The Wind in Our Faces

Of the many varied interests Inverbras and Zexiv share - counting among others the gym, Asterix and Obelix comics, certain books (i.e. Catcher in the Rye), video games (Metal Gear series) and 80s music, perhaps one of the longest running is a passion for biking. From the time Zexiv first learned to ride quite by accident on Inverbras' light blue single speed bike from Patria in his pre-teen years, they have been on many two wheeled-related adventures together. This includes bike rides to the club and back during hot summer days, a two way torturous trek to hilly Tagaytay from Makati, cycling to an anti-Marcos rally in Urdaneta park, and later on, when they both shifted to the mountain bikes (more appropriate for the pothole ridden roads of Manila), exploring parts of the Fort and a nearby military base. It was many things to them - a means of getting around, a form of exercise, and most of all a highly enjoyable activity.

There is something about the simplicity of the bicycle that appeals to the kid in us. It is not that easy to describe to someone, especially to one who has never tried and developed a liking for it - and Zexiv does actually have two close adult friends who to this day cannot balance on a two-wheeled bike. It is not exactly the thrill or danger of going fast, for riding a motorcycle is definitely not the same thing, and cannot be called a simple activity. Nor is it the challenge of going beyond the burn, or over the limits of human endurance, as in no way can it be called similar to that monotonous, joint punishing activity called running. Perhaps the best analogy I can make would be comparing it to birds flying. If you have ever coasted down a very seemingly endless long hill with the wind blowing in your face, you will get the idea. It is liberating, it is invigorating, and it makes one feel ecstatic just to be alive. The bike can be compared to the wings of a bird, propelled not by an engine but by our legs, allowing us to go further than our legs intended, and not be hopelessly grounded to the same barnyard day after day in the way a flightless chicken is. We have to exert a bit (or much) effort to make it up a hill, in the same way a bird flaps its wings, but can coast on a downward incline like a bird glides effortlessly above rising winddrafts.

In their older years, Zexiv and Inverbras continued to bike regularly although not always together. Zexiv would get together with a group of similar minded friends, they would all drive to the hills of Antipolo with their bikes mounted on a rack behind the car, park somewhere, and explore the many trails. Inverbras bought a bike in the States while still a student, and used it to explore the miles of boardwalk connecting the different beaches in L.A. where he took his first post grad job. Now that he is New York based, he is very active in charity fundraising rides, sometimes taking Ozaymas along. Zexiv on the other hand, was forced to leave his bike behind, when we all relocated to Canada. He actually missed his bike more than he did his car - in fact he would rather not drive at all if he can help it, seeing driving as a relatively stressful activity - feeling very much like a flightless chicken.

Last weekend was Zexiv's first bike ride in more than five years. We walked all the way to a bike shop in the north end of Denman street, where Zexiv, Inverbras and I picked out three Dahon folding bikes with 20 inch wheels to rent. Puff, who had joined us earlier for a dimsum meal, but had somewhere to go after, went with us and looked slightly envious, seeing our excited faces. She snapped one or two pictures, and then we were off, heading towards the seawall portion of Stanley Park. It was Inverbras' first trip to Stanley Park and the seawall, and Zexiv pointed out interesting landmarks and attractions on the way - the totem poles, the nine o'clock gun, second beach, Siwash rock, The Girl in the Wetsuit statue. We saw a number of blue herons, seagulls, a racoon, people sunning themselves on the beaches, pedestrians, and many other cyclists. Inverbras appeared to enjoy it very much; Zexiv was ecstatic and deliriously happy. On a certain lengthy downhill portion somewhere along the seawall, he coasted and savored the feeling of the cold wind on his face. " There is really nothing like a bike ride", he thought, smiling to himself.

"We have to do this again before you leave", he told Inverbras afterwards.

