Projeto Rodas Livres

Esperanto

So many things happened this week regarding my planned around the world bike trip… first of all, I decided to start writing in English a version of each post posted from now on (there’s a bilingual site being made, but for the time being I will post in both languages). This is the way I’ve found for spreading worldwide my experiences with this project and, after the departure, through the route.

We all !

It is quite difficult to me writing in a foreign language, and it will be even worse when I’ll try to record my next video, having to speak out loud in English, but I have to try anyway… I want my words to reach as much of my fellow earthling citizens as possible.

dá-dá, gu-gu...

The bad news is that when I translate the text I wrote in English into Portuguese (with the help of wonderful Google Translator), the result is a childish writing…  And even with the due corrections, the final effect is not the same as if I had writen directly in my own language… but that’s the price to pay to speak to the whole world.  And I guess it’s cheap.  If I did the other way round, writing in Portuguese and rewriting in English, I would lose too much time looking for the right words and expressions in English.

Sake...

... and Rum

Also, today I included back in my planned route 3 countries that I had taken off: Cuba, Japan and New Zealand.  I had cut them off because the first route that I had traced had totalized more than 100.000 km… it’s too much.  But the fact is that I want to know them anyway.  I’ve been in Tokyo once, but I want to visit the rest of Japan (horrible for bicycles, as I read).

Holy crap !

I have plenty of time to ride aimlessly, for I decided to dedicate 5 years of my life to this project.  Let’s hope I’ll keep this intention till the end…

On tuesday afternoon I spent almost 4 hours in lovely conversation with Roberto Maragliano, another cicle-tourist with so many kilometers travelled on a bicycle. We met at Franz Café, inside FNAC Pinheiros, and talked a lot about many aspects of a trip like the one I am planning to do. He intend to set off still in 2011 for a Latin America journey, and so there is the possibility that we’ll meet in the future somewhere in the road.

Let's meet somewhere...

Los Caracoles

Roberto has travelled with Valdo in the past years, and told me charming stories about their friendship. He believes that Valdo has forced too much his heart in the ups and downs of the Andes, and that that was perhaps the cause of his death. Well, we’ll never know that for shure, but it is one more reason for me to cross the Andes through the easiest “paso” I found, by Mendoza.

It gives me the shivers

The other novelty is that, finally, I set up a date for my departure: it will be on september, the 3th (so help me God). This will be at the end of the winter, so I get warmer weather in my first thousand kilometers… I want to take it easy at the beginning… And, finally, I received an answer from Charles Zimmermann (another around the world brazilian cicle-tourist), about the security of riding through Africa, one of my biggest concerns… He said:

Charles

“Travelling through Africa is an incognite. Travelling there with a rucksack is already an incognite. First, security: no doubt, regarding robberies we are much more targets there than if we were in Latin America. My deduction about travelling there: In Africa you can have the best and the worse of your journey in the same day. The landscapes are very interesting, the sunset in the African continent was the most beautiful that I’ve ever seen”

Helen Trip

Helen

So, I kept a little worried about travelling there all the same… but later I found the website Take on Africa, of a British girl, Helen Lloyd, who went on a bicycle all the way down from London to Cape Town, in South Africa. And then I thought: well, if a girl can do that alone, I can at least try. Let’s think positively and go ahead. I sent her a message and already received an automatic confirmation. Let’s wait for her precious words. By the way, I loved a feature that I found in her website that allows the visitor to see the travelled route and the altitude at the same time… take a look at this: Helen Trip.

That’s all for the time being, folks!  Thanks for reading.