Two things happened during the weekend, one was the Saturday trail ride,¹ the other one was a spontaneous road-trip with Cris to Tagaytay the next day.

Jersey Ride Gallery

Tagaytay Anniversary Gallery

Sta Rosa Ride

Otherwise known as the Rideable “Jersey Ride” – where we now got to wear our jerseys designed by yours truly ;)

Actually, it’s basically just a Peanuts (Charlie Brown) design, so it’s hardly what you would call “original” – but I did manage to add a semblance of a biker feel to it:

Lots of “doinks” moments on that ride.

I forgot to bring my sunglasses so I had to borrow Michelle’s, then our helper forgot to make sure my gloves were actually a pair so I only ended up bringing a single glove. Thankfully Vic had an extra pair. They were red, but hey, better bagets than blistered right?

Then there was Vic forgetting to bring the key to his bike lock. Thankfully it was a chain-type tool so Arnold was able to destroy it with a dremel.

Finally there was Diego (the youngest) bonking² at the very end of the ride. What makes this noteworthy was that we were all in our mid-20s up to 50s… and Diego’s a teen-ager :) So this was a good example where “pacing” actually allowed us “oldies” to outperform the “kids” – but in fairness to Diego, he was on point right up to the end.

But those off moments didn’t compare to the news we received that a group of riders were held-up at gunpoint and had their bikes stolen that same morning.³ Worse was that it was also a birthday ride of a friend and [new] bandmate! It’s beyond me how God can be so cruel sometimes, but hey.

Tagaytay Getaway

Cris wasn’t able to bike with us, so the very next day, we both found ourselves back south to start our “play it by the ear” whole-day monthsary date. We actually always intended to do a road trip just for the heck of it, but realizing it also fell on our monthly anniversary (which we both tend to forget) I guess the day had more meaning than it normally would.

The challenge when doing a whole day unplanned affair is finding ways to kill time, apart from finding good places to eat, of course :) We were able to accomplish the killing time part no problem, but as far as the food tripping goes, it was 50/50.

We started with an early lunch at The Boutique – which was said to be known for their Baby Back Ribs & anything grilled, I guess.

Thats was, without a doubt, the best meal of the day, and I would recommend it to anyone.

The next issue is how to kill time from then to say, merienda or dinner. Since we were already there and had nothing better to do, we decided to do an ocular of the “Moon Garden.”⁴ PhP 3k per night (good for two), free breakfast, all Villas are exactly the same… and each Villa’s bathroom is awesome – the accomodations kinda gave me a wierd yet appealing Flintsones vibe.

We tried to kill as much time at Moon Garden by taking pictures but still had so many hours to burn afterwards. We decided to go to the Picnic Grove, hoping to find something to do there.

The place was packed! We just ended up walking around a bit – and getting one of those ridiculous hats that all the kids are wearing nowadays.

Cris suggested we kill time in “Bag of Beans,” since that had a very homey feel to it – and that’s exactly what we did. Some Hot Choco Tablea and Cheesecake for merienda and just surfed the web trying to find out where we could go for dinner.

Andanita Taj, was mentioned constantly in the sites we ended up Googling, so we decided to try it out.

I will confirm that if you’re after the ambiance, Taj was a great find. We were the only customers that afternoon/night so we were able to just kill time using their free WiFi and doing ridiculous things like this:

I can’t really say anything about the food since I’m not a fan of Indian food, but I enjoyed staying there – especially if you had dibs on the room/area where we ate – it was really a nice place to wind-down and lounge-around.

I would imagine it being a nice date place too if you’re after the company more than the food ;)