Inverbras in Vancouver

They say one only gets to fully explore and appreciate their city and its surroundings when touring around an out-of-town visitor. We tend to sometimes take the places where we live for granted, getting caught up doing the same things day after day. In the years he spent in the home country, Zexiv told me he has never been to Palawan, or Sagada, the windswept islands of Batanes, or gone diving in the protected marine-rich waters of Tubbataha. It was only in the early nineties, when his Berlin-based cousins came visiting, that he saw Boracay for the very first time, and fell in love with the place. You really need to take a step back sometimes, and take a second look around you through the curious and fascinated eyes of a tourist. We had a chance to do this when Inverbras flew into town last weekend.

It was good to see Inverbras again. I remember my first meeting with him, when he was introduced to me by Zexiv at his old camp in the Eastern Seaboard. He had taken my picture and had helped us set up this blog. We met several times since then in New York, and he has been very supportive of our efforts to re-establish ourselves here and set up a secure camp, providing us with several top secret communications devices. He appeared to have grown his hair since the last time, and put on a few pounds, not surprising owing to his long fondness for giant cans of Piknik, dating back to his college days (a close Chinese friend even gifted him with a few cans one Christmas) . On the whole though, he looked quite well.

He told us he was here for several days' meeting with several top secret operatives from different countries. We asked him what he wanted to do. "Biking", he said. We have for quite some time been wanting to explore the seawall on bicycle, but have only done so on foot, during several nature photography treks. If you have never been to Vancouver, the seawall is an amazing thing, with perhaps nothing like it in the whole world. It winds on for several kilometers, with views of the ocean on one side, and depending on where you are, views of interesting neighborhoods and Stanley Park on the other. We quickly made plans to do that in the next few hours.

Over the next few days, Inverbras, Puff, Zexiv, Mademoiselle Marie, Piper and I were able to do things we have always wanted to try but never got around to doing so like biking the seawall, eating in this Dutch pancake restaurant along Robson, and having lunch in a sunny patio of an organic foods market, which Zexiv used to always wonder about whenever he would pass it on the way to his gym - although he has bought things from there like tulips and quiche. We also brought Inverbras to some of the usual tourist haunts like Granville Island and Gastown, and to some of the different neighborhoods, shopping and people watching areas, like Downtown, Yaletown, and the West End. Of these neighborhoods he told us he liked the residential areas of the West End the best - reminded him of Maui and certain parts of L.A., according to him. He was not much into sightseeing; of all the different places he went, he told us he really wanted to do two things over and over again - bike the seawall and sit on the beach and just people-watch. I believe these reminded him of his old lifestyle in Manhattan Beach.

It was a fun visit and we look forward to Inverbras' (hopefully with Ozaymas the next time around) next one.

Indeed one sometimes needs to see his city through the unspoiled eyes of a tourist to fully appreciate it ...

Merry Christmas from Snowy Vancouver

We always get excited to see snow because we don't get too much of it. A lot of rain, yes; after all this is the Pacific Northwest, but substantial snow that stays in the ground for days and days is quite unusual, especially in downtown Vancouver. At this time of the year we usually find ourselves wishing for a white Christmas, but these past two weeks have been a lot more than we wished for. Several heavy snowfalls, inches and inches of snow, several days of sub-zero temperatures - this is the first time we have seen this kind of weather in mild, rainy Vancouver. Snow is fun when it's fresh and powdery but when it piles up and turns into deep puddles of slush, it becomes a nightmare. The one good thing perhaps about all this snow is there seemed to be a lot less cars on the road for once, and pedestrians ruled. Zexiv said he imagined he was Frank Hurley, photographer of the Endurance, trudging through deep and blowing snow, trying to get to Stanley Park to get that once in a lifetime picture. He said parts of the water next to the seawall were actually frozen, and formed interesting and intricate patterns.

When things calm down a bit, after the holiday season, I hope to go through my notes and photos and tell you all about our Germany trip. Let me simply say for now it was a trip of a lifetime - perhaps comparable to our Alaskan vacation many years ago - and that Zexiv lost a bit of weight lugging around his gear everyday. If you are a photographer, a toy collector, a lover of old and historical structures, or a beer drinker, it is the place to be ...

A safe journey to all who are travelling this holiday season and a peaceful and joyful Christmas to all who read this!

