From Quezon City to Baguio during the weekend, we counted exactly 40 firetrees in bloom. Not all of them were in the explosive stage of all-red (flowers) and hardly any green (leaves) – the late blooming apparently a result of the short hot summer and the premature arrival of the rains – but looking out for them was a way to keep the kids from getting bored during the long drive.

After all those expressways, starting with the oldest of them, NLEX, and ending with the youngest of them, SCTEX, plus the one in-between, the road less-traveled that is the shortcut in Asingan, Pangasinan, billed as an alternate route – after all the handsome infrastructures and the toll-collecting schemes, it’s still a five-hour drive to Baguio. Cars are newer and supposedly more powerful and efficient, the roads are nicer and designed to shorten distances, but can anybody explain why motorists have not experienced any substantial change in cutting driving time?

It’s not simply a matter of driving in psychological time, is it, because the experience is measured in real time on my watch and those of my passengers.

There was a time when I could take QC to Baguio in four hours, so long ago I do not remember when. I have driven in the rain, in the middle of a storm, immediately after the Mt. Pinatubo eruption, felt the earth roll in a wave in Moncada, Tarlac during an earthquake, and challenged a meningococcemia health alert. Last week, we drove up in spite of a report of one swine flu case in Benguet.

No sweat. The people at the Baguio Country Club were on their toes. Nurses took every visitor’s temperature each time they entered or returned to the club house; attendants feverishly sprayed and disinfected every piece of equipment in the gym; memos were circulated to update guests on the pandemic.

I wish for only one epidemic: that there be an outbreak of directional signs on new roads, like those put up along the alternate route in Asingan by the makers of the Yellow Pages. Those signs are easy to read, consistent in size and schematics (colors, typography), strategically positioned, and I guess, theft-proof, to guide motorists in and out of rice fields, crooked streets and populated hamlets. Thank God for small mercies.