cardriver turned busrider once more

let me let you in on a not-quite-a-secret: i love commuting, as long as commuting is an option and i can take the car when i want.

complicated? here's the long-ish explanation that i hope will make sense:

growing up, i couldn't really understand why my mom would sometimes opt to commute rather than take the car to work. she'd drive and park at a certain undisclosed location, then take the jeepney all the way to laguna. it isn't safe at all, some of her friends reminded her.

me -- i resented not being able to use the car, even more so when my mom and dad first went to the US and i was living in las pinas and commuting to ortigas on a daily basis. there were two serviceable cars in the garage, and there i was, in my teacher outfit, daring myself to go out in the pouring rain. i think more than once i almost cried at the thought that the cars were drier that i was.

and so what if i couldn't drive yet. IMHO, the reason why i couldn't drive was the fact that i didn't have any vehicle to practice on.

then my mom went home, and then she migrated to the US for real and she had no choice but to distribute the cars to her kids: one for my brother, and one for myself. and since i had to get an operation which basically left me unable to get around in jeepneys and buses, i had to learn how to drive real fast.

and you know what, i did. of course that didn't happen without a bazillion mishaps taking place, but i didn't care. a car is a thing. a thing can be replaced and/or fixed. freedom -- the kind that comes with a vehicle -- is priceless.

so i drove -- to the shopping center (from my dorm 300 meters away, but so what?), to law school, then eventually to work, then one magnificent moment -- from UP to BF. after that, sky's the limit. i had me and my car, and we were going places.

and when spike arrived, that meant more freedom -- spike was tiny, can be parked easily, and zoomed (as quickly as a 1.3 can) around the city. spike went to tagaytay. spike went to cabanatuan. spike went to subic. spike went where i wanted to go. i may have had boyfriends then, but spike, spike was (and is) my one true love.

then gas prices increased. and spike had to learn how to stay at home. or, since taking a trike was expensive, spike had to be parked in the exact undisclosed location where my mom used to park her car.

they say an apple doesn't fall far from the tree. in this particular case, as much as it pains me to admit, yes, i am very much like my own mother.

but then as i am the one who pays for insurance, regular maintenance, gasoline, and all other incidental car expenses, i finally understood the charm that comes from having a car and then not using it. when i wake up each morning, i'm faced with a dilemma -- do i take the car or not? if i'm late, i definitely take it. if i'm not, i sometimes don't. if i'm sleepy or particularly broke, i commute. and if i'm feeling rich or the skies are dark, then i take spike. i realized that freedom didn't come from car ownership; freedom came from having the choice as to what to do with the car.

so, while i still am a cardriver, i regularly dabble with being a busrider once in a while. try it ... it could be fun.

the road less traveled

ever since i was a kid, according to my mom, i've been good with directions. so good, she related once, that i was actually able to direct her through the regular short-cut my school bus takes when i was a teeny-tiny pre-schooler.

i kid you not.

so, i don't know if it was just the built-in confidence level or my innate directional skills but i grew up with a good sense of direction. and that translated to me being adventurous with roads.

enter the c5 extension.



now, i'm a las pinera, and the c5 extension thing has been this giant white elephant, at least insofar as i was concerned, cause i never figured out (at least in my head) where it leads to. of course it says "c5 extension" and i knew where c5 was, but i couldn't exactly figure out how it connected to the c5. until one day, it made sense in my head and i thought, maybe somewhere through multi or villamor or something like that.

however, since a working day was never really a good day to try out new routes and i hardly ever leave the south on a weekend, i never had the chance to try out the c5 extension road.

until today.

so even if i hadn't had lunch yet (it was 430 p.m. already) and i had every plan of driving through the mcdonald's at kabihasnan, i figured, why not today?

so i tried it out.


at first it seemed promising: wide roads, directional signs, and most importantly, no traffic.

however, it wasn't long before i ended right smack in the middle of multi/merville. and there was zero directional signs. thank goodness for my (amazing!) skill in following other cars and my (amazing!) memory (translation: medyo naalala ko siya from the two or so times i passed there previously) because after a couple or so minutes of being *slightly* lost, i sort of found my way and was happily driving on familiar roads once more.

the verdict: it was a longer route, much longer than passing through kabihasnan-coastal-baclaran-edsa extension, and it was slightly hectic, especially if you're not familiar with the roads inside multinational and merville. also, it's about 2 to 3 kilometers only of paved highway before you hit the village and you're faced with a typical village road -- complete with humps, tricycles, and potholes. not exactly the fastest way to get from point a to b.

i love manny villar (even if i did not vote for him) and i love what his family has done for las pinas (at least the parts that i know). but i must say, i think the c5 extension was just a waste of the taxpayers' money.

*image uploaded by user "apiong" on http://www.skyscrapercity.com