October 14 was a rainy day and it was one of those days that we’d rather stay indoors because of the inclement weather. But when Mazda Philippines sent us an invitation to “play” with their latest toy, the Mazda BT-50 pickup, it was hard to resist especially since their Managing Director, Dave Macasadia, would be there to ride and drive with us.
Play time started with a breakfast ceremony at Mazda Greenhills, which I wasn’t able to attend because I was working late the previous night. I joined the convoy along EDSA near Balintawak and Brent Co of autoindustriya.com picked me up in a white BT-50 4x2. He immediately asked me to drive because he was feeling sleepy, presumably after a late night working on his website.
Brent updated me on the activities and the first order of business was to think of more than 50 words that start with the letter “B” and end with a “T”. From Balintawak to the Shell station on the North Luzon Expressway (NLEX) near the Tabang exit, Brent and I were able to come up with around 80 such words but when our editor Dong Magsajo and fellow contributor Manny delos Reyes rode with us from the Shell station, our B-T words ballooned to more than 100 with words like buffet, beret, ballet, bayonet, bassist, botanist, biologist, biophysicist, biogeneticist, biochemist, braggart, by-product, blatant, ballast and benevolent. We even played around the rules by including blackest, boldest, bravest, brashest, breeziest and briefest.
I drove all the way from NLEX to Subic through the new Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway (SCTEX), sometimes even hitting extra-legal speeds, when it dawned on me that we made easy work of the B-T word game because driving the Mazda BT-50 was easy and smooth, which allowed us to play mental games without putting too much emphasis on the driving part. We stopped for lunch at MeatPlus inside the SBMA and readied ourselves for the next playful activities.
The lunch-time banter and camaraderie made us stay a bit longer than we needed to and we had to rush to the Subic Raceway where Louie Ramirez guided us to a specially-designed test course for the BT-50. Again, the Mazda pickup showed its capabilities on the track as well as off. Despite having a 4x2 test unit, we were able to breeze through the muddy off-road course, speed up to 60kph and brake steadily to a stop in a short distance, corner with confidence and sail through the slalom course without a worry. This workhorse really loves to play!
We drove to El Kabayo where I was coerced by Dong, Manny and Brent to ride on a real horse instead of the iron horse, er… motorcycle that I always ride on. It was an enjoyable short ride and I hope the horse enjoyed it, too. After our horse-y adventure, we went to the Subic Golf Club where Mazda prepared a four-hole putting course. Brent was our designated putter and he took 12 tries to sink ball in the four holes. He would later confess that he hasn’t played golf in four months. So much for playing…
We had to cut our playtime short and go to the Subic Bay Yacht Club for our ride back to Manila because Manny, Dong, Brent and I had our individual obligations to our respective jobs but we were unanimous in declaring that playtime was indeed fun with the Mazda BT-50.