By Atty. Jijil Jimenez
On a whim and looking to partly shake off the ennui of the pandemic – now almost two years running and no end in sight – I took up with the Highway Patrol Group’s Executive Motorcycle Riding Course (EMCRC) early this year to become a Tiger. That’s what they call its graduates – Tigers.
There is no going around those tough 16 training-days. Whether you’re civilian or in the uniformed services, tycoon or economic journeyman, top honcho or plain bronco, riding master or complete beginner, you go through it.
If you can hack it.
On the first day, they make you crawl under a dozen big bikes as a test of humility. Then they tell you what you are about to tame is a high-powered, high-performance speed machine that can kill or maim at a split second’s indiscretion, as a test of nerves. In fact, among the first things they teach you, after the standard hip gyration exercises, is how to fall off your bike, and get it back up straight, by yourself, assuming you still can.
I took it thinking it would help convince the wife to let me on a steel horse once again, at middle age. The course is heavy on skills, as well as safety. What I didn’t realize was that I was getting into some fraternity of sorts, with a few women in it, who proudly call each other mates. Blimey, how so British, no, Aussie!
So, there I was on asthmatic training bikes, doing tighter and tighter circles, figure of eights and slaloms round empty oil barrels, with kids half my age a day each week that lasted till August due to COVID alert level interruptions.
I was not a complete beginner. I first took up big bikes in Tokyo more than two decades ago. It was a different riding world then. The roads where perfect, and the traffic lights and street signs were a safety-minded rider’s Xanadu. Simply stick to your lane and you’ll be just fine at any speed you and your bike could handle, and their humorless police expressway prowlers will allow.
Most of all, the average Japanese motorist, four or two-wheeled alike, were the warrior-monks of road discipline. Strict, highly- trained and incorruptible enforcers, along with progressively rising insurance premiums based on individual risk profiles, made sure of that.
This is not to give an impression that the Japanese is a naturally timid rider. A people like that do not produce some of the world’s fastest superbikes for nothing.
Once, a gang of about 30 riders on Suzuki Hayabusas, driving at blinding speed, alternately cut within what seemed like inches before me even as I accelerated momentarily beyond the 120 kilometers per hour limit to gain momentum at the approach on Tokyo’s iconic Rainbow Bridge. I have since learned to coolly keep my speed constant under such stress, to keep my life. My 250cc Honda racer was a great beginner’s bike but had few options against such power. I left the calculations of life and death at the throttle to those devils on their 1350cc speed monsters.
It is not the speed itself but the sense of speed that gives the thrill. Inside the cabin of a good car, 180 kilometers on a good road could feel nothing extraordinary. But on a motorcycle, at truly great speeds, with your eyes fixed far ahead in the open highway, you experience a strange, almost ethereal stillness, as if all time stops and the horizon is closing in on you, and not the other way around. The ground is a blur, and the rattle of helmet against the wind, the roar of the exhaust and the pounding of pistons and heart of the rider is a symphony. It is like breaking the laws of gravity with the sheer lifting power of Beethoven’s Fifth.
A rider is a man alive, all senses tingling. And experienced riders learn to stay farther ahead of the bike the greater the speed, turning on a curve or swerving past others in the mind before they actually do. The name of the game is anticipation and reflex action. The concertof throttle, brake and body movement recedes from conscious thought until there is nothing else but the ride, when rider and mount become one, and gain flight.
At high speed, the brain stops thinking but, strangely, captures and understands all it receives from the senses. The eye stops looking and yet sees everything, even at a glance. A keen, almost supernatural sense of awareness creeps over. The body automatically leans at the proper angle, the hands push the handlebars at just the right counter-steering pressure and squeezes the clutch and front brake levers and turns and releases the throttle at just the right ratios at every demand of turn and exit to keep bike and body from falling or overshooting.
There is an electric, and yet calm Zen-like presence to the world at every single moment of life in the saddle because life itself literally depends on it. Nothing demonstrates the essential unity of mind and body better.
In the training of a Tiger, HPG instructors teach us to trust in the advanced engineering of today’s high-performance super bikes, and the physics of the mass and velocity of powered steel as they cajole, coax and poke at us doing slow-speed maneuvers on badly beaten training bikes. But affecting their sternest of looks and gravest of tone, they drum on our heads that safety is everything and, road courtesy, almost.
The Philippines has a United Nations commitment to road safety, and far too many accidents on two-wheels occur daily throughout the country. Road accidents pose not just a big health bill for the nation in the aggregate but, perhaps more importantly, a serious loss of valuable human assets as well. The motorcycle riding course, therefore, advances a major public good.
And yet, out there in the training grounds of Camp Karingal in Quezon City, I found myself on a romp rediscovering among young adults the kid in me, as I am sure the few who were around my age in my class, EMRC 12-2021 Bravo, and two or three even older ones, did too.
The final test was a jump at Fort Bonifacio in Taguig. You have to target a wooden ramp about three meters in length and two feet in width, picking up speed in the approach to gain momentum at the drop. It was a jump of just a little over two-feet-high, but it might just as well be a sheer cliff to our nerves in the anticipation.
I was not surprised when the youngest in our class, little more than a girl really, but who took upon her shoulders many of the nettlesome minutiae of program requirements for the class, to the relief of her more laid-back senior Tiger-in-training mates, was awarded among the best jumpers. With, maybe, relatively lesser cares in the world, these young uns have nerves of steel.
At middle age, I picked up a 650 cc cruiser bike. I thought it was just right for my riding objectives, to relax with my bike-riding, college-days buddies and revel in the solitary peace riding affords that is so priceless to one making a living off the life of the mind.
These days, there are bikes at over a million price points, with all the bells and whistles, like gyroscopes for that perfect balance and computer-aided traction controls, that makes riding like heaven. But I like the earthy, mechanical manliness of a basic cruiser, and the necessary alertness that full control over the ride requires. I take my bike for a ride, the bike does not.
Besides, I don’t want to worry over a bike that costs a small fortune when I park for a coffee break along the road. Better the bike be worrying about me.
I do enjoy the little courtesies accorded the status of Tiger on the road. But a true Tiger seeks freedom and wants to go home to his loved ones safe, for himself, and for others, too. That takes responsibility.
For the rare opportunity, thank you PNP-HPG Chief Brigadier General Alexander Tagum, Lion sir!
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Editor’s Note: Atty. Angelo “Jijil” Jimenez is Of Counsel at the Jaromay and Laurente and Associates and contributes thought pieces to various digital publications on a range of topics. He is an expert on international migration issues, having been Labor Attaché to Japan, Kuwait and Iraq and Deputy Administrator on the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA). He is also a lecturer on Philippine overseas employment laws at the UP Law Center’s Mandatory Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) program. He was a member of the University Philippines Board of Regents, the highest policy-making body of the UP System, from November 2017 to July 2021. He may be reached by liking and following his blog page on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/obtuse101