Broken Coffee Cafe

It’s a perfect day for a race (**insert wicked laugh here).

It’s been raining like there’s going to be Part 2 of Noah and the Great Flood. Boulders have dislodged from their beds because of the incessant rain that loosened the soil, and the big rocks chose to settle in the middle of roads that wind their way down from my jungle home. Roads have turned into quagmire pits, and visibility is almost nill because of the constant fog.

Later today, twenty or so downhill mountain bikers will be slip-sliding down mountain trails near where I live, competing for the best time to ride through slippery, rocky, and cow-dung-strewn mountain footpaths that the mountain folks use to get to their homes on the shoulder of Mt. Talinis, which, for the time being, would serve as the racetrack for this impromptu downhill competition.

The standing record for best time on the open category for downhill mountain biking in the Camp Lookout, Valencia, Negros Oriental track is held by Joey Barba, who is the gold medal winner in the 2007 Southeast Asian Games downhill mountain bike competition. He ravaged through the 5-kilometer winding track that had technical obstacles of bushes, lanzones orchards, exposed tree roots, coconuts, cow manure, mud, barbed-wire fences, polythelene hoses the size of tree trunks, and dirt ramps in just three minutes and five seconds.

The rides will be using the same track today, and Tata plans on riding too (he won in the last Sandurot 2007 downhill mtb executive category champion cup at a time of 3 minutes and thirty-three seconds).

Safe ride, you guys!