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too fast too furious trip to Quezon

During the last week, I asked around how long a trip to Lucena City, Quezon would take. Everyone answered around four hours by bus from Los Banos. Since I should be in Lucena by 9am, I planned to leave the house at 5am early today… but as it turned out, I was too poofed by the harvest yesterday that I slept in until 5:30! Yikes! My companions for this trip backed out Thursday afternoon, so I went to Lucena alone.

I finally left the house at 6:30am, and was worried about possible traffic congestion in the Pansol area since it was Saturday. Thankfully, I left early enough, and the drive was smooth all the way to San Pablo (I got there an hour later! This is nothing short of a miracle). That’s where the traffic began to slow down. The San Pablo section of the Maharlika Highway was a bit crowded by trucks coming in from the Alaminos area, so I was forced to go a bit slower.

But once I got past that part, I picked up speed until I was running at around 80kph (driving to the beat of Chillout Project House Sessions 2 by Anton Ramos — enough to get the blood pumping, and to get me awake). I sped past Tiaong, Candelaria, and Sariaya, averaging 70kph (a bit slower because of the cargo trucks going to the Dalahican port), covering much ground by 8:30. Finally, I heaved a sigh of relief when I got to the Lucena boundary at 8:45.

The next challenge was to find the church in 15 minutes. In Lucena, I took the diversion road leading to Bicol, and had to ask questions at various gasoline stations and carinderias because there were no posters or bulletins saying where I should go. I even entered the Grand Central Terminal by mistake (this was at 9am). After a few errors, I finally took the correct turn that went up to the church where a college classmate of mine was getting married. I got there at 9:30. Not bad for a newbie… I got to Lucena in 2 hours and 30 minutes… and arrived at the church in 3 hours.
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