Brazilian Magic

	It took me two decades to understand a comment made to our seminary class by an elderly priest who had served his first parish in Berlin during the days of the Third Reich. He said, "One day as I stood on a street corner and listened to the eloquent young Hitler deliver his fiery rhetoric, I had to literally pull myself from the crowd and run, or in another five minutes I would have torn off my collar and followed him anywhere!" I was young and idealistic at the time, and as an aspiring 28-year-old ministerial student it made no sense to me that anyone could throw away his entire value system based on one brief encounter with an alternate ideology.
Then, at age 48, on the verge of launching a multi-billion-dollar, international joint venture with several renowned experts in business, science and government, I accepted the challenge of my paragliding mentor, Ray Leonard of Adventure Sports in Carson City, Nevada, to spend two weeks in an obscure Brazilian town for some world-class cross-country flying. Our friend Bobby Morken had been there for months, speaks fluent Portuguese, and had been dubbed honorary Mayor because everyone in Govenador knows him on a first-name basis. In addition to his paragliding expertise, Bobby has become the U.S. Ambassador of Good Will to Brazil. It made sense. After all, I knew for the next decade I would be working 60-hour weeks and the Brazil trip seemed like a last real adventure with the guys, a chance to unwind and prepare my head for the arduous tasks ahead Indeed, it wasn't until the final three days that I began to fully appreciate the comments of the elderly priest 20 years prior. And it wasn't the perfect thermals or cloud base soaring we enjoyed, literally every single day, which forced me into my internal conflict. One need not travel 5,000 miles by jet to get in some good X-C flying. I've been reading this magazine long enough to know that on every other page some grinning middle-aged athlete is touting an X-C launch in America, landing some eight hours later among strangers, tapping a keg and preparing a roasted pig to toast his 65K adventure. I mean, let's face it, we have rowdy enough lift here in Reno to send many seasoned pilots cross country to the nearest toilet to dean away the remnants of a one-hour high-desert flight complete with a dozen or so asymmetrical collapses.
	No, it wasn't the adventurous flying that forced my ideological confusion. It was the people, the lifestyle, and the values. It was the fact that everywhere I went in Govenador Valadares I felt not only safe but was also welcome, any time of the night or day. The food was remarkable. Nearly every open-air restaurant (and there's one on every corner) has a meal for about $4.00 U.S. which consists of lamb, beef, chicken, fish, veal and other interesting meats I didn't care to inquire about. It's brought to each patron on a sizzling skewer, one type of meat at a time, and the chef then slices the precise amount you request. Of course, all the meat is accompanied with four kinds of vegetables, rice, real freshly cut French fries, and all the Icy Antarctica beer you can drink. They're like diose children's pitch-til-ya-win booths at the country fair, only in this case it's all you can eat for under five bucks. And it's all great, not good, just plain delectable. The owner of a more upscale version called Fogo De Chao, in which I dined during my layover in Sao Paulo, claimed he recently joint-ventured a similar restaurant in Dallas, Texas. If I still lived in Texas, I wouldn't rest until I found it!
Because I'm happily married, my evening ended dead-tired and alone with HBO, but single pilots found themselves in what could only be described as a Jules Verne trip to another planet where it's compulsory that all women are perfectly bronze, five feet five, with jet black hair to their waists and zero body fat. It's mandatory that they all wear as little clothing as possible due to the heat (of course) and makeup is not allowed because it's totally unnecessary. I'd been in America so long that it never dawned on me that Lancôme and Clinique are wasted on a perfect bronze complexion accented by ivory white teeth and waist-length black hair. Slopping rouge on those girls would kind of be like scotch-taping peacock feathers on the rear spoiler of a $300,000 Lamborghini Countash to make it pretty.
	About the flying. Imagine a perfect, multi-directional grass slope, ideal in any wind direction or thermal cycle, several thousand feet in the air with an LZ near the town center that doubles as the local soccer field. Now imagine a raging Amazonian river parallel to the field with enough white water to deter the most gutsy class five rapids enthusiast (we never saw one rubber raft attempt to shoot the rapids during our entire two weeks) and then add two high-rise condos at one end of the LZ and a barrage of shanties and high wires at the other. Directly opposite the LZ on the other side of the river, imagine a jungle of 30-foot-tall saw grass from which it is a real blast (and I speak from experience) to attempt to extricate your paraglider in 100-degree heat. Then you realize why the soccer field fills with spectators as the first pilots of the day begin prayerfully heading for the LZ. It also makes sense that they have 40-foot speakers and woofers set up, blasting the latest rock hits from around the world to both entertain the spectators and motivate the paraglider pilots. What would be a basic landing back home is more like kicking a goal with one second left to win the Brazilian Cup.
Now imagine, following your routine landing before an appreciative throng of locals, that 10 expert canopy folders all under the age of seven come running out and take over your equipment the minute you touch down to the tune of "Born to Be Wild," made more deafening by the spectators' applause. You're done. Except for buying your helpers a few ice cream bars for folding up and completely packing your wing and harness with the precision of an Edsel factory employee, your only remaining obligation is to spend the next hour sitting around the field with adoring locals who are attempting to see just how close they can get to a real American hero. Most of them, by the way, are those I mentioned earlier who need no Clinique or Lancôme.
	It was about three days before leaving Valdares for Reno that I began to do some simple math. It occurred to me that for about 10% of the income required to live my current lifestyle in America, I could move to Brazil and live 20 times as luxuriously. I realized I could fly every day, eat like a Greek god and be respected in every local establishment. I could be around people for whom the adult report card is not the almighty buck but rather a life of adventure to be treasured, where what is happening right at that present moment is infinitely more important than a five-year goal. In a mere 10 days the humble maid who insisted on hand-laundering and ironing my underwear became significantly more important to me than my stockbroker back home. My values had shifted significantly.
Then the fateful day came. Ray Leonard's First Annual Adventure Sports Brazilian Tour was over. A new wave of tourists had slowly taken over our hotel, and the European and American paragliding strategies, which had previously dominated our early breakfasts, were replaced by tourists' discussions of shopping and Amazon picture Safaris. Alas, life must move on and change inevitability under even the grandest of circumstances. But I have a confession. On the way to the airport I eyeballed some houses for sale. And in the end, much like the young priest who had spoken so eloquently of his mental confusion on that Berlin street corner, I too had to pull myself away, or I might have easily cast aside my future goals and aspirations.
	But about one thing I am irrevocably convinced, my life was enriched, my life was enriched beyond measure because of a simple paragliding trip to Brazil, a trip in which I both soared to cloud base with hawks and lived temporarily among real people. As I pen these closing remarks on a jet somewhere between Dallas and Reno I cannot look into a crystal ball and predict what might happen with my coming business venture. But I can assure you that so long as my brain and body hold together, I'll never miss one annual Adventure Sports trip with Ray Leonard to Brazil. In the words of the late E. Frank Brydon, "A luxury once enjoyed, thereafter becomes a necessity." It occurred to me that for about 10% of the income required to live my current lifestyle in America, I could move to Brazil and live 20 times as luxuriously. I realized I could fly every day, eat like a Greek god and be respected in every local establishment.
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