How Much Can You Fit in a Small Suitcase

Sometime in the fall we will be departing for the land of Steiffs, nutcrackers, beer and beer steins, rouladen, currywurst, cuckoo clocks, old castles and half timbered houses. Where the Beatles got their first big start performing and honing their craft before live audiences. No, not Liverpool, but ... Germany. Zexiv has part of his roots there, his maternal grandmother hailing from Berlin. He has been there only once before, back in the mid-nineties, to Berlin and Potsdam. Back then he was still unmarried and it was quite an experience and an adventure travelling by himself, and seeing Europe for the first time. Middle Sister was then studying in Glasgow and so he made the trip to Scotland to see her - where she introduced him to fish and chips - after spending about a week with his uncle, aunt and cousins in Germany. He has many fond memories from that European tour long ago - the delicious dinners his aunt would prepare, drinking with his German cousins, exploring the Berlin Zoo with a simple Kodak point-and-shoot he bought on a stopover in Amsterdam, going to Berliner Dom, Checkpoint Charlie Museum, and the summer palace of King Frederick in Sanssouci with his uncle who generously took the day off so he could show Zexiv Potsdam. His only regret then was that he wished he could have spent more time in the country, but 3 weeks was about the maximum leave he could take from his bank job.

For this upcoming trip Zexiv will get the chance to see more of this beautiful and fascinating country. We will be accompanied by Puff and Zexiv's mother and be travelling mostly by rail to some very interesting places - Cologne, Bonn, Hamburg, Berlin, Munich, Rothenburg ob der Tauber. It should be quite an exciting adventure - probably not the spontaneous, daring, and unpredictable sort many young people who backpack through Europe like to do, but an adventure nonetheless. The last few weeks have seen a flurry of trip related activity at camp, with Zexiv arranging rail passes and reservations, making hotel reservations, and doing exhaustive research (he decided to finally invest in a travel book after being noticed by a sales clerk in a bookstore surreptitiously copying down information, who told him that sort of thing wasn't allowed :)). And planning what to bring.

Which brings us to the subject of this post. Zexiv and Puff have never been light packers, always needing at least a standard sized suitcase between both of them plus perhaps a duffle bag, if the trip involved any shopping, and their respective carry ons (normally a camera backpack and tripod for Zexiv). Because this trip involves a lot of travel by rail, we are trying something new, limiting our luggage to one 22 inch suitcase each. We saw a number of interesting articles on the net advocating the pack-only-what-will-fit-in-your-handcarry approach (Zexiv's friend Reader has done this a number of times, never checking in luggage when he travels). It points to a number of benefits, such as not having to worry about losing your luggage when flying, being able to breeze through airports after arrival without having to go through luggage claim first, and being very mobile. Many of them have common suggestions, such as going for dark and basic colors which you can easily mix and match, packing only what you will need and not what might come in handy, bringing just a few days worth of clothing and doing at least one laundry stop during the trip, using layers during cold weather instead of going for bulky jackets, etc. All quite useful and which sound, like many things, good on paper.

Unfortunately we still have the problem travelling photographers face all the time - how much photography equipment to bring. Zexiv usually likes to bring both a digital and film slr for trips, the latter for more "serious" black and white photography, and he loves his heavy ultrawide and telephoto f/2.8 zoom lenses and Benbo tripod, if he doesn't have to lug it around with him the whole day that is. But he doesn't want to be one of those photographers who are so involved in seeing a trip through a viewfinder, that they end up missing a huge part of the trip itself. Photographers everywhere will have their own "go light" recommendations - a "do all" zoom lens, or 2 lightweight zoom lenses and one fast fixed focal length lens, or one normal fixed focal length lens - the choices are endless. On the other hand Zexiv's original photo teacher back home (now wisely switched to guitar playing) tells him to bring the usual as "you don't want to be underequipped if you come across an Ansel Adams moment". Good one :).

It is indeed a quandary ...

