Adiridas in the Philippines

When I think of South East Asia, I think about the heat, the humidity, the ocean, the food, the jungle and of course the people. Usually the heat and humidity are two things that would keep me away from traveling to a place. But as it was one of the coldest winters in New Mexico’s history, a trip to the Philippines sounded like a pretty awesome idea.

 It all started when I got a call from Andrew Taylor (AT) asking if I would be interested in traveling to the Philippines on an Adidas Adiridas Trip with Niki Leitner, Linus Sjoholm and himself. 2 years ago after the first AT’s Showdown, AT and his friend Phil Segura of rideSFO and the SF Bike Expo both found out that they have family on the same island in the Philippines, and they decided to put a mountain bike trip together.











As soon as we stepped off the plane, the humidity hit all of us. The heat and humidity were a nice change after the arctic weather, snow or rain that we all had traveled from. It was nice to go from winter to summer in one day. Phil had family in Mandaue, a city next to the Provincial capital, Cebu City, and he connected with a gravity rider through Facebook, but we were unsure of the riding scene. Shorty after arriving at Phil’s families’ house a bunch of riders started to show up to say hi. We all soon found out that the riding scene in the Philippines is bigger than we ever imagined.

 We spent 15 days on the island of Cebu traveling from one side of the island to the other.




One half of the trip was spent in Cebu City and the other half was spent in the diving town of Moalboal. We lived in a mansion, on the beach with one of the best diving locations in the world only steps away; we bombed the highways on scooters to locations, and ate delicious food.

Our trip was no walk in the park though. We quickly learned that there wasn’t much in the way of sick riding features. We had to scout for locations and build everything by hand as fast as possible because our time was limited.







In between building a bamboo drop and jump in the middle of the jungle, we were also building a dirt jump in the town center of Moalboal to put a show for the locals. We worked from sun up to sun down, getting beat down by the sun and eaten alive by the mosquito’s.










Our 15 days in the Philippines had its downs (some of us got the flu) and a ton of ups, we couldn’t have done it with out Galvin Galan and Carlos Russell. They are local rippers that showed us around and always lent a helping hand. The trip was a once in a lifetime experience for all of us. My appreciation for athletes spending time scouting gnarly locations and building their own features for pictures and videos has gone way up. We were all able to ride in new places, witness and be apart of a new culture. In the end, it is amazing that you can almost go anywhere in the world and people can relate when it comes to riding a bike. Everywhere we went there were always little kids following us around. Many of them we saw came from poor areas and don't come from much, while others were neighborhood kids that just roamed the streets. But when we showed up, they always came out in big groups with smiles on their faces to watch or hang out with all the riders. And no we didn't go to a firing range, lets just say that the family we stayed with in Cebu City packed a lot of heat...