may 1st long weekend

this post has been long in coming indeed, truth to tell, i've not been in a blogging mood much of late.

however, it does pay to jot down things of a holiday nature, before the ravages of time and a faulty memory consign the events into a haze of forgetfulness.

so, taking advantage of the long weekend afforded by the may 1st labor day holiday, a trip to pangasinan was cobbled together. with an attrition in numbers that seems natural to group outings as these, the final count (on the final day) was enough to squeeze all and sundry into just one vehicle, a previous-generation short-wheelbase toyota hiace. "squeeze" being the operative word. which led to a fraying of tempers on the trip back, but that's getting ahead of the story.

why pangasinan, you may ask. well, for the prime instigators of the trip, perhaps it was to make good on the goal of the previous year's holy week trip -- on which we failed to make it to a certain beach in/named bolinao, try as we might (and twice attempted, all told, in a span of a couple of days).

friday night, and, as to be expected, unexpected hangups prevented a scheduled departure -- but this ought to be no surprise, and it wasn't.

off we were, 33% over the comfortable capacity of the swb van (true, it has jump seats behind the second row, but just you try to sit still in them for six hours straight -- it's torture), and a time somewhat shy of midnight (don't recall the exact time now -- so much for memory). drifted in and out of sleep during the trip, especially in the tarlac stages of the trip, until finally, at about 5am we arrived at the dagupan garden/village hotel. seeing as our numbers could not be accommodated in one of their admitted large rooms, we ended up with two. i was in the group that got room 45, the others in room 40.

breakfast, then a bit of sleep.

shy of lunch, we all got up, and the first foray to bolinao was attempted. this time, though, we had a guide. naturally, lunch was first and foremost in the minds of all. it was, as it had been previously, at the "d'original hito-an cm restaurant", where during the meal, it appeared that there were eagles or a similar bird of prey flying about over the fishponds that surrounded the restaurant. they were too far away for the 3x zoom of the digital camera to make out clearly, but i did take a picture of three of them.

meal wolfed down, the trip continued with the guide car in front.

then, just shy of 3pm, the hiace's horn went on, stayed on; the nose dove as brakes were applied, to the point that the wheels were locked and scrubbing on asphalt. in the windshield, a flash, a vision of an old man on a bicycle, completely broadside to our oncoming van, eyes scrunching shut for the inevitable contact.

the tires' scrubbing stopped, the old man vanished from the view out front.

there was a moment of silence, then the driver got out, and the circus began, or attemped to.

turns out that the braking had been miraculously spot on, with the only side effect being nudging him off his bike.

there were a few witnesses who laid the blame on the old man, as he had dashed between the gap in our convoy; however, the old man's relatives began to arrive and browbeat the earlier witnesses into silence. the potential for ugliness was now rising. somehow or other, it turned out that there was a clinic a few meters down the road, and the old man was taken there in the guide car. some male relative took it upon himself to call the local police, who arrived in a short while. strangely enough, the police were very pleasant, and did not seem of the mind to lay blame on either party, and after a while had gone on their way.

once the old man had been given a preliminary examination, the convoy then proceeded to the bugallon general hospital (and dialysis center) for x-rays to be taken. the rest of the afternoon went by as the procedures were accomplished, x-ray taken and developed. then it was back to the clinic, where the resident doctor proclaimed him in once piece (save for some minor wounds where he hit the tarmac).

it was, in sum, a rather unreal experience. especially if one took into account that this day was also the wedding of the old man's daughter, who was part of the first clinic proceedings with her hair all done and coiffed, and makeup still in evidence. certainly a day to remember, for all of us.

with night approaching, the decision was made to continue on to the beach. turned out that last year, we were actually on the right track, and we decided to turn back just shy of the goal. well, not quite. at the point we had turned back, there was still an hour's worth of bad almost-gravel roads to negotiate and then a dirt road to the beach entrance.

and there we were. at about 8 in the evening, we finally made it to the beach. in the distance could be seen the grand lighting of the other, posher, beach resorts that we had all passed to make it to this, the farthest accessible end of the beach at bolinao.

the sky was dark, with clouds, so the stars appeared between the tattered rags of dark grey. the beach where we were was unlit beyond the sundry incandescents and flourescents of the rudimentary cottages built by the enterprising local folk.

one of our number had brought along a high-candlepower handheld searchlight, and our guide driver was flashing it about; the beam was impressive, showing the clarity of the water, and for a brief instant, playing on some nude activities in the surf (so i'm told, i was looking up at the time).

guide was offering an overnight stay at his family's nearby rest house, and this was discussed by the group amidst intense lobbying by some. however, a certain bullishness borne of travel fatigue came to the fore, and the group decided to retreat to the airconditioned comfort (such as it was) of the garden/village hotel. after a gas stopover for the guide car (and at a place run by a relative of his), the car began to run roughly. some ideas were discussed, then i suggested that perhaps it was the fuel, and that he ought to get some higher octane gasoline in his tank to make up for the swill that apparently his last stop had burdened him with. he went for the shell velocity stuff, and that seemed to negate the rough running. we were on our way again. trip back, not including a dinner stopover at a place called "adora's" (with a slogan: "your taste is our business"), was about three hours all told

as to the food at adora's, well, perhaps it was the hunger, and perhaps not, but i liked the fried fish. turns out, later, that the rest house had no running water, so that would have been a bummer had we actually elected for that option.

