W3

With the kids starting school, we are now developing our new routine. A part of our routine consist of driving to and back from school. At least until we have the house, where we hope to have them take a little bus.
It is a 2-kilometers long route, and takes 7 minutes if there is no traffic. I usually count 10 to 15, depending on the time of the day. And after one trial, with two boys in their ultra casual walking speed, it takes 30 minutes by foot. Not yet an option - but maybe later.
Our route is fairly short, taking us from our lovely Quadra 106 across Quadra 306 via 2 round-abouts, stoping at a light at 506 to cross the W3, drive a little further for a retorno (a U-turn) before driving back along the W3 in the right direction. We then proceed to drive along this W3 for less than one kilometer, turn at Quadra 709, drive along to more one round-about and veer right, to finaly reach the school parking lot.
Well, I admit, this is not really interesting.

However there are a few things that are interesting. The first one is the driving experience. I have never lived in a city where I needed to drive my kids to school. (OK, I admit, our kids are really small, thus limiting our possibilities). It is certainly a time that I did not expect much of - yet it appears already as quality time. We chat about what has recently happened, what is to come, we share some most important thoughts and questions. It is a time I learn more about my kids than I had imagined.
Second, the landscape. The road we are on for the longest is called W3 (how can one lack imagination so much!!). The W3 crosses the entire two wings of the city, and it is an important thoroughfare as it can feed the residential quadras, the medical and educational quadras (at least for the south wing). One of its most important aspect, in my mind, is its commercial side. It is in fact a rare continuous commercial road, very different from the very short and disconnected commercial strips of 20 stores in each quadra. I can only think of another set of purely commercial street - of much less important scale - in a area called Sudoeste, just north of the Parque da Cidade, the City Park. Other main thoroughfares do not havea  similar use; commercial streets were in fact not part of the master plan of the city. The master plan rather imagined people taking their cars to go shopping, so specially dedicated malls, supermarkets and hypermarkets are all concentrated in one area at the periphery of the city.
For me, this W3 is for me the most surprising place I have seen since we are arrived in Brasilia. On one side, it is a real american-style semi-abandonned downtown strip, with a portion of stores trying to look correct, amidst a series of store fronts covered in graffitis, and a number of them keeping their shutters down. It looks like the kind of place that you should not walk at night. And maybe during the day too?
Then on the other side of this W3, there is a series of garage doors, some painted and graffitied, some more respectable, all tightly nestled against one another, right on the sidewalk. It took me a couple trips to admit to myself that these were actual garage doors of houses. That houses would be hidden behind something so rough. And so dense. So different from our lovely Quadra 106.
Like what we can appreciate the things that at first sight do not appear to be worth it.