March 30th, 2014 marks the kickoff of the first ever Iloilo Bike Festival, an activity that is part of the Experience Western Visayas First, the flagship program of Department of Tourism Region 6 (DOT-6). To open this festival, a fun ride will be held along the streets of Iloilo City, passing through historic and tourist sites such as Calle Real and Jaro District. More than 1, 000 bikers are expected to join the fun ride, which will start and end at Megaworld Inc.’s Iloilo Business Park, located at the site of the old Iloilo Airport. The aim of the festival is to promote biking as a healthy and environment-friendly alternative mode of transportation in a society.
I am very excited for this festival for several reasons, the main being that I am a fan of biking. Basketball has been (and always will be) the sport that I love with all my heart, but I’ve been participating in numerous biking events as of late and it gives me that wonderful feeling of being on the open road, outside the confines of a 5-meter long, gas-guzzling chunk of metal. Also, biking makes you sweat, and we all know things that make us sweat is fun (except the summer heat, I guess).
I enjoy that feeling you get after biking where you, after exerting much effort and straining your leg muscles, feel light and loose as if all your stress and all the negative crap that’s hounding got left behind after you went cheetah mode. It makes up for having to wake up at 5:30 in the morning.
But besides the personal satisfaction that comes with biking, I am stoked for this festival because of the awareness that it raises to people. It promotes biking to people who know how to ride a bike, but would rather own a car to take them to places. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with owning a car. Obviously you need it when your work is in the city and you live somewhere far, like in, oh, I don’t know, Oton maybe. But a lot of people would still choose to ride in their car to go to places that aren’t so far away from where they live (i.e. house to market).
Cars consume gasoline. Gasoline is expensive. Gasoline is non-renewable, and would most likely run out in the near future. Gasoline, after being used by the car’s engine, becomes carbon monoxide. Carbon monoxide is a harmful gas that aids in global warming. Global warming, as we all know, is not fun. Whereas bikes rely on man-power. That means exercise. Excercise is good for us. And the only thing that biking causes us to excrete is sweat. Sweating releases toxins from the body, which is, again, healthy.
Again, owning a car isn’t bad. Just make sure you know what you’re doing to the planet. I sound like a hippie saying this, but please, do exactly that. Give the Earth a break from your smoke-belching vehicle once in a while and ride a bike, especially if the place you’re going to isn’t that far.
I hope the Bike Festival makes this point clear to everyone.
The routes of the fun ride include: Megaworld, Plaza Libertad, Fort San Pedro, Muelle Loney, Calle Real, Arroyo Fountain, Gen. Luna, Molo Plaza, Arevalo Plaza, Carpenters Bridge, Iloilo River Esplanade, Diversion Road, Jaro Plaza (Graciano Lopez Jaena Park) La Paz Plaza, Calle Real.
For more info about the festival, you can go to their Facebook event page or join their Facebook group. Additional readings about the 1st Iloilo Bike Festival can be read here:
patrickkennan.com 