Brazil!

When I first came to Brasil (many years ago) I bought and watched Terry Gilliam's film Brazil. I was confused when I found a film more in common with 1984 than Rio, being as far as I recall a story of mindless bureaucracy amongst other things. I now think he must have tried to extend his visa.

When I tried, the website said I needed to take a form (printed from the website) to the Federal Police Station. I needed to pay the fee in advance and said that I could do this at a number of different places. The first two post offices said I couldn't do it there. The third told me to go to a bank. The bank said that I was missing a form which I needed to print off a website, but he showed me which site I needed to go to. I found an internet place I could print at, but then the website was down for an hour. Then I had to decipher what codes I needed to access the site, after finding these online, I hit the impasse that pursues foreigners in Brasil trying to get anything done - I don't have a CPF (the national ID document which you get asked for pretty much everywhere). So I went to the Federal Police station to find out what I needed to do, to find out that the foreigners' department moved to the airport 8 years ago. At which point I gave up.

Then I went to my happy place - not meditation, but a place with books. In this case the Royal Portuguese Reading Room (Real Gabinete Português de Leitura), an absolutely stunning building moments away from the chaos of the central market. The sort of library I imagine when reading Borges and like Umberto Eco's unread book collection, where the enormity of human knowledge and experience makes itself felt (especially in comparison with what I've acquired). It's a definite challenger for my favourite library (previous number 1 is the library at Chatsworth House) and I thought it would make a great wedding venue (ceremony, not party) if you worship knowledge rather than a big person upstairs (although no idea why that came to mind).

PS - It turns out that I'd been looking at the wrong website (although the bank pointed me to the wrong one as well). Maybe I'll get it done tomorrow... I think that's me gone local - amanhã...

UPDATE: I did eventually get it done, after my second trip to the airport (the foreigners bit is only open until 2pm) and proving that I had the funds to get out of the country if I needed to. I now have about 5 weeks to get out - the clock is ticking...

Bike surgery

I'd told them I was worried, they reassured me it would be fine, but it was still with my heart in my mouth that the guy I'd met about an hour earlier, and didn't work at the workshop, cut into the frame with an angle grinder.

After visiting two different Yamaha dealerships to work out why my new panniers didn't fit (and an email exchange with the dealers I bought Lena from in Woking!) I had a clearer idea that the problem was with the brackets/frame but still didn't know how to solve it. I went back to the welders that had done some work on the front of the bike back in January. Helped by someone (who happened to be a mechanic but was also waiting to get some work done) we dismantling much of the back of the bike. At which point it became evident that the whole frame at the back was bent down slightly - although I'm not sure whether this happened as a result of dropping the bike or riding with broken panniers for the best part of three months. It did explain why I had a similar problem on both sides of the bike though.

So they suggested making a V cut on the top of the frame on both sides, bending it up and welding it together again. This should also strengthen the frame which would have been weakened when it was bent.

So, first the frame was cut, then bent until the panniers fit. After that it was welded, painted and everything reassembled. Simple...

The welder came highly recommended and seemed confident of the quality of the work he'd done. To the extent that he said if I crashed the bike and the frame broke, it wouldn't break at the weld. Fingers crossed his confidence is well-founded... fingers also crossed I don't end up testing it...

First "strap-less" panniers since Bolivia!!

Not leaving Rio

There's a story I've been thinking about quite a lot over the last few months. I think the version I read first was set in the early years of the 20th Century but I've found references that go back a lot further and is set in China. It goes something like this:

"A poor farmer had all of his meagre wealth in one magnificent stallion, but one stormy night the horse escaped from its corral.  The next day, all the neighbours came around to commiserate with the farmer’s terrible misfortune.“Let’s wait and see,” is all he said.

Two days later, the stallion returned with four heathy mares in tow.  Now the neighbours were loud in their rejoicing.  “Let’s wait and see,” said the farmer.

The next day, the farmer’s adolescent son was trying to ride one of the new horses, and he fell and broke his leg.  The neighbours were desolate, but again the farmer said, “Let’s wait and see.”

And the following day, the army came through the village to draft all the young men to fight in a vicious war, but the farmer’s son was spared because of his leg."

In some respects the last few months have followed a similar pattern.

• My flight was delayed, but this meant that I was able to have a last pint in the UK and do some shopping at the airport.
• I just made my flight's connection in Lisbon, but I think the tightness of the time between flights may well have been a contributory factor in the fact that my pannier was damaged en route.
• The airline took nine weeks to admit responsibility and agree to pay for it, but it meant that I was in Rio for Carnaval.
• The delay in my pannier arriving meant that I was able to spend a last weekend in Rio and go to the first concert of the year at the Teatro Municipal, but the same delay also resulted in some of my cooking stuff being "liberated" from my bag in the kitchen.
• Then taking longer to post a package home meant that I ended up staying in Rio a few days longer than expected, but this was enough time for me to be reunited with the most important bits that I'd lost from my cooking kit.

Some people have said that I've had my share of bad luck in Rio - and then some. But maybe that's only if you look at it from a certain direction or a certain distance.

Last Friday I managed to break my oil filler cap and am now having problems fitting my new panniers to the bike. Is this necessarily a bad thing? I don't know. I think I'll take the advice of the farmer and wait and see.