J. Beaman - The Magazine

Ok, everything’s fine. I got a place to live for the next few months (a chance to get my bearings and learn the language). It’s in a great neighborhood (Sion, close to Savassi, if you’re wondering) with a great guy (Marcelo). It’s actually Eduardo’s room as he is in Angola for four months.

Sorry about yesterday’s post. I think I just had to bleed my vagina out a bit.

As promised, documentation of the paragliding adventure:

Leco, Steve and I arrived, late because this is Brasil and everyone is late, to a flurry of activity and Portuguese chatter. Ten people were standing on a cliff (a ridge, really); some drinking beers, some just watching the majesty of a man floating 300 meters out over the valley. Because we were late, there was little time for introductions and less time for safety instruction (not that I would understand it anyway). Leco gets strapped up and strapped in and I stood there wondering how I was going to communicate when things went bad.

I watched, with mild terror, as Leco abandoned me to the Portuguese gibberish. The Brasilian pilots, noticing my nervousness, kept repeating “Tranquilo” which according my dictionary means calm (duh), clear, easy, or certain. I felt none of those things.

Leco flies away.

Leco flies by. Note how I dropped the camera when they got close to the building. I think I subconsciously didn’t want to film Leco’s death.

They strapped me in and tried reassure me. Calm, clear, easy, certain. The guy in the red shirt in the pic above helped me get clipped and buckled and explained the process to me in rudimentary Portuguese. Hold (segurar) on here. Walk (andar) as the parachute fills with air and lift (levantar) my legs and fly away. Calm, clear, easy, certain. The pilot (Steve and I are sure they were saying bombeiro-firefighter or bombardeio-bombardment but we’re not certian. those don’t sound right) spoke no English. Fala nada. Speak nothing. We were not even on the cliff for more than 12 minutes and I was away.

We zigzagged back and forth along the edge of the ridge and it was marvelous. The wind, heated by the iron in the ground (this is the state of Minas Gerais - literally meaning general mines ) whips along the valley floor and up the slope of the ridge and into our parachute and up we fucking went. Calm, clear, easy, certain. After about 15 minutes of staying near the ridge (remember I have no idea what the fuck is going on - do we land back on the ridge? do we land on the valley floor? how long are we going to be up there?) we began to move out to the wide world; the really real world. 650 meters up and cruising along at about 40km/h. No shit.

Leco off in the distance. Again I stopped filming when Leco’s death seemed imminent.

After a bit I figured out that we were going to land way, way far away (3km, it turns out) from where we took off. As we started to descend, my pilot, emphatically repeated, “Levantar! Levantar!” and tapped my legs. I lifted my legs and we glided down and crashed through some bushes and slid our asses along the ground, somewhat ignobly but safely.

I was relived to be on the ground. And I was even more relived that about 100 meters from the landing sight was the coolest, tiny country bar with a few pilots and a few country people hanging out in it drinking beer.

These kids were parked out front in classic youth fashion. Miscreants. Teenagers. With big block Dodge. The world is the same everywhere.

I haven’t mentioned that Steve had been up on the ridge this whole time, patiently waiting his turn. And, not surprisingly, my favorite part of the whole adventure was hanging out down there at that awesome bar, drinking with these crazy Brasilians for hours while Steve and Leco drove up and down the ridge, shuttling the pilots and themselves.

View from the bar to the ridge.

Steve’s flight in.

I was fairly drunk when Steve came in for his landing. Living the dream, right? Right.

Steve’s landing.

So, what have we learned? I’m a big baby. Everything is not going to be ok, everything already is ok. And there could be worse ways to learn a foreign language.
Tchau!