I’m going to try to tell an epic tale.

A tale I just got back from.

One that will be long, from where I went, who I met, what I did, what I saw.

I hope I can do it the justice it deserves.

You see, I went on this crazy, almost on a lark, trip down to Brazil for Carnival. But not just any place in Brazil, no, I went to Rio de Janerio, Rio de Janerio.

The closet to a foreign country I had ever been in was Canada, which really doesn’t count.

I had never been in a country where English was not the primary language.

I had never been anywhere warm, when it was cold back home.

I did not know very much Portuguese, although I tried to learn as much as I could in the short amount of time when I knew I was going.

I only knew two Brazilians down there, who were brothers.

But I’m getting ahead of myself, first a little back story.

I worked with Rodrigo Cipriano at Hewlett Packard in Greeley, Colorado back in the late 90’s. I was on the automated test team for testing scanner software, and he was on the localization team. I am not quite sure when we started hanging out. I remember him coming to watch our roller hockey team play, and then all of us would go out to a local bar, usually with the other team, for a few drinks before calling it a night. He would always drink Coors Light. I would always look to see what the weekly special was, and drink that. Usually it was a pint glass for $3.75. One time I asked Rodrigo why he drank Coors Light, he told me to get drunk. I mentioned why he drank a 12 ounce bottle of Coors Light for $3.50, when he could get 4 ounces more for only a quarter more? He tried his first American microbrew, it was 1559 from New Belgium Brewing, and it was dark. He said it tasted it bad, and I replied so did Coors Light, but 1559 has more alcohol, and cheaper. He learned to enjoy it.

We started to go to Old Chicago’s, a local bar that has franchised, for their World Beer Tour. They had hundreds of beer on tap and in bottles. You were issued a card, and they kept track of which beers you drank, after a certain amount, you reached a “stop” (like a train or bus stop) and you’d get a prize of sorts, a pocket knife, a church key (AKA bottle opener), etc. When you reached 110 beers, you completed a tour. You got a 32 ounce mug, a sweatshirt, and your name on a plaque in your home bar, as well as a sticker for 20% off food. Then you were encouraged to start all over again. I finished my first tour in 1995 or 1996. “Old C’s” as we called it also had a “glass night”, where a certain beer was highlighted for the night, the first beer was $5.95, and refills were $3.00, and you were allowed to take the glass home as a souvenir. Many times we would go there for glass night on Tuesday’s, and then back on Fridays or Saturdays as the start for that night’s events. Rodrigo’s brother, Leonardo, would also go out with us, using Rodrigo’s other ID. In Brazil the legal age to drink is 18, while in the US, it’s 21. Leonardo was 20, so he “technically” couldn’t drink, but was able to using the other ID, until someone messed it up.

After I quit hockey as it started getting too expensive, and we had some shake ups at work, another guy joined our ranks. His name was Russ Voss, and he was from Louisiana. The band was now complete. The three of us would go out, two or three times a week. He also joined the World Beer Tour. Many times, Russ and Rodrigo would get into a little an argument about which was better Mardi Gras, in Baton Rouge, or Carnival in Brazil. I had never been to either one, so I let them argue. Russ said we should go to Mardi Gras, next year, Rodrigo would say we should go to Carnival next year.

The group would slowly break away; I switched jobs to a place in Fort Collins, and was kept out of the planning of trips to the bars sometimes. Then Rodrigo was going to move back to Brazil, as his family had moved back after his mother graduated from Colorado State University the year prior. He was going to finish his contract, but the airlines were going to start charging for extra baggage on flights, and he wanted to take all his stuff home. The night before he left, we went to Old C’s one last night for old time’s sake. We chose to not go to our usual one, as it would be busy, it was just going to be a nice quiet night. We talked of old times, over a dinner and a couple of beers. He told me I should come down to Brazil when I get the chance, and I told him, we’d have to see, as I was unemployed at the time. We paid, grabbed our cards, said goodbye and split.

It would be several years later, when I went back to Old C’s that I realized we had switched cards. When I got my receipt, the bottom showed what beers I drank, some of the ones I’d already had were ones that I did not have on my old receipt. I looked at the tour total, and it said 1, I was almost done with my third! I looked at the back of the card; I saw where I had written “ROD!” on the back. At times, saying someone’s name can be hard so we shorten it, when I was 4-5 years old, I used to hate when people would call me “Stace”, as that was not my name, but over time, I found that at least they got most of the name right, and were not calling me “Tracey” or worse, my brother’s. So we called him “Rod” at times, even though some told us we were alienating his culture. Luckily I had the receipt of the beers I had drank the previous time, so I just got issued a new card, and the beers I had added to it. I still had his email address so I sent him and email about the card swap and he checked, sure enough he had mine. I offered to mail it to him, but he said I could just bring it down to him when I came down to Brazil.

Many more years passed, and in 2007, I had finally paid off all my credit cards that I had accumulated over the years. Then I also traded in my pickup truck that I bought brand new in 1994, for a 2007 Nissan Xterra in 2009. I am given three weeks of vacation, and usually have some time left to use before my anniversary at work resets it. I had planned to go back to Omaha with my mother in 2010 to see my friends from college that were living in and around there, but my mother contracted GBS (Guillain–Barré syndrome) from a swine flu shot she had gotten in January of 2010, so that cancelled our trip as she was in the hospital for a month. In the December of 2010, Rodrigo found me on FaceBook, and we started talking of old times, but his main question was “When are you coming to Brazil? You need to come for Carnival!” I had forgotten about all the times he mentioned it in the past, but I started to kick it around in my head.

On my trip back to Omaha for the first time in 10 years, I asked some of my old college roommates about going to Brazil, both of them replied I should seriously go, because what did I have to lose? When I was at a sporting goods store, I saw a picture of a Brazilian team soccer shirt, and thought maybe it was a sign.

After I got home, I started working out some of the details. I did not have a passport; I never needed one before, so I had to work out the process of getting that. I would also need a Brazilian visa (Brazil works as a “reciprocal state”. In essence, whatever it costs a Brazilian to go to your country; it will cost the same for someone from that same country to go to Brazil). All the while, at least once, if not three or five times a week, Rodrigo would ask me when I was going to come to Brazil. By the time I got my passport and saved some money up, it was nearing the fall in Brazil, and Rodrigo told me I needed to come during the summer. Since Brazil is in the southern hemisphere, the summer there is our winter. At the moment, winter for where I work is also the busiest time of the year, and that was out of the question, so I was looking for either a January or February time frame. Carnival the year before was in March, so I had to send Rodrigo a message that I would have to come January or February. He replied that Carnival was in February this year due to the way Ash Wednesday is calculated.

I had the dates down in my mind on when I wanted to go, as I was supposed to come out a few days before and stay a few days after. Here is where what I perceived to be true about Carnival and what it wasn’t are totally different things. Thinking it was like Mardi Gras, I chose a few days before Tuesday, and a few days after Tuesday. I also started pricing tickets and looking at the visa process. The process requires either flight plans or travel itinerary. I knew what flight plans were, to me a travel itinerary was something from a travel agency. When I got down to Brazil, I would just stay with Rodrigo; I wouldn’t need hotels, a car or anything like that.