THE THURSDAY CLUB

The first meetings were held in a pungent dark space between the toilet and a duck pen to comfort quarantined souls with blackmarket liquor in the days of the MECQ, and Jan de Liche and the thieves of the woods were the first guests, joining from Aalst to plot his death and Marieke's revenge on Baru.

After them came Robert Redford from the west when the meetings were moved to the veranda under the cover of drying towels, the resistance of Jesse James, Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull narrated over bottles of extra strong beer while Billy the Kid and Wyatt Earp hatch their revenge.

MGCQ lifted the secrecy and enabled meetings in other places which attracted Piotr and Witold from the mire of a small Polish town, the gardeners of Alice Springs who emerged through a pine gap, and representatives of the American Broadcasting Company and People Magazine that tried to sell the castles of Edinburgh and Cardiff with the story of Diana.

It was then that Zambrano and Combate of the 4th Company shared how Palafox died from drinking too much tequila after their Friday football games in Mexico so right there, the Phantom Bikers agreed to move their meetings to Thursday nights. 

They've had enough of chasing hangover cures which took them to as far as Lanzhou for the magic of its stir fried lilies, firecracker beef noodles and Gaodan niangpi before side stepping to Jiayuguan to pick up pre-ordered grilled lamb and then to Linxia for some fat wrapped liver that will be paired with Wuwei's flaxseed yellow rice. 

It was almost a tour of Gansu Province where the Phantom Bikers also fueled on guagua in Xiguan and stir fried potato noodles with pork in Dingxi to prelude a roadside lunch of chicken gluten stew in Jiuquan before realizing that the best hangover antidote is the souherb hot pot of Tianshui. 

But the flavorful origins of the Thursday Club will only emanate from the tokwa't baboy and reheated refrigerated leftovers that somehow painted colors in the black pages of the quarantine.

THE MAN WHO COULD NOT GET AWAY

He who could not stay cannot get away, exiled by a nanometer-sized virion and surviving on biking, Netflix and a Thursday club with the neighbors.

His was in a suspended state of "buro", which sounds like Boru, which refers to a wolf pack or a tense and perennially angry special police squad from Ankara, almost a madhouse of misfits, which is like serving sashimi, oysters and sinigang na lechon for a Sunday breakfast. 

Cooking somehow tamed the ennui of the long hours of the quarantine with bowls of cocido-style stew and pochero served to fete the triumph of Sis. Irene, Fr. Burke and Frenchie over the nun of of Transylvania.

Chen and Chewing Gum's tragedy in Macau and the mayhem in Busan were also memorialized with a pot of kansi that is as temptuous as Yenical while what was left of the thieves gather in Hong Kong to reflect on their betrayal with a feast of gotong Batangas. 

Such is the fate of a globetrotter in the time of COVID-19, imperious among the mortals of Bakal 2 but trapped in the gilded cage of working-from-home where resentment against the Duke of Edinburgh transformed to admiration in Episode 4 as The Outsider mentored the British monarchy through the naivety of the Prince of Wales and his obsession with the Duchess of Cornwall, and the scandalous affairs of the Countess of Snowdon and Princess Royal for the sake of the crown and the Royal House of Windsor's survival.

So the frequent flyer drunk more than usual, starting with leftover brandy on Monday followed by whiskey on Wednesday then an extra-strong lager on Thursday and finally a pale golden lager on Friday in a week that the Phantom Bikers dedicated in finding the title lost to Diana, Princess of Wales, in the trails of Munoz, Talugtug and Guimba.

LOVE AND ANARCHY

Sophie is one horny cougar who fornicated with an equally lustful post-teenage Max to push Lund & Lagerstedt to the edge and burn her forest with episodes of quick masturbation.

She reminds me of someone from Bangkok and Siem Reap, not asexual Friedrich and the lesbian Denise but more like our hosts at Rana Slott and the multitude of Gamla Stan who stoked the Stockhom Syndrome's fixation to a well-behaved and modest Grecian princess whose pent-up horniness was breached by the accidental brushing of erogenous zones to ignite a wild orgy amidst smashed cakes and everywhere in every position conceivable when she is not masturbating in the bathroom. 

Bizzare, like Zeina's sudden urge to fuck Tony under the bombs in Southern Lebanon.

Macabre, like Xandra's double life and obvious preference for Martina's pussy rather than Ralp's dick, Anne's sideline as a high end merchandise as enigmatic as Sylvia and dense like Michiel and the old empty churches in De Wallen where the free cheese of Amsterdam tasted like the women of the night and perhaps the corylus too who would be a lovely fuck.

It will take 58 days to bike through the Blues Highway at 40 kms/day so I would rather start in Memphis and fry chicken in Clarksdale, smoke some ribs in Cleveland and do a barbecue in Greenville on the way to New Orleans where I once crossed the Missisippi River to Maturanoc for Kuya A's goat kaldereta and pinapaitan that turned out to be a huge letdown.

