From 4×4 to 2×1 – easy group ride!

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At the Vitara Club of the Philippines Christmas party a few friends who also ride mountain bikes requested we organize a 4×4 Philippines mountain bike ride for us to get together again on our 2-wheeled rigs.

We decided to set the date 3 weeks away from when we first talked about it. Dec. 27, 2009, was the chosen date.

We were aware how a lot of 4-wheelers who have tried mountain biking stopped riding their bikes for various reasons so a newbie/beginner pace and route was planned.

I also decided to invite an old friend, Chris, whom I haven’t seen for more than 5 years when I suddenly saw him a few weeks ago at the Fort Bonifacio tracks riding alone, when Team Prima decided to also ride those tracks.

The route was pretty easy: Climb The Wall to Timberland (mostly cemented uphill climbs until the start of Basic Trail), continue on to the Basic Trail which is a wide dirt road, exit Basic to a gate and more rolling and cemented road. Then we went straight to the Pestano farm for some lunch.

2009 12 27 Burning Fat Newbie MTB Ride with 4x4PH.com from Francis Arellano on Vimeo.

After lunch the others decided to head back down. Since Doc Riz and Chris were riding with me in the car, and they didn’t have any other commitments on that day we all decided to try out one of the Pestano farm mountain bike tracks. We chose the Red route (not sure of its difficulty, but I think that’s the most beginner-friendly track so as not to risk injury to Chris).

According to Doc Riz, who took the rear and had a front row seat on Chris’s Pestano farm run, Chris handled himself pretty well. We also concluded the same when Chris accepted our invitation to try out and ride the Malipay trails yesterday and was able to ride the relatively more difficult sections.

I have yet to fix the videos of our Pestano ride. Will post later on.

Anyway, riding at Mt. Maarat will not be complete without seeing some Mofos, whether they’re Mofos I’ve met before or not, and I took every opportunity to take photos of almost every single Mofo I met that day