A Facebook-free Life

photo taken during my talk at AkyatCon 2.0

It's been a week since I deactivated my two Facebook accounts. And I feel free. I no longer feel like I'm living a life that others wanted to see or that I wanted others to see. I can't say it had been a bad life. But I sure can say it had been a life preoccupied with vanity. Now I can feel more peace. The clamor in the audience has died down. The audience has disappeared. Now I can catch up on my reading and blog posts. 

Mt Baloy: The First and The Last.

On my fourth attempt, this decade-old quest was finally fulfilled.
With my buddy and brother by choice Kevin Jauod
Photo by Mark IAL

I should be writing a great deal about my recent Mt Baloy climb. After all, Mt Baloy has been my toughest nemesis of a mountain. And we took a route that is less taken by hikers: the circuit from San Agustin to Busog. But I guess this is what they call retirement phase.

Tracing Iraynon Bukidnon Trails (TIBT) 2018 Race Report

The top two finishers of the 50K distance teaming up to battle the sweltering summer heat of Antique and the unforgiving talahib of Laua-an.
(photo courtesy of Mark Ian Vescatcho)

The inaugural 50K of Tracing Iraynon-Bukidnon Trails has been a testimony of the struggle, fortitude, defeat and victory of the human spirit! Everyone came prepared, so they thought. But what transpired during the race proved to be an overwhelming shocker even to those who had reconnoitered the route before the race. In the end only seven of the pioneering twenty-two brave warriors crossed the finish line within the 15-hour cut-off time.

Mountain Horror Stories You Never Heard

Fear of the unknown keeps us going.

Our imagination is easily tickled by the story of the roving couple of Mt Cristobal; or Maricar, the lady who jumped off the 'dila' of Mt Maculot; or Taong Lumot of Mt Halcon and all other horror stories of many popular mountains in the country.

But I'm not gonna talk about them this time. Instead, I'll tell you of real-life horrors during treks. 

THE MOUNTAINEER, THE TRAIL RUNNER, AND THE ELEPHANT

As a man was passing by a group of elephants, he noticed that one of the elephants was leashed to a small stake on the ground using a flimsy rope tied around one of its legs. Surprisingly, however, it wouldn't attempt to break away even though it could pull out the stake with just a budge of its huge legs. Filled with wonder, he asked the trainer why it was so. The trainer told him that, when those elephants were younger, they were restrained using the same set-up. A few times  they tried to get away but they were still too young and too weak to break the leash. And they grew up conditioned to believe that they could not break loose.