summer

The blog has a new look, thanks Maf.

What is odd though is that I don't bike, though I have a bunch of friends who keep on bugging me to do so. I have a bike helmet just over a year old gathering some dust in a drawer.

Every other verb on the site description, I do: these days biased towards swimming and reading. I haven't climbed a mountain since late October.

Summer is on everyone's mind these days. School is out, and the holy week is approaching. Since our family is moving out to a new place this April, there are no grand productions / major outings lined up. We'd all be presumably too busy (and out of disposable cash!) to do any of those. There have been some invitations to go to beaches nearby, but I've got this slight aversion now to just pile into a car and take off to the nearest nature spot (whether beach, mountain, or forest).

No matter how careful you are, as an eco-tourist, you're gonna be making a dent on these environments. Environments are not destroyed just by loggers with chainsaws. They're also affected by people who bake in the sun while ordering their fruit shakes. Mind you, I've got nothing (much) against this type of consumption, 'coz I've done that sort of thing myself. But if you're going to be heading out this summer and going to Bora(cay), Bohol, Palawan, wherever, you got to realize the impact you make.

I've told myself that if ever I go to a mountain this summer, I want it to be in the context of a clean-up climb. Same thing if I visit a beach or a dive spot. Since, inevitably, I'll be "leaving a trace", I want to already give something back, if only to achieve balance in this place that I'm visiting. A tourist/traveller is a powerful thing.

There's a big brother / big sister climb coming up some time this summer, and I'm thinking of doing this again. I did this last year, and essentially climbers go to remote communities (in the mountains) to give them some books and school supplies. It's nice if you're a mountaineer to do this. This is your small niche in helping out education in the country. But people who aren't into climbing can also join in. Some of the people who tried this out for the first time ended up taking BMC (Basic Mountaineering Courses) the rest of the year. This year, there's a climb May 13-14 in Abra. I will put in more information about this project the succeeding weeks.

It's April 1. That means it's Jess Lopez's birthday. He'll be topping the bar in a few years like Len and Joan? Stranger things have happened. He he.