The Sunday Drive

Life in Metro Manila is stressful. There are deadlines to meet, bills to pay, kids to take care of, bosses or clients to satisfy. For a lot of people, time off to relax whether it’s a night drinking with buddies or an early evening at the badminton court is as sacred as sleeping in on a weekend morning. Car lovers though, or at least those that like to drive, see intrinsic value in a few hours’ blast through the countryside at the helm of a sports (or sporty) car.

It’ll cost a few hundred bucks in gasoline, probably some wear and tear on the mechanicals, and for sure you won’t get to sleep in, but driving enthusiasts do look forward to those early morning speed runs to nearby, scenic locales such as Tagaytay or Antipolo. I’m sure you’ve seen the car clubs at some point or another; convoys of Porsches, Mazda Miatas, Lancer Evos and other speedy cars driving at a smart clip, stopping over at a trendy breakfast place like Antonio’s for coffee and pictures, then heading back to the city for lunch with the family.

And I can understand why they do it. You wouldn’t spend so much for a set of nice wheels just to toodle along in traffic, would you? And enthusiasts love company; what better way to enjoy the rewards of life than with like-minded folks?

Actually, one needn’t be a member of a car club to enjoy the pleasure of driving. You can do it by yourself, you can do it with the family. Things to look forward to are a chance to stretch the car’s legs and see what it’ll do freed from the suffocating urban smog and gridlock, as well as a chance to bond with companions and enjoy some scenery besides. In theory, that’s what we might call the "Sunday drive" because working people don’t need to be on the road, and hence the only people on the road are mostly those that want to be on it.

But that’s an experience ever harder to enjoy. Drive for stress relief? Don’t count on it anymore. Several months ago, I’d drive to Cogeo, Rizal practically every Saturday or Sunday, that winding two-lane road heading up to the Sierra Madres. Starting from the Wrigley plant in Antipolo, it’s a great set of zigzags that go up and down, including a stairstep-steep section about three kilometers from the Sierra Madre Hotel that’s a great test of a car’s power-to-weight ratio. There are few cars, and the view of the clouds in the valley below is just awesome. It would be a great drive I wouldn’t mind doing every weekend, but the stress just to get to the nice section and back is really unbearable. Why?

First, jeepney drivers in that area have no idea of the physics they toy with. Imagine you’re accelerating up a 10-degree hill with a sweeping left coming up, and then here’s comes this overloaded jeep heading towards you, its rear end actually swinging sideways already on the slippery, narrow road. Disaster and manslaughter charges are averted by your life-saving instinct to swerve to the shoulder, the driver blissfully speeding off with the passengers clueless as to how close they were to dying on the way to Sunday mass.

But don’t get me started on mass, though. See, there’s also this Iglesia ni Cristo church right after an intersection. Everybody needs a little religion, but do those tricycles and jeeps have to take up the whole road waiting for spiritually refreshed passengers to get in so they can, well, work on a Sunday? Allocate 20 minutes just to get through this 50-meter section. Of course, honking the horn is something you don’t want to do in front of a place of worship, even if it’s the right thing to do in the face of dozens of inconsiderate, ignorant drivers who feel they own the road. And then there’s the wet market intersection, which you’ll have to allocate another 20 minutes to cross because Sunday is also market day and, therefore, clogged with human and motorized traffic.

Road etiquette in this day and age? Don’t count on it, not even on a Sunday. We don’t even need public utility drivers to blame because we’ve got enough trouble in our midst as well. Southern dwellers (Metro Manila, that is. Sorry, Mindanaoan readers) know that every off-ramp on the South Superhighway is fraught with peril.

On the three-lane highway, count on the two lanes closer to the off-ramp to start clogging up as the off-ramp gets nearer, because it’s too much to ask people to follow those nice-looking, solid white/yellow lines on the supposed exit lane. And of course there’ll be a distinct lack of highway authorities to put some discipline on the road because, well, it’s a Sunday and that would probably cost a lot in overtime.

Ironically enough, it’s also on a Sunday that you really have to have all your danger sensors up. Fewer drivers mean more room to go faster, but not everyone’s as skilled as you might be when it comes to car control and judging distances and velocities. Imagine you’re on the right lane cruising at 100 and there’s another car in the next lane at the same speed, about eight feet ahead.

Here comes this Sentra going at Mach 1 in the lefttmost lane, except there’s a truck slogging in his lane ahead. Does he decelerate and wait for his turn to get in a faster lane? Hell, no. By the skin of his teeth, he shoots into the lane next to me, then actually darts into my lane too, practically rubbing fenders with me and forcing me to slam on the brakes and yell a dozen invectives. What a moron. But he did belatedly flash his turn signal lamp after the fact. Wow, thanks. Mr. WMP-455, we’d both be roadkill if it wasn’t for ABS. Amazingly enough, a similar near-miss would occur on the same stretch of road (the Bicutan area), though I was just a witness this time. One of these Sundays, that area will be clogged with traffic when the luck runs out.

So we’ve got morons in the transport sector and more in the private, but does the tension end there? Only if you like billboards. Practically every product or service has resorted this out-of-home medium, from inexpensive shoes to the famous cellphone services to, well, pantlyliners. I do have to give credit to that billboard on the C5-Ortigas flyover with the teen mistakenly wiping his face with a Libresse. At least I laugh every time I pass that area. Otherwise, they’re a persistent eyesore. Maybe even a hazard because although you might be paying attention to the road, the other motorists might be too busy ogling yet another giant-sized celebrity’s airbrushed assets to notice they’re already weaving all over the road. So much for the relaxing scenery.

Ever notice that you naturally tense up on the wheel and pedals every time you need to overtake? It’s a mad world on the road any day of the week now, and you have to be on full alert if you want to arrive at your destination safe and sane. The "Sunday drive" simply isn’t as pleasurable as it used to be and, if anything, it’s actually more risky than a weekday commute because of the higher speeds. Drive to Tagaytay for breakfast with a view? Maybe I’ll just sleep in these days.