Flowers, Dune du Pilat and Saint-Émilion

Luck is one of those things you can't get enough. You can always handle a little bit more.

On the last grape harvesting day we had the privilege to be carried with our "baby girls" by furgo directly to our next job: at an horticulture preparing the orders for Hallowmas - thousands of chrysanthemums! We also had the privilege of being accommodated in the former family home of our boss Manu (Anaïs's father), where today only lives a sister of the fourteen brothers and sisters that once lived there. We looked like two happy children. Flowers, plants, soil, pure air! Everything we could want.

Beyond the pleasure we had working we even were added the pleasure of some tiny bicycle rides through the neighboring villages, wonderful dinners at Manu and Françoise's house and a day trip with them to Château de Roquetaillade, Château de Villandraut and Dune du Pilat. We've never heard of this last one but it's the highest dune in Europe. Walking along its 2.7km and more than 100m tall it seems we're not in Europe but rather in any exotic desert. On its left side a loose sight extensive forest and on its right side the Atlantic blue. We still went touring Arcachon's waterfront and strolled along the streets bordered with stately homes extremely well preserved. It was a magnificently well spent day with those who we call "nos parents Français" (our French parents).

But within a few days the open greenhouses covered with colorful chrysanthemums, lead to a void. The work had finished. We didn't want to go home so we decided to do some research on the internet. Kiwis, potatoes, nuts, beets, mushrooms, cauliflower, green beans... we tried everything. Nothing. Not having a car, experience and above all home (even if we could rent one afterwards) began to be a problem for those who answered on the other side of the phone. We decided then to grab our bikes and go from village to village, Château to Château, door to door, until Saint-Émilion to continue working in the vineyards. The time for la tombée/tirage des bois and taille was about to begin in some vineyards. For taille (specific branches cut) all houses required experience, sometimes even five years. But we thought it was possible to be accepted for the first job.

The first mishap happened right on the first day. The two season sleeping bags we had were made exactly for that, Spring and Summer. The temperature that night dropped a degree or two below zero and no matter how many clothes we put on it was still insufficient. Impossible even to get some sleep. Therefore we had to make a detour to the nearest Decathlon (Bordeaux, 40km away) to buy new ones, which we exchanged twice more... The ones we have now are undoubtedly very hot - in fact the hottest that Decathlon has - but we only managed to make the second exchange because, after a long time arguing, the shop manager made a brief pause, looked-us up and down and said, with some astonishment: "You're dressed from top to bottom with clothes bought here!" We stared at each other and confirmed. "You can make the exchange then!" And sponsorships, no?

We ended up not getting a job in the vineyards because all the Châteaux where we could find someone were with the leaves delayed - which meant they were still expecting the leaves to fall and then the works would start. Either that or they had their own teams. Anyway our business card with our numbers and where it says "tous travaux agricoles" (every agricultural work) were delivered. Still we were invited to drink house wines, sheltered from the rain, and we talked a lot with several owners, exchanging contacts. The general sympathy of the French with whom we crossed paths surprised hugely our "pre-conceptions"!

This small tour ended at Saint-Émilion on a beautiful sunny Sunday. Under a small shelter for farm equipment we found in the middle of a vineyard, and stayed overnight, we received a text message that would make us laugh happily! We could return to the horticulture, there were roses to plant! And so we returned to the starting point, to dig our hands in the soil (gloves what for?!) and prick our arms at a spectacular and surprising pace. We planted hundreds of roses a day after Thierry cut them conveniently. Among the names of the roses were Edith Piaf, Leonard de Vinci, Betty Boop and many others. I can't wait to see them grown and flowered in the Spring!

Unfortunately time had come to move back to Portugal, where our families were waiting for us for Christmas.

Grape Harvesting and Codfish

After all this madness it would be unfair if everything else wouldn't turn out great. So it did. The week we were in Bordeaux with Anaïs, who was going to grape harvest with us and who got us the job, and his brothers Pierre and Sibylle, was spectacular. The city is really beautiful - no wonder it's a UNESCO heritage site - and the cyclists crazy. They ride in all directions, on the sidewalk, on the road, on the metro lines, wherever needed. Cold or not two minutes afterwards I was already sweating from concentration. The good thing is that despite this almost bicycle anarchy cars respect them above all. And very rarely we heard honking.

Compared with Portugal the work at these vineyards couldn't have been smoother. The most important thing to make a good Sauternes wine is within the quality of the grapes picked up at the right time. Nothing to do with other types of wines which the important thing is to pick up everything as quickly as possible. Here concentration, observing well each bunch and see their maturation point (in this case a proper "rottenness") was sovereign. Therefore the pace was necessarily slower. Especially in the first days until we go it right. Our chef Pierre had all the patience in the world to teach us and to put everyone in a good mood. We were in the right place with the right team!

