Sta Maria Loop

June 14 wasn’t exactly a bike ride kind of day for me.

Getting motivated to ride felt like trying to grip a wet road—everything just felt off. The memory of my canceled Holy Week bike tour was still lingering, quietly draining my enthusiasm. Losing that trip had taken more out of me than I expected.

So instead of forcing excitement, I decided to shake things up. I set my sights on a route I’d been avoiding for a while—one with a ridiculous amount of elevation gain. If I couldn’t get motivated, maybe discomfort would do the trick. And just like that, I rolled out, wearing a wide grin that hinted I was finally back in my element.

Normally, a spontaneous ride like this would turn into a vlog. But for some reason, I just wasn’t feeling it that day. Rather than pressing record and talking to the camera, I spent the ride quietly taking in the views and snapping photos along the way. Honestly, if I had vlogged, you probably wouldn’t be reading this right now.

That said, I did manage to shoot a few video clips here and there. Who knows—maybe they’ll eventually turn into something worth sharing.

One thing I didn’t manage well, though, was my timing. I woke up late and didn’t roll out until almost 9:00 AM—far from ideal. But sometimes, just getting out the door is already a win.

So i just said goodbye to our aspin dog shaki, she is a cool dog by the way :D and sweet.

So when i left the weather was quite great, not really that hot but manageable, and managed to push some first few kilometers and reached Brgy Inarawan.

This route that im doing i was really familiar with and a little further I reached this dreaded KM 45 it has an i think a gradient of 11%

When you are almost at the top, you will see this Wildlife Sanctuary and a road that they call Big C because of the curve that motor bikes use to do some turning stuff they lean towards the ground called banking :DDD

Ohh yees so most of the time when im halfway on my route I do take a break in y favorite stopover place because of their great tapsi and coffee of course well I can show you their menu if you are interested.

Ok then so after having a great lunch  i proceeded to traverse already to reach Sta Maria so here are some tourist points of interest while im traversing the road

And finally i was able to reach my destination but this is only haflway going home and im still at the top, i need to traverse a road that i am not familiar with and its getting dark already.

Traversing down to sta maria proper was not an easy task, I cant forget the swarm of flyng termites that I have to deal with before reaching the town proper and its really dark already.

Until I have to decide what fork of the road should i take, good thing that there are local folks around at this time I think this was almost 7:00PM. The fork is kind of eerie good thing i did not push through forward as the locals said

So this this is the first time i reached sta maria proper.

Anyway going home was another exhilarating ride as i need to traverse again some dark areas of mabitac.

And finally got home at 1:00AM the same spot where i have taken the first picture at the bridge :DDD

Update — 10/17/2025

It’s interesting how interest doesn’t always come rushing back—it returns slowly, almost unnoticed. I didn’t plan on making this clip, and I definitely didn’t plan on narrating it. But somewhere along the way, it felt right to say something anyway. Maybe that’s a sign that the spark is finding its way back, one small step at a time.