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.