may as well turn in my full-time amateur dirt bike riding non-existent license and stay home. Most, if not all my long-range riding will be slanted towards this area for the foreseeable future... From my front-door over the gnarled mountain pass (the shortest route), it's maybe $6 in gas, both ways on the 4t 2010 TC250 bike; consisting of rolling as many downhills as possible to save gasoline. Probably 6 different variations of trails to get there but several can be blocked by the river being too high. -- Rode off on a connecting road on one of my passes today just looking around and ran into these guys and gave one a ride ... Good PR work for myself and our country. View: https://youtu.be/a5zRTS5K5uE -- Same area as gave the OldTimer a ride.... This is the upper part of the road where the dozers are still working ... Not sure what they are doing but this level of work is well past just a grading ... View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbNBIP5gg0U
Here's the first climb out and to the top ... There is a cutOff road at the top and its pretty cool addition and cuts off some of that flat tracker stuff ... This is a stock 2010 TC250 I'm riding... Forks have ~30cc oil removed and clickers are open ...Drained the oil out myself and held it up to the light and it was still clear ... Rear clickers pretty much open also ... That bike has lots of chances to bounce weird or whatever on this climb and never does much to worry me except on larger loose rock hits .. I'm getting some acceptable feed back through the bars and that's ok with me ... 4th gear stuff mostly.. View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mq91vs7euQY -- Same climb but this time in a light rain about 1hr after the 1st climb ... Just wrapped a plastic bag around the contour cam, cleaned it a couple times and it sort of worked ... That shower made the trail really slick in places ... All those embedded rocks are wet and really slippery now there was only a couple places I had much of an issue with keeping the bike upright and going straight... View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSw9sD7Ql-w
August - 2015 Got sidetracked on riding this area due to the even cooler riding in the Mt Manunggal area... Here's what the grading did to this area ..looks alot better for the locals to travel on for sure .... Top side is much too fast and smooth for my riding but the bottom was still gnarly and muddy and rocky ... This VID is from the bottom of the valley out to the top of the ridgeline ... First I ride across the river in an effort to clean some mudd off the bike... View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=br8MoWOPEhQ Stopping at the house was necessary because I had over tightened the rear brake and it locked up ... I though I had seized the bike and I was gonna have to leave it over night or something... -- The guy that lived there came out and helped me figure out the issue ... This small road just connects to different spurs that both run down into the valley... View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snQeB7_oL7A
Here's the topside and heading back down into the valley ... Too smooth and too fast for my Huskies .... That's OK as these guys need transportation to move themselves and their goods around .. View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CnFjYfzY0Q
Nice to see some riding in the Phils. I've been to Cebu a few times, always wondered if there was any riding up in the hills there. I've seen some video of MX races during fiesta's in Bohol and other places, but no trail riding. I wonder if any of the mountain bike guys have built any single track around there? Saw some potential spots in the hills above Dumaguete on my last vacation though.
I'm not sure if these guys have any 'built' ST but I have seen a couple very cool looking tracks made by these guys ... Right in the area where I live, some sort of Asian-wide mountain bike trail race is conducted here maybe every yr .. Not sure on the name of the event but the locals spent about 2 months building this trail. It was a really cool looking track with lots of small hand-made berms ... Not that I know what a bicycle track should really look like ... But when I rode it on my bike a few times, it was pretty tight and technical and cool to ride on. There might be one over there now ...If so, maybe I can get a VID made of riding it ... 250TXC is my youtube channel with a little over 1K of videos there... There are walking paths (and gnarled out roads so bad that they look like ST) all over these islands so I don't see a need to build any riding trails but then again, I do not know what you guys want to ride on really. We meet bicycle riders on the trails from time to time without any animosity that I can see ... Looks funny seeing the bicycle riders on the roads because they out-run many of the 4 wheel cars and trucks. I pass them on my Huskies and usually get a smile or wave from them. -- I had a friend here who spent about a month on Bohol doing MX racing ...He is a pretty good racer but not their top PROs .. He made about ~$1,500 racing his bike ... That would pay my home rent for over a yr here ... -- If you make it over again, drop me a line and we'll do a ride across the providences ... It is a dirt bike riding mecca here by default.
Thanks for the kind words TC and just when you think you know a crowd, they come off the wall in an unexpected manner ...My hats off to all you guys&girls... -- Lately, just alot of life issues happening ...Not big really, just a string of events coupled with no camera now and I've been really lazy with my film editing and lazy overall ... I had to take another dose of my realities ... Everything is shaping up aok and just trying not to blow it (act my age)... Next 2 weekends are racing+trails ... Taptap race this Saturday and Danao City (my home track) racing Valentines day ... And the AUS Huskies have landed... One of the top PROs here, if not the top rider now, is on a 450 Husky... Jon Jon Adlawan... It is gonna be interesting to hear what he has to say about the Husky.. As young as he is, he might not have ever heard of the brand before now ... He was with honda before and moved to the new YZs and just got off and on the Husky ...How cool is that? -- On top of all that racing I get to deal with, the cement being poured here in the mountains is pushing my riding around here ... Been heading north lately in some stuff that is awfully hard to pass through for me... It just whips me before I get to the area I want to ride in for that day ... So tomorrow, trying to find a new route north that is ~easy...
