Chapters in our Lives

Friday Night:  It’s amazing to me sometimes what I find challenging.  A couple of years ago challenging would have meant trying to stay awake after not sleeping for sixty hours while racing full speed through some crazy landscape in the dead of night.  Now challenging is trying to find the language to have a conversation in short basic phrases without resorting to google translate and lots of pointing and grunting (don’t knock it, it has worked).

My body, which anyone who has raced with me knows, is much happier now that I have stopped trying to destroy it from the inside out, and my brain, which was clearly not helping in the decision making process at that moment, is now what is being pushed and taxed on a regular basis.  That same, “I just want to rest for a couple of minutes” has been replaced by “I just want to be understood for a couple of minutes”.  I’m not sure which is harder.  Right now getting lost in the woods is kind of appealing, as long as the woodland creatures don’t mind toddler level Portuguese.

That’s sort of a random start to a blog I know, but I have been following some old teammates as they prepare for another big race and reflecting on whether I wish that kind of challenge was still part of my life.  Honestly, right now I don’t, and that feels pretty good.  I’m as excited as ever to have adventure in my life, and I’m looking forward to finding new things here in Brazil that challenge me mentally and physically in that same way, but right now I want those challenges  to involve keeping the food I eat inside my body.

And it’s really nice to finally have a moment to slow down and think about things.  Today we are in an old colonial town a couple of hours from Brasilia called Pirenopolis and our biggest concern right now is which waterfall to hike to tomorrow.  Seriously, it’s not as simple as it sounds.  Today’s waterfalls were amazing and we want to continue that streak.

Hiking here is very interesting because many of the trails are operated by private enterprises, which means that there are fees to hike everywhere.  It also means that things are being protected and taken care of, which is great, but it’s not like the state and national park system in the US.  Lots of what we would think of as state parks are way more commercial here.  Not that cold beer isn’t a great way to end a hike, it’s just different.  People protect and develop the land they own as a business and as a resource.  The two go very much hand in hand.  I feel like tourism here really is driving a lot of conservation.  Yellowstone wouldn’t stop being a national park if people stopped coming, but here people coming is what is turning things into protected lands. Or at least that’s how it feels to me right now.

Sunday Night:  Success!  We officially went on our first vacation in Brazil, and came back in one piece.  And it was awesome.  Three great days of swimming in waterfalls, eating good food, swimming in our hotel pool, ziplining, swimming in other people’s pools (notice a trend?), seeing our first wild iguana, and just exploring the great little city of Pirinopolis.  Lots of speaking Portuguese, out of necessity, which was great.  Learned a few new words and milked the heck out of the ones I know.  I think I must sound like the Portuguese audio book version of Green Eggs and Ham, “I will eat food, hot or cold, I will eat food, please no mold”.  I am probably giving myself too much credit.  I am guessing it is more like Dick and Jane speaking Yoda, “Food please now, money have I give you, thank you man with three foreheads, I children teach good stuff for job, no speak bathroom.”

However we did it, we did it.  We rented a hotel room in Portuguese, drove a rental car three hours across Brazil and back, and managed to disconnect and just enjoy being a family.  The girls even stopped complaining about not having other kids around, at least when they were in the water, in the trees, or eating ice cream, which was most of every day.

I’m not going to try to add any captions to the photos this week, I’ll just pick out a few of the fun ones to give a feel to our weekend.  It turns out, three day weekends are an amazing thing, no matter the language.  We hope everyone is having a good start to the school year up there, and we miss and love you all.