On the next weekend me and Fernando decided to go for ride till the nearest coast. Early enough we prepared everything to leave with our baby girls. 5km later - fffff! - a hole. Now that's odd we thought. Concerning we were rolling on the smoothest asphalt road. When we took a proper look the reality was quite different: ripped tire! Which ripped the inner tube, which in turn or we get a good enough solution or Fernando had to walk back to our Château. I don't know where he got that but he came from behind a machinery house in a neighboring vineyard with a piece of black hard sponge. We filled the tire with it, mended the inner tube and returned "home", which after all was about 1km away from another road. Fortunately it rained the whole weekend so we were glad to not have been able to go.

I have to tell you about the most unbelievable episode that happened to us during this stay. The codfish episode. Since the grape harvest beginning, when we met Ignasi again, we talked about making a cream codfish - his favorite Portuguese dish that Fernando could do so well. We promised we would make it when we received the payment.

It was a night like any other. I don't remember where our friends were, probably had gone out. I was cleaning the kitchen and the toilet. We went to the tent at night as dark as pitch. This time I hadn't forgotten the flashlight so it was the only way to see where we were stepping. Right outside the gate I'm faced with the strangest vision. I point the flashlight down to the ground and ask: "Can you understand what that is?" We approached. "A codfish?" We laughed. "A codfish? It can't be!" We kept on laughing. Already squatting towards what would be a very good slice of codfish, already soaked, we couldn't stop laughing. We looked around, we turned the slice around, we looked at the sky... no clue where it would have come from, as how or what was a nice slice of codfish doing at the entrance of the Château. Any cat that stole it from a house? That haven't eat it afterwards? And actually not even cracked? Absolutely no idea...

We grabbed it, washed it well and it was sure that the next day it would be transformed into the most flavorful - and unbelievable - cream codfish of our lives. Even today we laugh at this surreal event and we've given up trying to understand it. We also lost count of the number of times we raised our voices up to the skies and asked the Almighty Codfish Lord to send us other things or even more slices like that one... but apparently that was a one way ticket. (Unfortunately we didn't take photos.)

Welcome to France

The departure and arrival to France represented a huge test to our resistance capacities. One day before departure I received a message saying the grape harvesting were delayed by at least one week - it's a very specific kind of grape and the picking days constantly vary with meteorology. All that clumsy situation made us think it would be rather good to delay the flight and keep on grape harvesting at Cadaval. We thought it would be easy to find a job within the contacts we already had. At the end of that working day we (literally) ran into a colleague's house we've met that same day to access the internet and make those flight changes. Cellphone ready to make work calls in the meantime. We had ten minutes to decide everything. In case the answer was negative, the mission would be aborted and we had 10km to ride to catch the very last train that would take us to Lisbon. From there the flight would depart the next 6AM.

With sweat dripping down my face and 86€ to be paid for the flight amendment, we realized that the working teams were already full and we hardly would find any house that still needed someone. We dropped everything and ran to "our house". We packed and mounted all the luggage on the bikes, plus ten grape varieties, rocha pears, royal gala apples, and off we went! We arrived early enough to the station, at least enough to read the warning signs "rail works" for that same day. Fortunately, the train we were taking was one of the few that wouldn't be affected. Uff! Even the memories of that day get me almost exhausted!

Arriving at Lisbon another marathon was waiting. Re-packing, weighing the bags, dismantle the bikes, protect and put them in boxes. Everything would have gone more or less okay if my pedals weren't too attached. There goes Fernando out in the street at two in the morning. From the second floor the only thing I could hear was a shrill tim tim tim, echoing off the street that sounded more like if someone was breaking the bike into pieces. Mission accomplished, he went sleeping. Needless to say I did not. Charged of the bags I only stopped at four in the morning, just in time to go down and get the taxi-van that would take us to the airport. Inside we didn't pass unnoticed - from one side to another with giant boxes. Check-in employee: "Did you deflate the tires?" I looked at Fernando certain that the answer would be positive: "I forgot." Boxes opened, arms deep inside, deflating tires, boxes closed...

Inside one of the hand luggage was all the kitchen paraphernalia plus a compressed sleeping bag on top. X-ray employee: "Can you open the bag, please?" Anything but that... Puff! Everything pops out as soon as I opened it. After some researches we found the problem: a large piece of soap wrapped in aluminum foil... We couldn't help smiling at each other. Who would have thought? "You can close it. I've seen that you have all the necessary ingredients to make a good meal." Inside the plane I felt some relief at last. Finally I was going to get some sleep... that if Fernando had managed to hide his excitement and kept it silent... But no.

Already on French soil we realized we were all alone. No one to inform us, no carriage to help us carry the boxes and luggage out. So we decided we would assemble all the stuff right there, on the exit hall. We were there for so long that three policemen armed to the teeth came to check what was going on, the precise moment Fernando decides to go to the toilet (at the opposite corner of the airport) leaving me on my own. They stood around me, guns prepared, a good ten minutes that seemed more like an hour. Disappointed, I believe, they retreated certain that I wasn't assembling no bomb but just bikes.

