Monday, November 06, 2006 Editorial: Going bicycles
IS THERE a Filipino childhood that does not recognize the homemade contraption of recycled wooden slats and makeshift wheels or a locally assembled three-wheeler with colorful plastic tassels and a shiny paint job?
Scooters and bicycles are fixtures in this country’s earliest rite of passage, bridging the awkwardness of mastering one’s limbs to the headiness of racing against snot-nosed rivals up and down the streets of the old neighborhood.
But for many Filipinos, this age of innocence ends all too soon.
Whether it is to avoid darkening the skin through prolonged exposure to the sun or to save face by arriving at one’s destination without sweating and smelling offensive, Pinoys abandon walking and biking for the social necessity of taking a ride in a fossil fuel-guzzling, expensive-to-maintain, environmentally threatening private or public utility vehicle.
Commuter logic and status branding can always rationalize the monopoly of automobiles, despite public works scams, traffic chokepoints, ill-maintained roads, stressors like the encroachment of street vendors and skywalk-illiterate pedestrians, road rage, road accidents, road deaths.
Isn’t there a gentler, kinder way of making one’s way in this world?
Commune
If cycling in the country doesn’t faze Martin Langevoord and Jens Funk, it’s not because they weren’t born in the country or haven’t yet acquired the local bias against biking and other forms of manual exertion.
More likely it will be because Langevoord, a marine biologist from The Netherlands, and Funk, an Information Technology (IT) specialist from Germany, have covered the Visayan Islands, from Cebu to Siargao, Palawan, Romblon and Camiguin, on their bikes.
Aside from their development work in the country—Langevoord was involved with the Coastal Resource Management Project while Funk handles IT curriculum development and teachers’ training at the Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (Cite)—it was cycling along the trails in Cebu that made them know the country better.
“We intensely feel that our passion for the Philippines comes mainly from the way we got to know the country: by bicycle.” Funk, who road-biked from Germany to England when he was 16, told the Khaleej Times Online that he learned to ride mountain bikes for the first time in the country. “I’m a German by passport and a Filipino by heart.”
Recently, the friends captured their explorations by writing and publishing “Cycling Philippines.” In his e-mail to Sun.Star Cebu, Funk said he was surprised that, despite the readiness of Filipinos to assist and befriend them during their travels, the foreigners cycling here are fewer than the ones he met in Thailand, Vietnam and Laos.
In appealing not just to expatriates but locals to take up cycling, Funk wants their biking-and-writing collaboration to contribute to cyclo-tourism. “The benefit for the environment will be clean air ...for the individual it will be that bike commuting (entails) less (than) jeepney (fares).”
Bridge
Believing that joining a group of disciplined enthusiasts can distract youths at risk from alcohol and drugs, Langevoord and Funk formed a non-profit organization that gathers bikes and assembles parts to give to less privileged Filipino youths.
The Bike 4U foundation holds that a “bike should be a right, not a privilege.” Working at Cite made Funk realize that many scholars need a bike but cannot afford one.
Aside from pledging P60 for every copy sold of “Cycling Philippines” to fund Bike 4 U programs, the tandem raised P60,000 by cycling 1,082 kilometers from Pakistan to China along the scenic but challenging Karakoram Highway last September.
Their voyage through snow-capped mountains of over 7,000 meters, including the Kunjerab Pass at 4,730 meters, was supported by corporate sponsors, as well as from kilometrage purchases sold online at P60 or 1EU$ per kilometer through the expedition’s daily journal at bugoybikers.com.
In his e-mail to Sun.Star, Funk wrote that Bike 4 U will bring over 100 bikes from Germany for low-income adults, youths and children; hold summer camps and trainings on bike safety, repair and maintenance; as well as organize bike volunteers to advocate for more bike commuters.
In “riding the roof of the world for a Filipino cause,” Langevoord and Funk proved that, in their words, “a bike is more than just a bike; it’s a tool that connects people.”
