Another Long Weekend, Another Bike Trip

So Ted and I took a three-day weekend a couple weeks back to do some biking. We took a 5 hour bus to a little town of Três Marias and began biking back in the general direction of home. We biked mostly little dirt roads, passed through small villages, and just enjoyed being in the clean open air, away from the big city. We stopped in one town that I really liked: super-small, of course there was a church (this is Brasil after all), little bar complete with a hitching post out front -but no horses were hitched to it, they were just left to wander free! We saw probably 15 people in total in that town.

A pair of blue-and-yellow macaws:


Always the math teacher, I've got a little problem for you:
In the aforementioned town we met a woman, her daughter, and her granddaughter. The woman (the grandma) is 43 years old, her daughter is 28, and the granddaughter is 13. Should the pattern continue, when will the granddaughter get pregnant? It was really crazy to be there and talk to all three of them at once, and to think that this little girl may be a mother soon. This is not uncommon in Brasil and I have more thoughts on it, but that'll be for another post.

Everything went quite smoothly except for one minor incident: We had been biking for hours; had passed no towns, and no one. The sun was strong that day and, together with the rough dirt roads, made the riding tough. The water in my bottles looked at once more and more appealing as I lost more and more fluids, and less and less appealing as it's temperature rose. As chance would have it we passed by a flowing brook: good, clear springwater. I thought...what are the chances? I dunno, maybe it was the heat, maybe we were delirious, but there you go. Wouldn't you know it, that bloody water...just kidding. There was no drinking of any spring water on this trip!
Although to tell the truth, we did stop at a bar in a little town to ask where we were and to ask for directions. When the dude in the shop asked if I wanted anything to drink I said sure, I'll have water, expecting him to bring me a bottle that I could buy. Instead he brought out a pitcher from the fridge and poured me a cup. The last experience drinking untreated water was still fresh in my head and having no idea where he got this water I knew it could cause some problems. But I'd rather get sick than be rude (you do it your way, I'll do it mine), so I drank it all. In hindsight though, I could have tried to slip a purification tablet (which I make a point of carrying now!) into the glass.