Right to the Edge: Sydney to Tokyo By Any Means (28 page)

Big John greeted us. He was a huge man with a bald head, wearing the obligatory leather waistcoat bearing his club’s insignia. He was intimidating to look at, but he was friendly and inside we were made very welcome.

It was Friday night and lots of members were drinking beer, shooting pool and smoking cigarettes. One guy from Sweden was having a tattoo added to the many he already had; a couple of ‘prospects’ were wandering around wearing dog collars. Big John explained that any would-be member had to wear the collar at ‘dog functions’ for their six-month probation period.

The atmosphere was buzzing and the chat the same as that of bike lovers anywhere in the world - it was motorbikes, motorbikes and more motorbikes, in this case customised Harley-Davidsons. The members were from all over the world, a real mix of ex-pats and native Filipinos. They were a variety of age groups as well, although I reckon most were over forty.

The bike I would be riding had been built by Danny Stewart of
radkustomcycles.com
. Danny was an Australian who came to the Philippines for a holiday ten years ago and never went back home. He could certainly build motorbikes and for me he had a chopped Harley with massively long forks, a low-riding saddle and a side stand in the shape of an upturned finger.

‘Fantastic,’ I said as I tried it for size. ‘I’ll be fine. Just as long as you look after me and don’t drag me off somewhere to beat the crap out of me, like bike gangs are supposed to.’ The boys promised that nothing could be further from their minds . . .

 

 

We all hooked up again the following morning. There were about thirty members coming on the ride - the brotherhood was sixty strong but not everyone could make it because of family or work commitments. Big John rode up front and I joined him for a while. He told me that he was from Canada originally, which explained the maple leaf he wore on his colours. He had come over with a construction company, working on a contract that ran out in 2002. By then he had fallen in love with the place, so he stayed, formed his own company and was doing very well. There was another John in the group, John Morgan from England, who had been in Manila eleven years and had no intention of leaving.

One of the Filipinos, a man in his fifties whom everyone called ‘Boy’, asked me how I had slept the night before.

‘I slept OK,’ I told him. ‘Except I woke up in the middle of the night and I had no idea where I was.’

‘I know the feeling,’ he said. ‘I spent a long time in the corporate world, flying all over the place. I would fall asleep on a plane and wake up not knowing if I was going to my destination or coming home again.’

It was interesting listening to him. There he was with his colours and his bandanna, his rumbling old V twin; a man who had been riding bikes since he was ten and had his first Harley, a 1977 shovelhead, twenty-six years ago. For years he had been a suit-and-tie man immersed in the rat race; now he was a club member and for the first time in his life felt that he belonged. That’s how it is with groups like this: it’s mostly about friendship, camaraderie; like-minded people who look out for each other. Tribal, perhaps, but a brotherhood nonetheless.

The Mad Dogs came from all walks of life and it was wonderful riding together in convoy. I was reminded of that first day in Sydney, only this time I was on a chopper that grounded out in the corners and I really had to tug on the bars to get it turned. We were heading for Angeles City, a tourist spot that evolved from its proximity to the Clark Airbase. Until Mount Pinatubo erupted in 1991, Clark had been the largest US airbase outside the United States, but after the eruption the Americans pulled out.

Side by side we rode the back streets to an underpass and the main freeway, where we filtered between vans and trucks and cars. I have no idea why anyone would want to drive a car when they could be enjoying the freedom of a motorbike.

I was in my element again and I was happy. Riding along with a whole new group of people I would never have got to know in any other circumstances. In addition to the Swede I mentioned, who had been a commercial diver, I met a Scotsman from Dundee and a tall, rangy guy in his sixties called Bob Hunnicut. Bob was from Texas originally, a former US marine turned traffic cop, who had ridden motorbikes for eleven years with the Texas Highway Patrol.

‘Don’t ask me why I became a cop,’ he said. ‘Too nervous to steal, I guess, or too lazy to work maybe. Something like that anyway.’

