On the Road

I’m sorry the front tire blew off when I hit the gutter, when I evaded the produce truck two streets away and I was too exhausted my mind drifted to coconut crabs slow-stewed in coconut milk and didn’t see it coming…

My head ran with apologies as I walked toward the panciteria, where I rented a bike for a day to explore a small town in Batanes. I was dallying the streets of Basco when I almost collided with a truck. I only had to swerve. But my dinosaur bike got the beating.

Everything in town is reachable by a half-day biking tour. I forgot, though, that it required the leg power of a triathlete to endure 7 hours of steep hills and slopping roads. For it was a pepper of rocky islands with mountain pasturelands and hedgerows and lighthouses. An ascent to any high point would provide a confluence of earth, sea, and sky—oftentimes with battering storms and gales. I came on a July and anticipated a deluge, which will have me getting stuck for a week or two. Instead, I was sizzling like a dried squid on the road.

I just pedaled my way to the lighthouse, where time stopped. Batanes lies at the tip of the peninsula, too far that provisions are rare—the weather too erratic both sea and air voyages have disclaimers. Here, life stagnated into a dream decided by the winds. From where I sat, I saw bancas shaped like half-cut coconuts bracing the colossal waves to either fish or ferry passengers. Yesterday, a local angler chopped a freshly-caught dibang (local flying fish) and turned it into sashimi before my eyes. I devoured it in less than a minute. Thinking of fish made me hungry so I dusted my saddle and descended like a ping-pong ball—abrupt turns to the right, blindly to the left, and teetering on roads that resemble skewered chicken innards.

The woman, a motherly woman in her 50s, accepted my apologies and seeing my spent state, offered a cold soda from her sari-sari store. “It’s free.” She smiled. I clutched the soda bottle that probably took one week to arrive and with the busted tire hanging over my head, felt guiltier. “I’m sure you’ll do the same for me one day.”

I decided not to argue and we ended chatting about the weather and the typhoon I came for but never arrived. I popped the tin knobble and drank. And as the dark liquid evaporated in my throat, I realized I’m glad I swerved.