CLARK FREEPORT, Pampanga- It’s a most fatal combination.
More and more families seeking al fresco fun without much of the cost of beaching or malling troop to the “picnic grounds” here, packed with food and a little cash for their children to hire foot pedaled cycling machines, P90 for an hour.
On weekends, the grounds — located towards the Mabalacat gate of this Freeport – swell with picnickers, a delight to the franchisee for bike renting enterprise and the store. Also perhaps to the Aetas who roam the grounds to sell their bows and arrows and, when the picnickers unpack and eat their foods, stare at the conscience-stricken eaters.
But while the obvious deprivation of the Aetas rankle, there’s no match for worry to the sudden emergence of automobiles (cars, jeeps, SUVs) along what’s supposed to be the huge bicycle oval at the picnic grounds.
While there is no danger of anyone immediately dying with every refusal to share the barbecue with an Aeta, the mix of a three- or four-year-old child struggling with a rented bike and a teenager or an adult driving an automobile on a shared narrow lane is without doubt a proposition for twisted limbs if not literally smashing death… for the cycling kid, of course.
Concerned citizens have appealed to the Clark Development Corp. to block all possible routes that could be accessed by automobiles towards the oval which, they noted, should be exclusively for foot-pedaled machines.
Otherwise, the CDC should either ban renting out bicycles or tricycles at the park and put the oval at the exclusive disposal of the automobiles of picnickers. The latter, of course, is an unattractive proposition.
Meanwhile, parents (except those who have no civilized sense and insist on driving their automobiles through the oval for best proximity to their picnic spot) had better be warned: keep off the picnic park.
More and more families seeking al fresco fun without much of the cost of beaching or malling troop to the “picnic grounds” here, packed with food and a little cash for their children to hire foot pedaled cycling machines, P90 for an hour.
On weekends, the grounds — located towards the Mabalacat gate of this Freeport – swell with picnickers, a delight to the franchisee for bike renting enterprise and the store. Also perhaps to the Aetas who roam the grounds to sell their bows and arrows and, when the picnickers unpack and eat their foods, stare at the conscience-stricken eaters.
But while the obvious deprivation of the Aetas rankle, there’s no match for worry to the sudden emergence of automobiles (cars, jeeps, SUVs) along what’s supposed to be the huge bicycle oval at the picnic grounds.
While there is no danger of anyone immediately dying with every refusal to share the barbecue with an Aeta, the mix of a three- or four-year-old child struggling with a rented bike and a teenager or an adult driving an automobile on a shared narrow lane is without doubt a proposition for twisted limbs if not literally smashing death… for the cycling kid, of course.
Concerned citizens have appealed to the Clark Development Corp. to block all possible routes that could be accessed by automobiles towards the oval which, they noted, should be exclusively for foot-pedaled machines.
Otherwise, the CDC should either ban renting out bicycles or tricycles at the park and put the oval at the exclusive disposal of the automobiles of picnickers. The latter, of course, is an unattractive proposition.
Meanwhile, parents (except those who have no civilized sense and insist on driving their automobiles through the oval for best proximity to their picnic spot) had better be warned: keep off the picnic park.
