My Turn Behind the Wheel

While this was not exactly my first roadtrip, this was the first time that I’d be driving myself. You see, even though I got my driver’s license when I was 16 waaaay back in the day, I only really started driving on my own last year. I used to be the youngest in the family, and we also had a driver, so most of the time, someone would be driving me around and I almost never got to use whatever I learned in driving school. As a result, I forgot most of it, though I did some rare driving in an automatic within our subdivision, and only once in Makati. And even that was years ago. Plus, everyone knows driving in the suburbs and driving in the business districts of Metro Manila have almost nothing in common. (Which is why when I enrolled in a refresher course, I made sure to do so in a school within the heart of excruciating traffic made more challenging by intimidating SUVs, rude jeepney and bus drivers: Makati. It’s easy to know how to start a car—but navigating the roads in a stickshift, while you’re slugging it out with a big bunch of bullies, is an entirely different matter.)

I was excited at the prospect of driving my first roadtrip because here’s the funny thing: I actually love driving. I’ve heard other designated drivers complain for years about being behind the wheel, and sure, because I only really drive stickshifts, I know it’s not exactly the loveliest thing during rush hour. And I’m not such an excellent driver, mind you (even my sister sometimes fears my driving attitude, as I tend to designate hit points to pedestrians when I’m bored. But don’t worry, it’s mostly just a joke). But there you go. I like driving in the wee hours of the morning or really late at night, especially on the skyway. I also like giving friends a lift; heck, I’d drive everyone, if fuel charges weren’t an issue. Surprising revelation from someone who usually likes sleeping in moving vehicles.

As I share driving this vehicle with men who are in the business of construction and engineering, my most common contribution in maintaining the car is providing the fresheners.  And tissue.  Hand sanitizers.  And a monthly shampoo, inside and out.

The clock says 6:53. We needed to be in SLEX by 7am because the car’s plate is restricted from major roads on Mondays.  Luckily, we were on our way out to Alabang by this time, and the clock was 15 minutes advanced.

I decided to bring our old Adventure for this trip. While we have newer and certainly faster cars, I thought I’d drive the one I use more often because I was also going to try (for the first time) high-performance fuel from Shell. If there would be any difference with the handling or the way the car was running, I wanted a familiar engine just in case I pick up on it. Although to be honest, I didn’t really expect a noob like me to pick up on anything—and not that I don’t believe high performance fuels are really better for engines in the long run, because I don’t doubt what the experts have to say about its purity and whatnot. But I thought it would be something maybe only mechanics notice, or car aficionados. Well, I was in for a couple of pleasant surprises.

Picking the Rest of the Party

Although I contemplated going on my own, as I was tempted to do many times before, alas, I couldn’t. To be honest, I don’t know that much about fixing cars so in case something happens, I wouldn’t know what to do (I don’t even know how to change tires). So I invited my best-friend-since-birth cousin, Rae, and her husband, Noel Salazar. They know zilch about fixing cars, too. But at least with the three of us, we had several cellphones, GPS devices, 3G as well as a couple of ideas to get us out of any common mishap.

Anyway, the two of them came straight from an out of town shoot so they were tired as hell when they got to my house.  (Rae is a make-up artist and Noel is a photographer.)  Unfortunately, I was using our family’s old Adventure, and it was on coding that day.  As luck would have it, I also happen to frequent the only two cities in Metro Manila that don’t have windows for coding–Makati (where I go often for meetings) and Las Pinas (where I live), so we really had to get to Alabang or the SLEX before 7 am hit.  They were late, being that they came straight from Nueva Ecija, and we were all worried we’d be stuck in a red zone.  I’m usually a laidback driver, but in this instance, I was overtaking all other vehicles *ahem* within reason (I wouldn’t really speed inside a subdivision with a lot of speed bumps/humps y’know *coughcough*).  We were all freelancers and we forgot that it was a holiday (we don’t operate with normal working hours, okay?).  Turned out, early morning traffic was light within BF and on our way to SLEX because there was no school.   But all my “safe” speeding/overtaking got me to notice that it was much easier to do compared to previous instances.  Remember, this was my first time to use high performance fuel, Shell’s V-Power Nitro Diesel.  So yes, I’m sorry that’s all I can offer, but it was the first thing a noob like me noticed.  ”Yay, I can outrun these twerps blocking traffic!”

Yep. This plate number is coding on Mondays.  But we got to SLEX safely at 7am.

Originally, I wanted this roadtrip to start in Taal, Batangas (the village, not the volcano) and end in Tagaytay.  But I figured since we were all tired and were in urgent need of relaxation, we should all take our first day really slowly.  We planned on stopping by Tagaytay first, checking in at our hotel, eating, resting, eating again, getting a massage and sleeping at least 8 hours.  Tagaytay is built exactly for those kind of activities anyway, which is why there are plenty of retreat houses there.

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