sleep, and thus ended day 1. i mentioned earlier something about "airconditioned comfort," and it transpired that room 45 had a less than adequate airconditioner to cool the room, so prior to departure the following day, arrangements were made to transfer to another room with a hopefully working aircon unit.

bright and early the next day (as early as it could be to coordinate the waking of so many... about 9am), we set out for the beach again. somewhere along the way, we stopped at a mall and got some snack and other stuff to take to the beach. it was an odd kind of place, especially as instead of a supermarket attached to the mall, there was a full-fledged wet market in the basement...

half past noon saw us to the white sands of bolinao, where an empty cottage was located, far from the caterwauling of karaokes and their tone-challenged users, and we dumped our stuff there.

i didn't go into the water immediately, i left that to the others. remarkably, when i did go, i didn't stay long in the water, as some miscreant had throughtlessly emptied his/her bowels into the clear waters somewhere up the beach (likely among the rocks between our stretch of beach and a posh-looking resort in the distance), and the results were floating to our general location.

suffice to say that it negated any desire to stay in the water much longer...

so i just hung around the cottage, and contented myself with the oncoming sunset. took a bunch of pictures, trying to figure out among the multi-fangled settings of the digicam a way to get a 'what you see is what you get' kind of shot. turns out that max optical zoom is one way to lower the ccd's overload response to the light, and i went as fast as i could through the asa numbers as the sun raced down to meet the sea. matter of fact, i should have kept notes on the numbers that worked. next time, maybe.

a note about the beach. it's actually quite nice, the sand, unlike that of puerto galera's white beach, say, is amazingly soft to the feel. even if it gets between your skin and your sandal webs, it doesn't rub raw.

and then there's the fact that a river flows right behind the beach, separating it from the mainland (i think it could be called that). the river doesn't have a visibly appreciable flow, though, so i'm not sure if it's really that. don't even remember seeing if it makes it to the sea, actually.

nightfall, and departure. and then, a catch. that very evening, in dagupan city, there was scheduled, i believe, a world-record attempt at a "longest grill." it was decided to try to make it there, to join the fesitivities. i was not certain that it would be worth the effort.

off we went, and took a wrong turn. ended with a non-functional lighthouse looming over us as we did a u-turn. surprising, that. back on the right track, we sped through the night, and as we parked near enough to the location of the evening's festivities, fireworks went off in the sky above.

we got to the place, and it was over. with hunger now an insistent companion, it was decided to try for a jollibee or something to that effect. as we turned a certain street, a restaurant hove into view. there! and so we reversed a bit, and so came to the bonsai cafe of good coffee, small sizzling boneless bangus, very nice leche flan indeed, and a limited supply of small c2 iced tea drinks (and even iced-tea mix) -- we ran them out of the latter two items for that evening.

if you chance by there, look at the trophies in the display case. the wording will seem a bit odd, but with some thinking, it will make sense. in time.

a transfer to room 18, and all is well and cooler (though not as cool as room 40).

last day of trip, and a side trip to a purveyor of sharp bladed implements of, well, potential individual destruction (or at the very least, maiming). from dagupan, we headed in the direction of la union, but instead of heading up to baguio (which we could have done, really), we turned aside and headed i know not where precisely.

at a certain point, i made note of a sign that had a thought provoking message on it. beyond that, we stopped at a gas station to ask for directions. and turned back, but not before being flagged down by local police (not sure why). somewhere around the interesting sign, there was a road beside a sari-sari store, and that was our intended destination. leaving the van next to a waiting shed, we walked up the short road and came to a house. the inhabitant thereof affirmed that he was indeed that whom we sought, but as far as swords were concerned, he had none in stock, having shipped them all out to his customers... but he did have some inventory pictures and a few small samples about.

now, in the course of handling the samples (taking a blade out of a recalcitrant sheath), one of us managed to slice a finger (though not deeply enough to require stitches). deep enough to bleed (how much, i wasn't certain -- i wasn't around for the event: i had decided to be uninterested when i found out he didn't have any large swords in stock, and had gone out).

however, all was not lost, and it was discovered that some ways up the road, there was another place that also did similar business. off we went, and we hit the mother lode.

in a showroom, the man had more than a dozen swords on display, mostly replicas from movies. some of those things were seriously large, and heavy. and they were all sharp. i was more interested in the japanese blades, but they were disappointing. though i'm sure they could be fearsome implements to use, provided you could use them as intended, i was not taken by the level of artisanship involved in their making. perhaps i expected too much.

of note, one of the trophies in the display case in the showroom had the enterprise winning an award for excellence "...in cutlery".

cutlery indeed.

and so, all that was left was to head on home, and so we did.