We rode up country to Angeles City and the Big Hat Bar that was the Dogs’ home away from home when they were up this way. It was run by a good friend of theirs called Greg, a pony-tailed Aussie in his fifties. He looked at me a little strangely when I told him we were travelling to Taiwan by boat. The bar was sort of outside, open on one side though covered by a roof, and some of the guys rode right inside. It had started to piss with rain and there was room for a few bikes among the pool tables. As the engines were cut I asked Greg whether the Dogs behaved themselves in his pub.

‘Oh yeah,’ he said, ‘they’re good as gold, Charley. They can get a little raucous of course, but then they’re boys, aren’t they? I’ve known them for years and when they’re in Angeles City, this is the doghouse. Are you staying in town tonight by the way? The boys taking you to Fields Avenue, are they?’

‘Fields Avenue?’ I wasn’t sure where he meant. Then it clicked. ‘Oh, you mean the naughty three miles I’ve heard so much about. No, I’m a married man, Greg, and anyway, tomorrow I’m up in a plane.’

‘Is that right?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m planning to have a few quiet beers then tomorrow I’m taking an ultralight up to Subic Bay.’

‘A few quiet beers, right, right ...’ He peered at me in disbelief. ‘An ultralight though, that’ll be amazing.’

‘I hope so. I’m not the best when it comes to small planes. I like to think I am, but that’s not the reality.’

He slapped me on the shoulder. ‘You’ll be fine, mate - a fella like you? I’m sure.’

I hoped so. As much as I was excited about the ultralight, I was plagued by memories of the Spitfire in Australia. I wasn’t helped by a story Terry told me either. Terry was the guy I would be flying with and we met up with him later that afternoon when we took a drive into the countryside to try to find the airfield. It belonged to the Angeles City Flying Club and was in the middle of nowhere. We found it eventually, though, and Terry showed me his ultralight. It was small and red with a bubble cockpit and the seats set side by side. A few years back he had taken a travel-show presenter up for a brief flight, but the poor guy was terrified of being in the air. His fear was so great that after just a brief spin, they landed, stripped him of his clothes and put them on his cameraman. They used someone else to film while the presenter stayed firmly on the ground and his cameraman took his place up in the air. It worked apparently, and when the TV show aired no one was any the wiser.

That wouldn’t happen to me. I’m not scared of flying. I love small aircraft; I just get sick. Terry told me that the weather forecast for the next day was not looking that good, though he was hoping for a brief window of opportunity so we could get to Subic. It was only forty-five minutes in the air and he was confident we would be OK.

 

 

Fortunately he was right and when we arrived the following morning there were three planes ready for us. I would be flying with Terry, Claudio with an American pilot called Pete, and Robin with a really funny German guy called Helmut. Helmut had been in the German air force, but not as a pilot. I asked him why he didn’t fly and he told me he only lasted four years because he had never liked doing what he was told. He had worked as a technician and only took up flying when he left the air force.

Surprisingly perhaps, given my track record, I was suddenly really looking forward to going up. Whereas with the Spitfire I’d been cramped in the back and sweating buckets, this ultralight had a cone-shaped windscreen and no doors. I would have the wind in my face and hopefully I wouldn’t get sick. I couldn’t wait. While they fuelled the planes I was scampering around the airfield like a kid. It was a gorgeous place - the landing strip was beautifully mown lush grass and there was a swimming pool and a couple of cottages that were rented out to people learning to fly.

Terry had the calm assurance of all good pilots. He was an ex-pat from the UK who had lived out here for twenty-five years. He told me he had married a Filipino woman with a daughter from a previous marriage and subsequently they had another daughter of their own. Once I was strapped in, I settled back as he spoke to the tower. A few minutes later we were airborne. I loved it! Sitting there with no doors, I could feel the cool breeze blowing across me. The little two-stroke engine produced just under 70 hp and we cruised at around 90 kph at an altitude of 500 feet. The plane was a RANS S-12, one of the most popular ultralights around, and Terry told me that a good second-hand one cost only about £10,000.

Leaning over, I said, ‘I love the fact there are no doors, Terry. It means I’ll have a really clear view of the ground when we hit it.’

‘We’re not going to hit the ground,’ he assured me. ‘We’re going to have a really pleasant flight.’

