A motley crew of people concerned about the dangerous level of air pollution in the Metropolitan Manila area, one of the worst in the world according to United Nations statistics, will gather on Sunday, 25 April 1999 at the Quezon memorial Circle to take part in a unique bike ride around the city. Old and young, women and men will come together to ride their bicycles at a leisurely pace through seven cities on the metro area, exposing themselves to the dirty air and the ghastly motor vehicle traffic in order to make the point they have had enough of pollution and are determined to change the city for the better. They, of course, face a formidable foe in real estate developers, unsympathetic city planners, government officials, and car industry lobbyists who would like nothing better than to transform the city into a veritable concrete asphalt jungle.

Far from being the “bike nuts” that one ordinarily observes running rings around the Quezon Memorial on weekends, most of these people are housewives, professionals, office and factory workers, students, artists, maintenance workers, and government office slaves, ordinary people in the most mundane sense, who have probably never ridden their bicycles more than halfway around the block since taking on the personae of “productive and responsible citizens.” On this Sunday, however, they will transform their ordinary lives into an extraordinary experience, viewing the city, from the radical perspective of a bicycle seat and challenging the notion that cycling in the city is unfeasible and dangerous, if not impossible. On this day, they will have become spokespersons of a new movement that proposes that travelling through the city need not mean spewing out more pollutants, contributing to emissions that lead to climate changes nor spending precious foreign exchange to import foreign oil.

Participants in costume and who decorate their bikes will be eligible to win special prizes. Participants are also being asked to sign the statement of commitment included in their registration forms, the statement commits the signatory to ride and support the annual Tour of the firelies until such time as trully effective means of curbing urban air pollution are adopted and the fireflies return once again to safe environment.