We always take the BART but next time, I will ride a bike through Mission Street from Daly City to San Francisco and back twice to notch 40 kilometers that will deserve a pierna enchilada from La Torta Gorda and would not mind adding four more kilometers for an apple fritter at Bob's Donut and Pastry Shop and perhaps a clam chowder too at the Swan Oyster Depot. 

It was always the MRT in Singapore but a meal of chicken rice at the Maxwell Hawker Center powered me by foot to the Raffles Hotel where the famous Singapore Sling was created, and enough for a side trip to pick up a tub of chwee kue, one or two shiok dishes and a peranakan cuisine sampler for the pulutan to feed the Bakal 2 Bikers in Delaen.

Somebody feed Phil too and for that, a meal of feijoada and picanha with a pitcher of caipirinha at one of Rio de Janeiro's botecas would be best after a downhill ride from Sugarloaf Mountain to Copacabana Beach; or maybe poke, poi and huli-huli chicken after crossing Hawaii's Big Island from Waikiki Beach to the North Shore which is only 65 kilometers by bike, more than half of which was recorded in Munoz by the welcome committee for Typhoon Ulysses.

    

RANDOM LINES FOR RICHARD CARAPAZ

Lata was Soni in 2018 Calcutta and Soni was Lata of 1951 Delhi who shared a feminist definition of a suitable boy, not Maan who was obsessed with an MILF nor Kabri who owns a BSA/Hercules bicycle. 

The doomsday virus spared the 75th Vuelta a Espana and was traced by Maj. Eden Sinclair from Scotland to Wahtye, high priest to King Neferirkare, keeper of the most guarded secrets of the Saqqara Tomb in Egypt including the ghosts of Dakar who haunted Ada in the Senegal side of the Atlantics and perhaps Cedric and Leni too who lost nine lives to "Pagpag" in the Philippines.

In Marseille, Capt. Richard Vronski was dying to tell his story of the Rogue City to Arminius and Thusnelda, barbarians and rulers of the Teutoburg Forest, patrons of aproned, masked and shielded men who fraternize and get drunk in Baloc every first Saturday of the month.

And finally, the 3-week old frozen pork ribs was transformed into Quezon's sinantomas as the Vuelta arrived in Aramon Formigal, the 2-week old frozen chicken was cooked into a tiim after Angliru, much like the retouched leftovers and light brandy from Tata Pito's birthday or Pare Charlie's samgyupsal-ed frozen beef strips and extra strong beer on Thursday night.

Omar was memorialized with Nora's barbecue and Smirnoff vodka while two bowls of sinigang na ulo ng salmon and light beer sobered me up from an earlier bout with pale pilsen and dinakdakan to therefore entertain Kuya Bob's birthday with eclectic bluetoothed music.

Primos Roglic narrowly won the 2020 Vuelta due to time bonuses and a weak Ineos Grenadier team, and perhaps with help from Movistar in the last three kilometers to  Alto de la Covatilla, but the Phantom Bikers will ride with Richard Carapaz as they did with him through the ricefields of Munoz, San Jose, Sto. Domingo and Lupao with a single feed stop at Thelma's Pancit Malabon during the last week of the Vuelta.    

HIS LORDSHIP, THE EARL OF SANDWICH

Meat wrapped in bread has been around since the time of the ancients.

But the sandwich as we know it now is attributed to the 4th Earl of Sandwich who, because of his fondness for gambling, dined on beef "sandwiched" between two pieces of bread while he played.

That was in 1762 and spawned the creation of various forms of the sandwich like chicken salad from Rhode Island in 1863, banh mi from Vietnam in the 1830s, steak that was first served in Connecticut, Sloppy Joes from Iowa in 1930, and medianoche which originated from Cuba.

With gratitude to Google, I was able to recreate a grilled chicken salad sandwich from refrigerated leftovers that choked the prejudiced throath of Judge Julius Hoffman during the trial of the Chicago 7, a Vietnamese sandwich from thinly sliced soy sauce-marinated pork chops to gag SS Col. Hans Landa somewhere in France as he is being marked by the inglorious bestards, a steak sandwich from simmered sirloin strips to sustain Arnau Estanyul as he preached from the pulpit of the Cathedral of the Sea in Barcelona on why Aledis is his Alpha and Joan his Omega, Sloppy Joes with withered raisins to celebrate La Revolution against the blue bloods of Montargis and commerate the betrayal of Elise and the rise of Joseph Ignace Guillotin, and a pickle-less Cuban midnight sandwich to help me endure Copenhagen and 6 episodes of CC the warrior.  

The sandwich maker is also the Phantom Biker who checkmated both Beth Harmon and Vasily Borgov, the Queen's Gambit allowing him and Richard Carapaz to escape a Sicilian defense and scholar's mate, navigate through the Levenfish and Najdorf variations from a Reti opening to take back the maillot rojo in the steep slopes of the Angliru and once again scorch the trails on a day when the saints hide from the trick-or-treat of Super Typhoon Goni/Rolly.