Climbing above the trees, we headed for the mountains, where I could see the conical dome of Mount Pinatubo, the volcano that had caused the Americans to leave the area nearly twenty years earlier. It was stunningly beautiful scenery, the mountain dominating the smaller peaks, the valley spread with paddy fields that glimmered in the morning sunlight. We flew over an ostrich farm and later a massive resettlement area with millions of crammed together huts housing refugees from natural disasters while their towns and villages were being rebuilt.

‘Thank you so much for this,’ I said. ‘It’s fantastic, really.’

‘Are you enjoying yourself, Charley?’

‘Just a bit, yeah.’

‘I’m glad.’ He was smiling now. ‘I took this one chap out in the other plane - the X-Air that Pete’s flying.’ He nodded over his shoulder to where Claudio was filming from behind Pete in the second plane. ‘I asked the passenger if he was having a good time, and all he did was grunt and say it was all right. All right, I thought, I’ll show you all right, mate . . .’

‘What did you do?’

‘I stalled the plane and yelled, “Oh shit!” into the microphone. The poor bloke just about crapped his pants.’

‘Stalled it?’ I asked.

‘I’ll show you.’ And with that he let the revs drop until there was no sound from the engine at all and the nose began to dip. Then, as he pulled on the stick, the engine kicked in once again. ‘I do it all the time,’ he said, ‘but he didn’t know that, did he?’

We flew over the northern tip of the Bataan peninsula where, in 1942, a Japanese general called Masaharu Homma forced thousands of American and Filipino POWs to march seventy miles from Mariveles to San Fernando. If they faltered, his soldiers killed them; when some tried to fill water canteens Homma set up machine guns and shot thirty at a time. If anyone so much as looked at a guard, the guard could bayonet him to death. The march took nine days and one thousand men died. In 1946 Homma was tried for war crimes and executed.

After flying in across the bay we landed at Subic. This was the quietest international airport I’ve ever seen. During the Vietnam War the US had forty thousand men here and B52s would land to refuel. Now the only planes were the ultralights, and the apron and terminal buildings were deserted. It was weird, like a ghost airport or something . . . really strange.

Thanking the guys for a fantastic flight, we found a taxi to take us to the yacht club, where hopefully the captain of the boat to Taiwan, Derek, would be waiting. I had spoken to him last night and discovered that the vessel was a converted trawler. I hadn’t seen any pictures, but her name in English meant ‘No Problem’, and he assured me she was perfectly seaworthy. The only issue was the weather. We had known about the monsoon season for a while now, but a typhoon had just swept across the area we would be sailing through. The fact that it had come and gone sounded quite positive, though, and by the time we arrived at the yacht club we were feeling pretty encouraged.

I really did not want to fly to Taiwan. The Boorman boat curse notwithstanding, this was an expedition across land and sea and I’d seen enough commercial aeroplanes already. Fingers crossed, the weather would be with us.

The yacht club was upmarket - it looked like a five-star hotel. The marina was marked by a series of floating pontoons, with some very expensive-looking motor cruisers tied up against them.

‘One of those would be nice, Claudio,’ I commented, as we made our way down to where the trawler was berthed. We could see it now - a huge boat with a bridge and everything; it was way more substantial than the boat I’d been on from Timor to Darwin. It was painted white with a pale blue hull and sat high in the water. As we approached, Derek came down to meet us. He shook our hands and welcomed us aboard.

It was a great boat, very spacious below deck with three decent cabins, although one was better than the others - more comfortable and further from the engines. I had my eye on it right away. The captain’s cabin in the bow was on offer too, but Derek said it was no good at sea because of the way the prow slapped through the waves. Derek was English, in his forties and had been skippering the boat for a year. He introduced us to the crew, two boys called Sting and Mark, and a girl whose name was Ping. This was a good boat, well fitted and organised. I had a positive vibe, and if only the weather would hold this would be great.

Taking us up to his office on the bridge, Derek showed me a laptop he had hooked up to the ever-changing weather charts.

‘We’ve got a bit of a problem,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid we’re going to lose at least one day.’

My heart sank. ‘Why? I thought the typhoon had gone through.’