Three hours and two apples later, feet on the pedals and off we go. In one mile we were entering the rocade (motorway). Brilliant. Fortunately after the next exit it was "toujours tout droit" (straight ahead). That's what we were told at the first and only store we would find that day selling something to eat (not counting a McDonald's). It was Sunday. The only thing we wanted was to get to the center of Bordeaux, if we had a place to stay, or to the campsite. Since the answer wasn't coming we went to the second option.

Hungry, exhausted and after riding too many miles on roads that seemed to be right next to the campsite (and they were), we arrived at last. There was still nothing to eat even at the campsite. It was Sunday. On Sunday you eat at home. After 20€ and an ice cold bath in the swimming pool we were right on time to get into the tent, seconds before the beginning of what would be the biggest storm I've ever seen. At least inside a tent. The sky was dressed in an electric yellowish orange. Fernando was ecstatic watching it by the little tent window. I just wanted to sleep and forget hunger. Not that we didn't have food but we had no gas bottle because it's not allowed to carry it on a plane. And Decathlon (and every store basically) was closed. It was Sunday.

Not even fifteen minutes after the deluge it was already dripping inside the tent. Not much laughing will was left but rather one last brilliant idea. To put up our second tent... inside that tent... without leaving. We had no time to find the idea silly or feasible - off to work. Even today I find it difficult to visualize how did we manage such trick... but we did. When an immense stuffy heat settled we were sure our task had been successful. Time to sleep. A text message finally arrives (the phone had been switched off for a few hours): "Where are you? You can come sleep at my house!" It was from our host in Bordeaux. Too late indeed... I fell asleep at last hearing the sound of thunderstorms, wind blasts and what appeared to be an opened dam on top of the tent.

Welcome to France!

How did everything start

I already mentioned on the first post: around 2008 with a book. That's when it all started. As someone designing a route on Google Maps - point a, point b, directions between the two. The departure and arrival points won't change - unless you want to - but moving the directions' line up, down, right or left, it will find other alternative ways. I knew what I wanted but as much as I tried to predict the route, it would inevitably change with time, never loosing the sight of the destiny. The final goal.

It was good that I've written the first posts. Nowadays I wouldn't remember well the quantity of things I already had in mind so many years ago. I wouldn't remember how long ago it had started. But it was right there. The silence in between is part of those route adjustments we have to make. Everything went more or less without mishaps, "more to the more than less" (we say that in Portuguese, I don't know if it's the same in English). Let me explain myself better: it all went as it had to, full of mishaps. An unfortunate extra year studying; half the salary in the first year of internship (state budget cuts); resignation.

However I never lost sight my very destiny. I risk to say that 90 to 95% of the money I spent these last years were destined directly or indirectly with that goal. Bicycles, material, equipment, books, mountain bike trips... a never-ending number of things. The rest of the money unspent and kept aside will serve the same purpose. The percentage of time that my thoughts were busy with this was inferior, lamentably. Work obliged. Sometimes I felt it (the "point b") as an unhealthy obsession but time showed me that letting it flow made that same obsession taste like determination.

I'm convinced, which day more than the previous one, that every event in our lives are opportunities. Of everything. Of meeting, knowing, learning, growing, turning, changing... living! I finally learned that I may also fail, that not everything is meant to go as planned because after all what doesn't go as planned is precisely what will bring you the taste of life. Resigning my job simply gave me the opportunity to open other doors and windows. I resigned not before ensuring I've done all necessary arrangements to have the final card attesting to be "Architect". Letter sealed and end of story. Now I can move on with my life.

[Just a curiosity... this blog used to be called ArchiCulTouring...]

After resigning I didn't sat down a single week waiting to feel the taste of unemployment. Fernando invited me to pick up pears with him at Cadaval (Portugal). And so did we. By bicycle! Actually it was something I never imagined doing in life. But it is also true that it couldn't have pleased me more. Not even that sweltering August heat in the interior of Portugal made ​​me enjoy it less. Or physical exertion. Nothing could be more opposite than sitting in front of a computer in an office, hours and hours on end, where the head can't stop thinking. There, the hours went by, the buckets (and mouth) were filled with pears and in two blinks of an eye the day was over. The head, itself... clean! I don't know if there's anyone agreeing with me on this, or understanding, or even if they had the opportunity to try... but it's an unspeakable feeling of pleasure...

We continued apple picking and grape harvesting in the same region, invited by the same boss that was very satisfied with our work. We were a click away to decide grape harvesting in France. And, none of us hesitated, we were taking our "baby girls" on the plane so they could be our faithful companions in every necessary travel and on which would our brand new home be rolling. Working with pleasure is something every human being should be untitled to, shall they (too) give themselves the opportunity.

It was in 2008 that everything started but in 2012 too.

What could I say more? I hardly could be happier!