Biking community rises on UP campus

LOS BAÑOS, Laguna—What’s rolling fast in the university town of Los Baños in Laguna are two-wheelers of a varied lot—from refurbished mountain bikes to road racers and surpluses from Japan.

Thanks to Jeremy Deanon, 23, a senior agricultural engineering student at the University of the Philippines-Los Baños (UPLB) and cycling enthusiast, one can rent a bicycle and cruise leisurely around the sprawling campus.

“You may call it a business, but there’s little money (generated). Primarily, I just want to promote biking as an alternative mode of transportation,” he said.

Deanon got his grip on the bicycle when he was a boy on a three-wheeler. He acquired his first mountain bike when he was 15 years old and started joining cycling competitions in Los Baños and in Laguna.

As his circle of cyclists grew, he developed the strange habit of buying and collecting bicycle parts, such as old frames and wheels. “I would buy even those I didn’t need. I just felt like they were a good buy on a sale because other riders would sell them at below half the original price,” he said.

Over years of stockpiling goods to which he attached a “sentimental value,” Deanon was able to assemble five mountain bikes. His collection later grew to a dozen in 2007.

Now a hundred

“Then there’s this triathlon team that offered to lease my bikes (for P150 a week) during competitions. I could not use them all at the same time anyway so I agreed,” he said.

Not a lot of people were renting the road bikes or racers used by professional cyclists though, so he opted to sell them and buy simpler and easier to use single-speeds. In 2008, he found a shop that sold used folding bicycles from Japan.

“There was a time when I had to borrow money from different people so I could buy more bicycles almost every week because we ran out of bicycles to rent out,” he said. There were also instances when some students and friends prodding to borrow bicycles cost him his own.

With a little reconditioning, Deanon’s pool now has almost a hundred bikes for rent in UPLB.

“My mom was very supportive and she would attend to the customers when I was in school. But our neighbors would not put up with the customers coming to our house late at night or as early as before sunrise to borrow a bicycle,” he said.

This month, from their own home in a village on campus, Deanon began renting a small space behind a students’ dormitory, where he could keep the bicycles.

Cheaper transport

Almond Carlo Gamil, a junior computer science student, has been renting a folding bike from Deanon for two weeks now. He would pedal his way from his apartment to class, with a laptop in his backpack.

“I am saving a lot from biking than riding the jeep since I go back and forth the campus for my morning and afternoon classes,” Gamil said.

The rent for a folding bike is P30 per day, P80 per week, or P300 per month. For mountain bikes, the rates are P50 a day, P150 per week or P500 per month.

Joan Pauline Talubo, 30, who’s taking her master’s degree, believed no one’s ever too old to learn riding on the bicycle so she rented one from Deanon. “I felt like I’m missing out on life’s greatest joys,” she said.

Thrilled about the new learning, she posted on her Facebook page how she learned to ride the bike. “It felt good! A natural high,” she said.

Risk

Deanon, however, said renting out bicycles was as risky as riding them. In 2008, a former maintenance employee sped away with one of his mountain bikes.

In cases like this, he was leaving them up “to the conscience” of the “mischievous” renters. “I worked hard for those (bikes),” he said, hoping that the renter would ultimately account for his misdemeanor.

A renter is now asked to submit a copy of enrollment form and a waiver guaranteed by a UP faculty member, parents’ consent (for nonstudent or employee or if below 18 years old) and identification card.

Pictures of the customer and the bike are also taken. “(Customers) are given bike locks and we advise them that they are liable for its loss,” Deamon said.

He said he never thought that word about the bike rental would spread so fast since he started it as just a hobby. Once, he said, his only wish was to see bike parks in dormitories and on the school grounds, and bike lanes to encourage more people into the sport.

An achievement, to him, is to see people learn how to ride his bicycles.