[Rhodes22-list] Biggest Party In The World

[brad haslett]

Slim,

Thanks, you've given me the excuse to buy that
motorized mini-dish antenna I want.  We have Direct-TV
and DSL, (I friggin hate Time-Warner and every other
cable company), and a fixed dish pointed to CCTV
4(Beijing TV).  The CCTV box can pickup broadcasts
from all over the world but right now its fixed on
just the one satellite.  On my farm I had one of those
"mother-of-all-dishes" set-ups but they're not allowed
in my subdivision.  Is yours a full size system or a
mini-dish?  Movable or fixed?

My one and only trip to Rio was not a pleasant
experience but that wasn't Rio's fault.  I had
ruptured a disc in my back about two weeks prior but
didn't know it.  I came out of the water on a slalom
ski and it felt like someone stabbed me in the back. 
Some liquid pain-killer out of the cooler got me
through the rest of the day.  The next day I was in
intense pain so I went to a "doc-in-the-box" and he
said I pulled a muscle and gave me muscle relaxers and
pain pills.  This Rio trip was coming up and I really
wanted to fly it so I quit the drugs and flew the
trip.  We spent 48 hours in Manaus, on the Amazon, on
the way down and some of the extra-curricular
activites there only agravated the back situation.  By
the time we got to Rio all I could do was sit in a
chaise lounge at the hotel pool, order beer, and drool
over the view and eye candy walking down Ipenema
Beach.  When we got back to Miami my crewmembers
literaly had to carry me off the airplane.  I spent
two days in MIA recovering to the point that I could
non-rev home.  They replaced me with a crew-member
thatthe company flew down on one of the corporate
jets.  When I got home and had an MRI my L4-L5 was
ruptured and I had surgery.  Haven't made it to Rio
since.

The second missed approach at a Carnival experience
was in Caracus, Venuzala.  We stopped in San Juan and
they had the 727-200 fully loaded with fuel.  "Why so
much fuel for this leg"?  Global Operations Command
(GOC)explained (they didn't mention a word of it when
I left home) that the air-traffic controllers were on
strike in Venuzala and they weren't sure we'd be
cleared to land.  We got there and the military was
running the control tower.  Everything seemed normal;
shitty as usual.  We spent the day lying by the pool
overlooking the gulf but separated from the locals by
a chain-link fence.  The local kids sell Polar beer to
hotel guests in tomato-juice sized cans for a quarter.
The cans are small so they will fit through the holes
in the fence.  That night we escaped the compound for
some local flavor.  I got back to my room about 2am
and was just about to fall asleep when the phone rang.
 It was GOC explaining that the company had suspended
operations to Venuzala and they thought United and
American would the next day.  We had reservations on
an American flight in 5 hours and were told to get out
of the country while we still could.  The second
officer said, "it's Carnival week!  Let's get stuck
here".  The F/O and I had trips coming up and felt we
wouldn't get paid if we didn't follow the plan.  We
had no ground transportation because it was an ad hoc
dead-head so I tried to call back to the "brain trust"
to schedule something on the 1-800 number.  I got the
phone menu, press 1 for this, 2 for that, and just
stared at the rotary dial phone.  We bummed a ride
from an American crew at the hotel and checked in for
the flight.  The ticket agent said "this is Carnival
week, this flight has been sold out for months".  "No
mam, we're positive space, look up the agreement".  "I
don't know nothing about any agreement, I just know
you're not going on this flight".  So we left the
country 6 hours later and "celebrated" Carnival at the
airport terminal.  When we checked in for the second
flight and checked the bags, the agent said, "I don't
understand, you're going to Nashville, he's going to
Kansas City, and he's going to Chicago, all on the
same reservation, this doesn't make sense"  "Forget
about it lady, we're all going to Miami, we'll take
care of it from there".

Oh well, some day before I die I'll really make
Carnival.

Brad Haslett
"CoraShen" 

--- Steve Alm <salm at mn.rr.com> wrote:

> The biggest party/music festival in the world is
> going on right now in
> Brazil--Carnival!  It goes on for a full week, 24/7
> and culminates in a
> frenzied finale on Tuesday--Fat Tuesday-- the day
> before Ash Wednesday and
> the beginning of Lent.  We have a satellite dish and
> we get the Brazilian
> broadcast station, Globo.  They've been showing the
> parades from all across
> Brazil and these are the most over-the-top
> productions I could ever imagine.
> They make the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade look like a
> high school homecoming!
> Maybe someone more internet-savvy than me can come
> up with some sites that
> show live feeds or streaming video.
> 
> The parades are a competition and a sequence of
> "samba schools" as in
> "school of fish" for the way they swim through the
> streets. They're
> developed and rehearsed back in the vast favelas
> (slums) and comprise
> thousands of people in each one.  They have a
> specific underlying theme and
> one song that prevails in the whole school
> accompanied by hundreds of
> drummers and dancers.  It can take up to an hour for
> each school to pass,
> and there are dozens of schools in every parade. 
> The floats, costumes and
> music are unbelievable. Sometimes the whole float IS
> the costume for one
> very important person, or maybe the costume is a
> beautiful woman dressed in
> a fancy hat and some paint--that's all.  Some
> costumes consist of nothing
> but glue and glitter.  There's no shortage of T & A.
>  8-)   And bless
> Globo's heart, they show it all.  Most costumes are
> so elaborate you can't
> believe it.  These poor, poor, poor people collect
> beads, sequins, fabric,
> etc and spend the whole year hand-making their
> costume.  After it's over,
> they carefully take their costume apart and save
> every bead for next year's
> costume.
> 
> Virtually every business closes for Carnival except
> the bars, hotels and
> restaurants.  Everybody just goes for it!  If you're
> not in the parade or
> watching the parade, you're out on the street anyway
> partying you butt off.
> There's nothing like this anywhere else in the
> world.  Feliz Carnival!
> 
> Slim 
> 
> 
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> 



		
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