A week ago Sunday my boss and I embarked on a trip to Brazil. From the very beginning it was “eventful”.

When we arrived at the Denver airport there was a report there were funnel clouds reported in Denver. The storm was tracking very near the airport. Our flight was delayed and delayed and delayed. We finally took off about an hour late, hoping that the connecting flight to Brazil from Chicago would also be delayed. It wasn’t.

The flight to Sao Paulo left the gate about the same moment we arrived.The airport was nearly empty that time of night – except for the line at customer service trying to rebook. We tried to rebook using the phone and were informed that we had been rebooked on the same flight – Tuesday night – meaning we would miss half the four day trade show. Not an option. They tried to rebook us but my ticket was paid for with frequent flyer miles so the options were limited – they could not rebook us to a partner airline. We looked into all sorts of options on the phone and later at the customer service counter.

While waiting at customer service counter, a young Chinese man with an elderly Chinese man was behind us. The elder man had missed his connection after a long flight from China and the young man was trying to help him get at least a hotel room for the night. The young man had to go catch his connection and had the elder man follow us to the counter. He did, and when we were called to the counter the woman helping us couldn’t understand why we were talking about just two of us when there were obviously three. Once we explained what was up, the man at the next counter took care of  him using a by phone translation service. It seemssince his delay was strictly weather related and he was not entitled to a hotel voucher – onjly a discount coupon. Our flight was over booked as well as being weather delayed so we got the voucher.

We then tried to retrieve our suitcases but were told doing so would somehow cancel our newly aquired reservations for Monday night (24 hours later). We were assured that our bags – which contained not only our clothes but all the literature and trinkets to be given out at the show – would be on the flight with us.

Monday morning we tried again, with the help of a travel agen to get an earlier flight – still no go since my ticket was paid by miles. Finally, we accepted that the red eye flight that night was our only choice.We again asked about our bags and were assured that they would make the flight with us – the clerk even entered our claim check numbers into the computer to make sure they were associated with our tickets.

Guess what, my bags made it the bosses did not. Again, the claim check numbers were entered into the computer and we were assured they would be on the Tuesday night flight and delivered to our hotel by Tuesday night.

While we were at the airport in Chicago we made sure emails were sent to the rental car agency and the hotel letting them know we were delayed 24 hours. The rental car was not there.

Of the 4 rental agencies at the Rio airport – only one had cars available.

We quickly found out that having a map was pretty useless- Brazil seems to see little need for putting up road signs with the names of roads. We took a several mile side trip into Rio proper after we missed the turn to the bridge across the bay. The maze of streets with no names and very limited oportunities to turn resulted in our finding the only obvious “retorno” toward the bridge not only was marked with a no righyt tur sign (tose they put up) but manned by a policeman. When a motorcycle made the turn with no reaction from the cop we tried it. He reacted, we held up the map jabbered in English (which at least 99% of Brazilians do not understand) he smiled, looked at what we were pointing to on the bridge – jabbered some Porteuguese and waved us on to the road we needed.

we made the rest of the road trip of about 150km with little difficulty (and zipping past who knows how many photo speed traps because we did not recognize them). The route we took was mostly a two lane with many trucks laboring up the many hills. the tiny Fiat we rentedhad some difficulty accelerating enough to get safely around the trucks so we did what the locals did – cut it way too close and passed them anyway.

We drove past the trade show venue on our way to finding the hotel – it took over an hour getiing from the one to the other even though it was only a few miles.

The hotel honored our reservations (but I am sure we had better rooms waiting on Monday than we got on Tuesday. The view was of a blank concrete wall and looking down from the balconies we found the hotel employee’s break area – the alley behind the hotel. We asked for directions back to the show venue and the hand drawn map the busman let us look at (he only had the one copy) indicated the route we had taken getting there. So we headed out (me in clean clothes and armed with a handfull of literature and trinkets from my bags) and drove the hour back to the show. We paid the R$20 to park and were there for the final two hours of the evening.