Francisco Tarrega's Recuerdos de la Alhambra

Zexiv's sister Grasshopper injured her knee the other day, going down the subway steps in New York. Zexiv prescribed RICE - no, not the complex carbohydrate but the standard treatment for minor injuries which he learned in an introductory PE class at the state university long ago - Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation. He hopes Grasshopper's knee is a lot better now.

Actually, there are some other remedies as well some say can help a bit in hastening recovery, such as massage and accupunture, which coupled with a good rehab exercise routine, can do wonders, as Zexiv discovered when he injured his lower back almost two years ago. And we have our own yet to be proven cure-alls, such as a bar of good chocolate (Zexiv's recommends Cadbury Fruit and Nut or Hershey's Kisses :)), a steaming mug of brewed coffee, a Peanuts comic book, and soft soothing music, like this piece Recuerdos de la Alhambra.

Recuerdos de la Alhambra (Memories of the Alhambra) is a famous classical guitar piece composed by Spanish guitarist and composer Francisco Tarrega. We discovered it recently in YouTube (in this particular video the piece is performed by Kazuhito Yamashita), while searching for videos on Zexiv's favorite classical guitarist Andres Segovia. While Segovia is frequently cited for his contribution in bringing the classical guitar to world concert halls and making it a respectable instrument of classical music, Tarrega, who died in 1909, is known as the father of classical guitar.

A beautiful and haunting piece inspired by the famous Moorish palace and fortress in the south of Spain, it sounds like a duet but is played by just one guitar. Zexiv remarked that the tremolo reminded him of the sound of a banduria from his rondalla days. Listen to it with some good chocolate and a steaming mug of coffee. or better yet, churros and hot chocolate.

Where in the World is Inverbras' Dahon?

We spotted Inverbras' Dahon Speed TR yesterday on our way to a hardware store. Inverbras used this bike for a short duration - even starting a blog on it - before he opted for a full size Canondale mountain bike. Kind of a hassle to lug up and down his brownstone walk up in the New York West Side, he told Zexiv, when asked why he decided to replace it. Plus something about having to pedal a lot more as compared to a bike with standard sized tires.

On the other hand this kind of bike does lend itself naturally to the idea of Vancouver downtown high density and low impact "green" living. We already use CFLs for a number of our lights, walk or take public transportation whenever possible, and do our part to recycle. Imagine a small folding bike you can take with you on the elevator in a bag without the neighbors making a fuss (or even knowing that there is a bike sharing an elevator with them), and then store in a walk in closet. Probably not the sort of thing you'd use to ride a century in (which Inverbras and Ozaymas just completed today), or use in technical North Shore trails, but it might be just the right thing for exploring the seawall and the outskirts of Stanley Park. In the Dahon website it is touted as the bike for those whose "idea of a vacation is heading to Croatia, Costa Rica or Vietnam to tour the local back roads".

Perhaps it is time to reexplore the idea of a "folder" again ...

Old Houses are not Forever

The concept of the ancestral home is a very recurring theme in Engish literature - particularly that which is set in the Victorian era - evoking images of ivy covered walls, oak paneled drawing rooms, chandelier-lit dining halls, heavy furniture, stale air, and generations after generations of families all living and dying under the same roof. Frequently the old home is an essential element to the plot itself and provides a certain air of mystery and suspense, without which the story would not hold together so well. Think of Baskerville Hall from The Hound of the Baskervilles, Darlington Hall from The Remains of the Day, and Dunoran House from Sir Dominic's Bargain. A modern condominium filled with contemporary furniture somehow does not quite provide the same atmospheric effect.

Unfortunately, the idea of the eternal ancestral home seems to be a dying one nowadays. It is simply not practical, when the owners of an old house pass on, to keep the house going year after year. It would be a simpler matter if each couple that owned a house were to have one child, who would then marry later on and also produce one child, and so on, so that the ownership of the house would pass directly to a clearly designated successor. Or perhaps as in Baskerville Hall, if there was no direct heir, the closest surviving (and unfortunately cursed) relative would assume ownership. In the real world however, many couples have more than one child, who then move out after marrying and having families of their own. Maintaining an empty old house, particularly in the tropics, where heat, humidity, termites, and the yearly monsoon all combine to cause all sorts of upkeep problems to continually crop up, would probably be a very expensive and losing undertaking in the long run.

