Road trippin 3.0

Written to R.E.M. Live by R.E.M.

“No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.”

- Lin Yutang

No quote could better sum up the past weekend, which began on Friday, when Lone and Esben picked me up in São Paulo and we headed out of town toward Porto Feliz (Happy Haven in English) to visit Carson and Ellen Geld. We arrived at Fazenda Pau d'Alho at around 16:30 on a cold, drizzling day. Not long after we arrived, Ellen, Lone and Esben went for a walk, together with the dogs, a trek which culminated with Ellen and Lone filling the bed of our Mitsubishi L200 Triton HPE 3.2 Diesel pickup with half a fazenda worth of saplings. After a lovely dinner, we retired relatively early.

The next day we enjoyed a huge family lunch with a large percentage of the Geld clan…delicious food and delightful company. Just after 16:00 we headed off, decorative clothing in tow to Catanduva for the wedding of Daniel Teruo Famano and Daniella de Grande Curi, which was slated to begin at 20:45. After a quick stop at a local luncheonette (note to any and all: do not mess with a hypoglycemic woman, especially when she doubles as your wife), we changed clothes on the fly and metaphorically-speaking transformed from road-weary ugly ducklings into swans (1, 2, 3) for an evening. While Lone was taking the first photo of a Bossed-out Esben and me, I leaned over to my middle son and quoted Kanye:

The Goyard so hard man I'm Hugo's boss

Why I gotta ask what that two door cost?

Esben's retort was breakneck: the reenactment of this scene from Men in Black.

At somewhere south of 01:00, we departed the festivities and climbed back into our trusty pickup and headed back to Taubaté, where we arrived in the parking lot of Carrefour at 07:00…and waited until the metal roller shutters were lifted at 08:00 to do a little grocery shopping. A couple of hours later, we arrived back at Fazenda Alfheim, more than slightly worse for the wear. Suffice it to say it was a quiet Sunday -despite the fact that it was election day in Brazil.

While I did all of the driving on our road trip, Esben and Lone bore the brunt of the farm work, which involved more sowing of heirloom corn and feijão, caring for our two beautiful new Jersey calves, one male and one female, and the all-important task of picking Jabuticaba! Vidunderligt!

While somewhat cold during the weekend and Monday, the weather cleared today, Tuesday, and with the sun brought hope that our milho criolo will continue to prosper...7-9-13!

Finally, in a blow to The Man, Monsanto appears to have fallen on hard times in the past year, its stock falling 42% since the beginning of the year, shortly after Forbes named it “company of the year” back in December. While normally not one to gloat over others' misery, I admit to having trouble hiding my glee over these developments. The New York Times article is well worth a read.