So today, Brady the Traveling Wolverbear leveled up to "Brady the Underground-Airport-Terminal-Train-Riding, Portuguese-Translating, Ladies'-Man, Traveling Wolverbear." After landing in Atlanta, Ben and I did a quick terminal change using the airport's well-known underground interterminal train and got something to eat near our gate. This was the last time for 13 weeks that my phone was on roaming... iPhone in airplane mode activated.
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| Ben riding on the train in ATL |
The flight from Atlanta to Brasilia started in a memorable way. The man sitting in the seat directly behind me had misplaced his passport and boarding pass somewhere between the plane door and his seat in row 23. The FAA couldn't clear the plane to depart knowing that he didn't have the documentation he needed to return home. This began an onslaught of bizarre sights to see while still parked on the gate. After he put up a verbal struggle against the Delta representatives and had the entire area repeatedly check the surroundings for the missing docs, the pilot was publicly scorning the disturbance over the intercom and informing the rest of the passengers that the flight would be further delayed since the airline is also required to remove the passenger's luggage. Although this was inconvenient, this served as Ben's and my introduction to the Brasilian concept of travel time, a southern hemisphere adaptation of "Michigan Time." Ben's seat neighbor, Ivan made a point that in all of his Brasilian travels, he has never seen a flight take off on time, but to the fault of the passengers' timeliness and not airline passivism. This trend was even more obvious as we boarded in Brasilia for our final leg to Fortaleza with plenty of time to fill up a relatively empty flight yet we still departed the gate at least 20 minutes late.
As for Brady the Traveling Wolverbear's Ladies' Man status, we may have to travel together more often because I enjoyed all of the attention. As I boarded different flights throughout the journey, the Brazilian flight attendants said things in a tone in which I'm assuming they thought he was adorable and of course made me look manly (I couldn't understand what exactly they were saying, but I think this is a safe direction to go). A lady sitting next to us in the Brasilia terminal was also enamored with Brady and asked about him... also using broken English.
Until next time,
-David Rood
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