I love motorcycles. They’re fun machines, but right off, I tell you I never owned one, neither as a teenager with pimples nor as an adult with far bigger responsibilities than making sure the gas tank is full, the oil level is as recommended and the brakes work. Although the family and I never owned one, that did not prevent me from learning to ride one early in my teen years either.

The machine I remember the most through the years was a Honda, the utilitarian Scrambler 90 whose mechanical purr I could recognize from two kilometers away. Its 90cc engine was all the rage in my youth when I would rather take it to as far away as its owners would allow me than, say, spend an entire afternoon drinking tuba. We were provincials. We’re used to carabaos and horses, but we also love messing around their mechanical counterparts.

In any case, someone suggested I learn to ride his motorcycle because we were friends and, what the heck, friends share things, don’t they? So, we had the machine stand on a thick slab of lumber while I learned to coordinate my wrist muscle movements for gas and clutch control with the footwork required to kickstart the dang thing, go from first gear to fourth and step on the brakes as and when required with my right and left feet. It proved to be a breeze, so unlike what my mother told me of this aspiring motorcyclist, the school principal, who had to be snared with a net as his hands froze on the accelerator to keep him and the machine from hurling full tilt into a wall.

These and many more youthful memories flashed through my mind as I put on the helmet from an Angkas driver whose services I sought for the first time just last December. I had to be at a particular hotel by a particular time for an event or I would miss the fun and the food that had been dangled days before the actual event happened. For working journalists such as I, the promise of food and fun brings images of putok-batok food fare and beer that could not be passed up just like that. But I was already running late for the event as work at the office had been completed late as well and I had a choice between giving it up entirely and go home to Bulacan some 2.5-hours away or try to catch up even in the face of horrendous traffic between where I was and where I wanted to be. I would have gladly taken the taxi or that other ride-hailing service known as Grab to get there in time, but both would have been futile exercises given the number of vehicles on the streets of Makati this deep in Christmas revelry already and what lies further up there in Pasay City where journalists were already into several glasses of beer or liquor.

But for less than P100, the Angkas driver gave me a helmet to take me to my destination plus a few words on riding safely in tandem. For the finicky, wearing a helmet with the smell of a thousand heads, some of them unwashed or lice-laced, is intimidating, but I gracefully took it, secure in the knowledge that should my cranium meet the asphalt I should still be alive to tell the story. As for the ride itself that I thought would take at least half an hour, it was over in just 15 minutes, no doubt weighing a few milligrams more at arrival than when I left, thanks to my new lousy friends now discovering the joys of exploring my root hairs.

I liked the service and could not fathom the wisdom of regulators sitting on their asses and mouthing mantras like motorcycles are unsafe vehicles and their drivers are undisciplined. The tricycle drivers I know in Bulacan do not know the right side of the road from the left, but the Angkas driver I had, unlicensed as he was, certainly knew driving on two wheels. I arrived safe and sound at my destination, alive, didn’t I? They beat my Bulacan tricycle driver friends who always park on the left side of the road when you tell them you have arrived at your destination. These are guys who, when making a left turn, will take the left corner and do a tight turn there instead of making a long looping turn to the left as road rules require. But no, not the Angkas driver I know who would signal his left or right movements with the appropriate blinking of lights well before he actually takes the lane he needs to be in.

Motorcycles are fun. Some of my best travels, however long or short, were done on two-wheelers and it pains the commuter in me the regulators would throw the book at an option that allows one to get to his destination quickly — Metro Manila’s intractable traffic woes notwithstanding. Their obstinate and collective refusal to grant legal standing to the riding-in-tandem option smacks of indifference to the plight of a sizeable number of people wanting only to get from A to B. Get it done, people!