Getting off at the last bus stop
SAO PAULO – Just another night in Brazil: We ride in the bus from the stadium to downtown Recife, make a turn into a street that is really too narrow for the bus. The bus is now blocking the street diagonally and is so close to hitting a parked car (which would be the third bus accident on this trip) that the driver and two other guys get out and try to lift and move the car by hand.
That doesn’t work very well. Driver just says, “Everybody out,” in Portuguese and we leave the bus in its diagonal position.
We walk to the hotel, where all the U.S. writers wait a long time for an elevator, only to discover their room keys no longer work. A few hours later, the checkout line is 30 minutes long.
As I predicted, Koppett’s Law went into effect, the U.S. finished in the worst place possible for my travel plans and now I am thoroughly inconvenienced, throwing money around at many transit and lodging problems. Never fails.
I’ve now instructed Lewis to tell me that his jokes are jokes before he tells them, not after. That way, I can more politely laugh. It’s not really any good for him to tell me it was a joke after the joke. That’s embarrassing for both of us. He’s agreed, and it’s working out much better.
We’re wasting all the best weather on Sao Paulo, which I have to say is not exactly a tourist’s paradise. Glad to be rid of the German journalists, though. One guy just perched behind me and read everything I was writing on my laptop. He was smirking the whole time, like he had a diary that was much, much better than mine. Impossible.