Raining in the mountains

A fella begs to asks himself if it’s the hub when 60k takes 6 ½ hours. Rollers. A mountain, a serra, but nothing obvious, nothing like La Linea or Mt. Evans. More like Bloomington, Indiana, where I’ve ridden some of the toughest miles of my life. Nothing is harder on the mind than rolling hills. There is never completion. There is only hard climbing, descending, hard climbing, and descending. It began to rain just as the very steep climbing began. I got off the bike and pulled out all the entirety of the front pannier’s contents. The Phil’s tenacious oil was at the bottom. It should have been at the top, but I didn’t think it would rain. Earlier that day I was happy to have finally gotten out of bed at 8:15. I didn’t sleep until 3 that night due to my having to kill 14 mosquitoes. With the windows shut it was hot and stuffy. And I was generally paranoid, didn’t know why. When I couldn’t sleep I began to read American Desperado, and the book disturbed me when I realized that much of the reason I am alive in Brasil depends on the population not being like the guy in the book—believing that evil always wins. Bike touring and exploration and mountain climbing and distance running—I wonder if this fella could value these things. I wonder if he could value cooperation. The word ‘atruism’ exists because it indicates a unique perspective. Many try to translate the term and reduce the term to other components, but they miss the point—the concept of altruism doesn’t exist by mistake. It doesn’t need to be explained away or reduced to other components. Many must obliterate the meaning of altruism because to them it’s nonsensical or eats away at them. That’s fine—many people don’t quite get ‘nothingness’ either. Some people can’t tell the difference between dark green, brown, and black.

I didn’t realize there was a time change until Rodrigo—another Rodrigo—pointed it out to me at breakfast. It didn’t matter it was nearly 11. I went to the park and worked the abdominals, triceps, pectorals, and biceps. I wasn’t going to let my upper body wither. No more excuses. I picked up some more water and headed back the room and lubricate and clean the chain, safety check all bolts, and repack the bags.

I got on the road and it was deserted but filled with rural beauty. More small ceramic factories fed chipped wood and sawdust into their kilns and the thick wood smoke filled the air. I climbed and descended but the riding still wasn’t very tough. I saw dark clouds ahead, but they were far above in the sky and no one mentioned any chance of rain.

An hour in to the ride it began to sprinkle and get steep. Like Flavio had told me in Curitiba, on the climbs I’d have to ride opposite traffic because there was only one shoulder. It was getting colder and the wind began to whip up stronger rain and the large trucks began to spray and sway my balance with each pass.

I would ride for 60 kilometers and it would take me six and one half hours. When I arrived in Guarapuava, it really began to pour but my O2 rain jacket did a great job of keeping me warm. With only one ear of the earphone functioning, I continued to listen to my Portuguese lessons as I road, sometimes shouting out the translations as I rode. As I shouted out “you already had that” in Portuguese, a toothless man in a black had rode by on a bicycle. I couldn’t understand much of what he said—Pimsleur does not teach uneducated, toothless slang (and I say this with compassion and do not mean to denigrate the man)—and he shocked me by telling me I ha 18k to go. I have to be at the base of the city, I told myself. How slow could I have been moving?

I rode another 8km into the city. It was grey and rainy and depressing. This was the capital of the state of Parana, even though Curitiba was ten times its size (think Springfield, Illinois). I spotted one hotel for $R22—the cheapest I’ve yet to see—but it was too close to the bus station and had a bad vibe. I saw a few other hotels, but I eyed one of a side street that fit the bill—innocuous and mid-priced.

In my sleeplessness last night I realized I need to settle in Brasil but not in the way most do it. It might be a small town. It could be a mid-sized city. It wouldn’t be a big city. But before I do that I would need to have a transformative experience that would give me power over any small town or mid-sized city. And the transformative experience wouldn’t be a great feat on the bicycle. No, that still is to come. There will still be adventures on the bike—I am only 400km away from the Paraguayan border and I know adventures are waiting there.

No, I decided that I must live and work on a farm for a least 2 weeks. This will mean 2 weeks of language immersion—something I am missing now. I don’t want to take classes here and I don’t want to have bad, meaningless conversations with urban people. No, I want to learn how to farm organically on a small farm and improve my ability in the language as I am receiving instructions from farmers. I will then carry this strength with me to whatever town in which I settle. No one can call me a gringo if I have worked the land with my hands and lived in the farm house with a family that does not speak English. How many Brazilians can say they have done this? In addition, it will give me something to offer should currencies fail. I can work on any farm. I want to get a mix of vegetable and grain farming as well as animal husbandry. In this manner, I will be protected from society.

Society in general is dangerous. But it is most violently resentful of rejection. Society is very insecure. The moment it doubts your sincerity, the moment it senses you do not take its value seriously, the moment it bites you hard, oftentimes hard enough to kill you. 

But I urge the both of you to continue to stay very strong and powerful. My powers are growing here, and it is a constant battle--most of the time with myself. But I have no more crutches to rely on. Today as the climbing would not cease in the dark and dismal rain I realized there was no help, there was no end to the climbing until the climbing ended. And then it only ended because I determined it had ended.