Our “hostess” we hired was a very pleasant surprise – she was so good at translating and learned our products so well that she quickly did not need to translate the questions but simply answered most of the questions directly.

Wednesday we went to the show, found we could park across the street for only R$10 and had a good day at the show. At least the boss was able to wear one of my shirts with the company logo – but was still in Sundays clothes otherwise. Returning to the hotel Wednesday night we found that the airline had again failed to deliver the lost bags.

Our translator told us there is a “mall” in the city – near the hotel. The desk clerk said the only directions “You should take Taxi”. Diligent internet searching found themall’s web site with a rudimentary map. Only one of the roads on that map could be found on Google or Yahoo maps. But Thursday morning, instead of going to the beach (the hotel is on the beautiful beach and the trade show started at 2 pm) we set out to buy clothes and a phone charger for the boss. We found the road shown on all the maps (linhqa Verde – Green Line) and it is a four lane divided highway. We of course missed the turn to the mall – this time because there were not only no signs but a construction project blocked us actually seeing the mall.

That missed turn led us to the realization we could use that highway to reach the show venue in considerably less time than the through the city route.

We got clothes and the phone charger and went to the show. (n between we went to the hotel and parked in the attended lot across from the hotel and – as instructed – had the hotel stamp the ticket. When we went to get the car we gave the attendant the ticket – he tore it up and demanded R$4.)

At the show we found a farmer allowing parking in his field for only R$5 (we only had a 50 and two 2′s so we negotiated it down to $4.

The end of the day at the show left us with exactly 4 pieces of literature.

THE BAGS arrived!

Friday we managed to get stuck in the elevator at the brand new hotel (it had not been finished when we made our reservations). The boss wore his own clothes and we had plenty of literature and several different “trinkets” to give out. On the way to the show we decided to stop at the only money exchange house in the city – armed with what details we could glean from the internet mapsrealizing actual street names might not help,I had counted the number of blocks from recognizable landmarks, only to realize too late the internet maps left off at least half the streets. We wound up asking directions on the street and two women gave up trying to make us understand and simply got in therecar and waved for us to follow. We did and many turns and several close calls from the kamakaze drivers she waved out the window at the proper building.

To be continued… too late to keep typing tonight

We are here in Macae’ (Mack-I-ya) Brazil (Brasil the way they spell it) for a trade show. It is a town that without oil would be a nice stretch of beach that nobody would go to unless they had relatives there.

The discovered oil off shore here and – unlike the USA – the Brazilian government actually lets them drill  for it. Did I say “lets” – no – they make sure they drill for it. The oil revenue is paying off the national debt – it can be paid off? These Brazilians are so clever – why didn’t anyone in the US think of that?

There are no hotel rooms to be had here, the traffic through town is terrible (we found out today there is a much better way to get there on a very nice 4 lane road. The people at the hotel did not include that in their directions.

Yahoo maps and mapquest were of little help finding our way around – not so much because of anything they do but the fact that Brazilians seem to see no need for street signs, certainly none with the name of any street you are actually on.  Add to the lack of road signs the drivers who make your worst foreign born cabbie in the US seem like a grandmother off to church on Sunday, the kamikazee motorcyclists weaving through stopped or slow traffic at twice the posted speed limit and it is easy to find your self quickly lost of at least needing to find the next “retorno”(U-turn) to get back on track. There are city buses that squeeze by on the right with inches to spare (with motorcyclists squeezing through those inches).

We have been introduced to the Obama future car of the US – it is a tiny Fiat (didn’t they just get Chrysler?) with a tiny engine that has just enough power to let you pass a slow moving truck and leave a few inches to spare before the oncoming car flashes past. It looks remarkably like a 4 door “Smart car”, runs on Gas or “alcool”. We drove it about 150 miles and then bought R$75 worth of alcool ($40 US). I work it out at 15 mpg and the cost of alcool (made from sugar) R$7.20 per gallon about $4 US. Gas is double alcool but the mileage is probably better – not sure if it is double.

