Impressions and personal experiences from somewhere else.

I had just quitted my job. Swinging between relief and despair, I took an invitation for dinner from an old good friend. A glass (or six) of wine and good company would fit perfectly into my new no-perspective reality. The usual crowd in my friend’s place was enhanced by a beautiful stranger. A Turkish girl my friend met in Belgium, few years ago, and was living in Brazil for a while. When I saw her two dreadlocks, overcolored hair band and dirty flip-flops, I knew she was a careless traveler. She didn’t wait to desert to make a proposal: - Who wants to come with me to a bike trip through the northeast of Brazil? I finished my glass and broke the silence: -Me. An insane idea - that turned into the best adventure I ever lived.

Why was it crazy (or the proof you should ignore your brain)?

-The last time I rode a bike I was eleven
-I’m a sedentary – the closest to exercise I do is running to catch the bus
-The roads in Brazil are kind of unsafe for a bicycle riding (bad asphalt, crazy drives, poor signalization, no infrastructure), even more if you consider the “only girls” aspect
-I knew my trip partner for…half an hour

Ignoring all that – I made it my mission. For the next weeks, all I did was bike related. First movement was to buy a bike (a crazy investment considering my recent unemployed situation). Then, I made a mend on our relationship. Worried about the possibility of a flat tire in the middle of nowhere, I also took a quick workshop on bike repairing. Another crucial decision helped my mom to sleep during my trip – I rented a security dispositive guided by satellite that has a “emergency” button and basically tracked us even where mobiles are still science fiction.

I was feeling like Lance Armstrong (before the doping stuff) when I arrived in Natal, where my bike-buddy was couchsurfing. We would leave the next day and she had no bike, no snickers, no helmet, and no worries. I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry, but somehow I felt she had everything under control. Using her beloved flip-flops, she bought a sixty-hand bike on the next day (which later I would discover had just one break working and a lousy shift). And so we cruised through two states, from Natal to Fortaleza, with 600 km ahead of us. On the journey, we pray to die sometimes, laughed so hard our stomached hurt, got drunk, lost, meet welcoming and crazy people, found ‘secret’ beaches. I discovered a new way of travelling.