My highly-mobile Lolo Dodong
Have you ever encountered in the streets of Dumaguete a senior man wearing a brown cowboy hat, driving his electric scooter that proudly waves a Philippine flaglet?
That’s my Lolo Ranulfo “Dodong” Limpiado, born in 1926, now 95 years old. And still happily riding his bike.
As the pandemic is raging, making personal mobility a limited luxury, Lolo Dodong continues to do his essential errands, riding to town on his red electric scooter.
My Lolo has always been an avid biker. My earliest memory of his biking was in the late 1990s when I was born. He would ride around town on blue Japanese-designed bikes, those quaint ones with a basket upfront, and a thin pair of wheels.
I did not always know what he was up to during the daytime, but always had the spirit of a busy 20-something with jobs to accomplish, people to meet, meetings to attend, and deals to close.
Even in his late 70s to early 80s, Lolo Dodong continued to occupy a small room on the second floor of the Limpiado ancestral home in Tubod. Those were years when he amazingly had the strength to climb up and down the narrow wooden steps of our steep staircase.
The ancestral house was finished in 1965, around the time their youngest child, my mother Palma Jane, was born. Lolo built the house to move out of their home behind the Silliman Elementary School where they raised the first five children of the Pamanian-Limpiado couple.
This has since been my mother’s home, and then my home throughout my school years. 
Today, many parts of what stand in our Tubod home are the original fixtures from when the house was built, including the staircase. The fact that my Lolo built this house that has stood many storms and floods, and many more changes in the City the past 56 years is one of the many sources of pride for my Lolo Dodong.
The house took rounds of renovations throughout the years. The latest of which became a catalyst for Lolo to move down to the first floor of the house, as he is slowly starting to struggle getting up the steps.
The blue Japanese bike was traded in for a blue tricycle with a basket, now placed at the back with a matching flaglet. Later, Lolo added a sign on the back of his trike that proudly reads, “Children/Senior Citizens/PWD get priority on the road”.
Lolo Dodong continues to pedal on the bicycle with pride. He may have lost some ability to balance perfectly, and get up the stairs, but his legs are still good for kicking those pedals!
Life in the streets of Dumaguete continues to be his to explore with his Pentax camera while he is astride on his blue tricycle.
Ask anyone who grew up in this University Town, and they’d tell you they remember Dodong Limpiado as the lanky man who would take photos of graduations around the City, celebrations, parties, every event in between.
Lolo got into photography as a hobby back in the days of film. The hobby later turned into an act of “fatherly love” for his six children, as he would proudly show up in Silliman events in campus, with his camera on hand, to document major milestones of his children.
This caught the interest of other parents who started asking him to take photos of their families, as well.
What started as a hobby, morphed into a long-standing contribution to the Dumaguete community. Lolo was always happy to oblige, as he found a lot of joy in photography, and as he told me later, made him “popular in town”.
Lolo Dodong moved to Dumaguete in the late 1940s after the Second World War to enroll in the University. Pastor Managbanag, a Protestant minister who preached on the remote island of Higatangan, off the shores of Naval, Biliran, had recommended to him Silliman University as a quality Protestant school, perfect for a Protestant family to send their oldest son to.
Dodong made his way to this City of Gentle People, and took up a course in Engineering. Algebra was a foreign language to him, so he shifted to Business Administration.
He stayed in Dumaguete because before he even graduated, the dean of the college made an offer for him to become a teacher! Dodong saw many problems with the offer: one, he did not know how to teach; two, he knew he was not the smartest student (remember, algebra). But from his many stories, I think he has a sharper mind than he let on.
Fast forward to the last few years, and as is often with old age, my Lolo Dodong’s mind remains strong, but his body starts to betray him.
The blue bike and trike have been swapped for a motorized four-wheeled wheelchair. The basket is still present, together with a flaglet, and the sign that reads, “Children/Senior Citizens/PWD get priority on the road” but with a new additional flaglet: “Best Grandpa.”
The pedals in his four-wheel electric contraption are now missing, as the strength in his legs fail to be as reliable as they used to be. His motorized bike takes him to the market where he selects his own fresh fishcatch; to Silliman Church where he drives up through the ramp, and all the way to the front nearest the first pew; and to the homes of his few remaining peers who must have been born about nine decades ago.
I asked Lolo Dodong recently what he thinks about the pandemic. To him, it makes sense that this actually happened. We produce a lot of garbage from what we consume and the way we live, and the garbage gets stored here on Earth. There’s no escaping the world we create and live in, nor the garbage we put out on the planet.
Lolo Dodong is also baffled at how people, even the educated ones, refuse to believe in the science of vaccines and in modern medicine when in the life of his father, my great-grand father, cholera took away his first wife and their would-be first born.
My Lolo Dodong keeps on reminding me he believes we are lucky to be able to live in a time of technology and change, where things can be better, only if we choose it. Compared to a time in his past when the choice did not exist.
His first-floor room in the ancestral home in Tubod is now a jungle of ropes and various metal handrails to assist him with moving around, while a walker is always within easy reach.
All these contraptions, a set-up of his own design, were installed to match his determined spirit to be as independent as possible, for as long as possible.
My Lolo Dodong has accomplished a number of significant things in his over-90 years here on earth, and counting. He built our ancestral home with his own hands, he has captured people’s various emotions through the lens of his camera, he has biked thousands of kilometers around town just doing his essential errands. His goal now is to live to see the day when this pandemic will be a thing of the past.