The poor mileage could be partly from the hour long traffic jams through town.

Since the Unnamed Air Line (which I’ll call UAL for short) lost the boss’s bags in Chicago from Sunday through tonight (Thursday night) we went in search of the Plaza Macae’ (sole shopping mall) to buy a phone charger so he could consult his Blackberry, some clean clothes and other necessaries. The hotel declined to offer directions saying – better to call a cab. Yahoo maps and mapquest couldn’t find it by name, the plaza’s web site did not include an address or directions but did include a not to scale short on detail “map”. The usual map sites could not identify the few street names on the plaza’s map, the not to scale feature (and not terribly accurate even as to the relative directions of the roads it did show) made comparing it to the other maps useless. There was one named road that seemed familiar – I had seen a sign pointing toward it near the hotel. So we went and found that road, then drove down it looking for the “mall”. A less than convenient road construction made it impossible to spot the mall on first pass – we had to go several km before finding a “retorno” which conveniently led us to a road that appeared to go to the convention center.

We back tracked, found the mall behind the construction vehicles and got the needed items.

Of course this evening the bags appeared at the hotel.

We ended the day at the trade show with 4 company flyers left. The rest are in the now found baggage so tomorrow, we can be much more free with them.

I really have to say something about Pollyanna our interpreter. We thought we had hired another interpreter and had lined her up as a “hostess” to hand out flyers and just be friendly. We were not expecting our interpreter to bail on us and for our “hostess” to be a very smart, pretty assistant who not only did an excellent job interpreting for us but quickly learned about our products and then was answering nearly all questions directly.

Well, TCM just finished showing “They call me Mister Tibbs” in English with Portuguese sub-titles and is now showing an old Clark Gable movie dubbed in Portuguese. Guess it is time to turn in.

Cleared 3 inches of snow and an eighth inch of ice from the cars and trucks and left Wichita just before noon today. The roads in Wichita were sloppy (they barely understand the concept of snow removal and seem to rely upon the solar method). Once on the Interstate it was cleared but wet, with a stiff, slightly above zero wind which immediately froze the spray onto the windsheilds of the trucks, even though they had warmed up for over half an hour.

The first twenty miles revealed that the previous owner of the ’07 suv they just bought felt that straight water was OK for the windshield washer. The older suv also turned out to be out of fluid (even after the local Jiffy Lube had done an oil change with the instructions to check and top off all the fluids – they seemed much more interested in convincing us that unless the trans fluid and the grease in both differentials was changed that disaster was imminent).

About 30 miles out of Wichita, after three stops to deal with the washer fluids we decided to stop at a WalMart /Subway for the bottomless pits (the boys). We also filled the washer fluid on both trucks.

Was then uneventful until we were on I70 west of Salina and decided to fill the trucks. I was enjoying listening to the Audio Book (Double Cross by James Patterson). Neither of the boys wanted to ride with me – which was probably for the best since it was prone to more motion than they probably are used to. So no one got car sick. The dogs also made it through the trip without incident.

Stopped in Colby, Ks for fuel – a little ahead of schedule because they had a Starbucks in the Petro2 Truck Stop.

Took C 86 from just north of Limon to Kiowa and Franktown, saved about 35 miles and who knows how much in tolls by ignoring the GPS suggested rout of I-70 to E-470 toll road.

Considering all the snow that has fallen between Denver and Wichita in the last few days the roads were all pretty good. The first few miles of C 86 showed evidence of previously drifted snow and some areas that were close to black ice but no slipping was evidenced but we did hold significantly below the posted 65 limit in that area (the old motor home towing small suv with no lights obviously felt need for extra caution as he went past me at about the 65 limit over a double yellow and barely cleared my truck before crossing back in front of me).