Or maybe I should use a Brett Favre analogy? Here's hoping I don't need a veritable cocktail of painkillers to make it through my day when I'm in my early 40's. By the way, I really have no feelings about the Vikings' signing of the scourge of Green Bay since the boys in purple have been dead to me since the ruinous end of the 1998 season, which you can relive in painful, raw detail here. It almost brought me to tears all over again, but some masochistic part of me watched it until the bitter end. Damn you Gary Anderson! Or maybe I should be thanking him since the last 11 years of Sundays have seen me anesthetized toward any feeling of living vicariously through grossly overpaid athletes that couldn't care less about the average fan. But I'm NOT bitter.
Anyway . . . I never did finish my story about Pamplona. I will let the rest of it pour forth in the hope that it will provide some catharsis and rationalization. Where was I?
The running takes place at 8:00 AM every day for the whole 8 day festival. The average time it takes for the bulls to get through the 850 meter course (about 1/2 mile) is around 3 1/2 minutes. At around 6:30, I was lined up at where I thought would be an ideal spot (see video), midway
between point 5 and 6 on the map. My thinking was that I would only be faced with a short 200 meter pants-filled dash into the bullfighting arena where I would bask for a few seconds in the admiration of the cheering throngs while simultaneously getting the hell outta the way of 1,500 pounds of pissed off hamburger. The rest of my traveling party had retreated to a balcony overlooking the course, for which they each paid 40 Euros, including breakfast.About 6:45, Juan Law (Spanish cousin of Johnny Law), started clearing the streets. They had an ingenious method of closing the gates on each cross street to divide the course into one block sections, separating the crowd that was trying to do the same thing I was doing. Us glory-hounds were quickly
surrounded by cops in nasty-looking berets and forcibly removed from the course. Oops. Didn't read anything in my research about that. Back to the drawing board. So I had been pushed off the course around point #6. I then needed to hightail it all the way back to the start, fighting my way through drunken cowards the whole time. I made it all the way back to #3 in the main plaza about 200 meters from where they release the bulls. There was a huge crowd assembled and all of them had that "What the eff have I gotten myself into?" look of terror on their face. In fact, there was even a procession of people lined up behind the cops who marched them out of the plaza after they elected to "use better judgement" as my mom would say. Pansies.
So all runners are packed in between points 3 and 4, but around 7:30 they swing open the gate (#4) that confined us to that area. This gives us 30 minutes to spread out along the course and take our positions from which we will attempt to avoid getting trampled by not only bulls but each other. At this point, there is no turning back. Foremost on my mind was the fact that one of the bulls scored a kill the day before when it was turned around going the wrong way on the course. It proceeded to gore anything in his path including an unlucky Spaniard who took a horn in the lung and jugular. Medical personnel pulled him under a gate only a few seconds after he was hit but he bled out in an instant was declared dead soon after.
As luck would have it, I ended up camped in the same position I had been in one hour previously. The adrenaline was pumping and, as per my nature in situations such as these, I wanted to capture the scene, bringing some of the sights and sounds of Pamplona home with me on my camera. Where I went wrong at 7:52 on that fateful day is anybody's guess. But after making a short video of the minutes leading up to one of those "gotta do it before you die" moments, one of Pamplona's finest spotted me from his perch on one of the wooden gates that seals off the course from any overzealous spectators. He barked at me in Spanish, which I took to mean "Sir, could you kindly put your camera away since the bulls will be released in just a few short minutes. I know you wanna capture this momentous occasion but you should really pay attention while trying to tempt death."
Alright, it's been 17 years since my last Spanish class so forgive me if I got the translation wrong. Soon enough, I felt like John Hinkley at the Washington Hilton in 1981. Surrounded by four of Juan Law's cousins as my heart pounded with fear, there was no escape and all I could think about was how stupid I was for not running into the crowd as soon as he had singled me out. I showed them that I had put my camera away and was ready to dodge bulls. But instead of congratulating me on my courage and my desire to showcase their fine city, they shoved me to the ground and under the gate. Not only was my dream of running with the bulls crushed but my brand new white pants bought specifically for this occasion were stained with the dirt, grime, and fluids of an all-night Spanish bender. As I frantically scrambled to run back to the start of course and fight again, the fireworks signaling the start went off and I wasn't even in a position to watch others get gored. Was it the blonde hair and blue eyes that made me the victim of police brutality? Or maybe stupidity? I guess I'll never know, but at least it makes for a good story.