Zexiv has always been fascinated with his paternal grandparents' house in New Manila in the home country. His grandparents acquired the house shortly after World War II, after their old house in Sta. Mesa had been bombed during the liberation of Manila. According to stories heard from one relative, the house had at one point been owned by a lady friend of an American army general or senior officer. Zexiv's grandparents spent a few years there, and then moved in the late 40s or early 50s to the United States, staying there until most of their children had grown up in the late 60s. They then moved back to their old house in New Manila. Zexiv's parent's preceeded them in returning to the home country and lived there for a perhaps 2 years, and this was thus the first house that Zexiv knew.

The house was built in the traditional Spanish style of many pre-war houses in the Philippines, with high ceilings, rippled glass windows, patterned floor tiles, a second floor balcony, a winding wooden staircase with statues of saints on the landing, and a separate building, which contained the garage and houseboy or driver's quarters. Zexiv's grandparents stayed in a room on the ground floor, which also contained the maid's quarters, and living room or sala, and an extended room for entertaining, while the second floor contained the children's bedrooms and another room which was used as a storeroom. As a child, Zexiv was always scared of the house, particularly the second floor and would make sure that at no time he was ever up there by himself. His curiousity would sometimes get the better of him though, and he remembers discovering at one time, interesting old toys in one of the rooms used as a storeroom, which also contained an old four poster bed that Zexiv's great grandfather was supposed to have died in. Perhaps because it was a very old house, he would have recurring nightmares, long after Zexiv's parents had moved out (initially to a rented house in Sampaloc Avenue, and later to a house of their own in Makati), of hordes of snakes crawling around the garden outside and vampires trying to break into the house at night.

Later on Zexiv's uncle and aunt built a house in the adjoining compound and the extended family would come to Zexiv's grandparents' house for a delicious Sunday lunch prepared by Zexiv's grandmother and aunt. His grandparents had a huge garden (at least in the eyes of the little grandchildren) and Zexiv, his siblings and their cousins enjoyed playing cops and robbers with their toy guns, hide and seek, and at times touch football (which Zexiv played but could never quite understand). The adjoining house of his uncle and aunt added new hideouts for the kids, and Zexiv's uncle would sometimes entertain Zexiv and his cousins by twirling around their toy revolvers, just like the gunfighters did in the movies. He remembers many things about his grandparents' house from his childhood - the different dogs his grandfather kept at various times (his most memorable of them being a huge and gentle half breed poodle named Maurice), the crunching sound the cars would make when rolling up the gravel stone driveway, an old dinner bell that sat on a console table, the santol and sampaloc trees that stood near the garage, old shrapnel marks from the Second World War on the bathroom of the second floor, an earthquake that shook the house once while the family was dining there, the tv shows that Zexiv would watch as a child in his grandparents' room, a hat rack that contained a pith style helmet that his grandfather wore on trips to the fishponds in Bulacan, the Lionel train that his grandfather liked to bring out every Christmas Eve.

After Zexiv's grandmother passed on a few years ago (Zexiv's grandfather had died more than 10 years earlier), the family made the sad decision to sell the now empty house and not long after that it was torn down. Last year Zexiv went home and was surprised to see tall grass growing where the garden and the house used to be. There are sure to be a couple of snakes out there now, thought Zexiv, as he surveyed the jungle like scene. Zexiv remembers walking slowly down the driveway almost to the end and being amazed to find the foundation still there, and recognizing the familiar patterned tiles from the floor of the dining room and sala. Somehow the lot seemed much smaller now with the house gone. It was a surreal feeling and brought back many memories ...

Diamonds are forever. Old houses are not.

Farewell to the old house ...

P.S. Thanks to Zexiv's cousin for forwarding this picture taken by a photographer friend of the family's before the house was torn down. We hope to give credit once we get his name ...

P.P.S. Zexiv remembers his grandfather, whose birthday it was today.