The boy who rode his bicycle into the river

February 6

This past Saturday was a cold, wet and dreary day in Chaves. It was one of those days when we woke up and thought…”what are we going to do with the kids all day.” And so, we decided to get out of town and head to the meat festival about which I wrote previously. Before the Feira began, we had yet another adventure.

Arriving to Boticas around 11:00am, we found that we were too early for the feira. Jenna was asleep in her car seat. So we decided to stop at the little park edging the river that flows through Boticas. The park had a number of interconnecting, granite walkways passing though it and seemed an excellent place for Marcos to ride his bike.

Marcos put on his helmet and headed for the park. The walkway entering the park was a steep, downhill grade with a sharp left turn just before the river. There were no walls or guardrails between the path and the river. We noticed the sharp turn just as Marcos began his descent and yelled for him to put on his brakes. He did just that but the granite was slick and fast. He tried to put his feet down – but the momentum was too great for him to have any effect. Over the wall he went falling about four feet and then into the river. We ran ahead to see if he was okay. There, standing in the only shallow section of the river, was Marcos soaked from head to toe, shivering with the cold and crying inconsolably. The water had cushioned he and the bicycle’s fall. He was not hurt. Fishing him out of the cold water, we raced Marcos to the truck and stripped him of his clothes. His skin was red. Every bit of clothing was drenched.

Duarte had to go into the river himself to get the bicycle that was heading downstream in the deeper part of the river. Rolling up his pant lets and using the handles from our umbrella stroller as hook to grab the bike he created quite a scene. Cars pulled over to watch and take pictures of this strange man in the river. He was successful. Marcos and the bike were unscathed from their death-defying launch into the river.

In Portugal, all commerce closes at 12:00 on Saturdays. It was 11:45, we had only 15 minutes to find Marcos some dry clothing. Lipe and Susana miraculously arrived just as we were about to scour the stores. They climbed into the car to sit with Marcos and Jenna. Duarte and I took off to the stores frantically searching for inexpensive socks, a shirt and shoes. Boticas is a small town with 10 stores lining the main street. As we explained the situation to the storekeepers, we started a rally with all of the townspeople to get Marcos dry. We wanted to get into the laundromat to dry the clothes, but the owner wasn’t there. A man from the florist shop next door, pointed out her house just down the hill and told us to go there. The Pharmacist from across the street, called the owner of the children’s clothing shop and asked her to open the store for us quickly. The lady from the shoe store allowed us to run up the street to our jeep with a couple of pairs of shoes for Marcos to try on. This was a desperate situation and it was turning out to be hilarious. I felt like we were on Sesame Street.

In the end we found a white cotton shirt from the grocery store, a pair of hideously ugly shoes from the shoe store, socks from the children’s clothing store and the lady with the laundromat allowed us to dry Marcos’ jacket while she went off to get a manicure. In a matter of 20 minutes we met every storeowner in Boticas. For the rest of the day, everywhere we went, folks were saying hello to the family of the boy who rode his bike into the river.

It sure is hard to be anonymous around here.