Before arriving in Pamplona, what I knew about Running of the Bulls was that it was one of the most barbaric displays of human idiocy available to mankind for one week every summer. Also, to paraphrase BC scholar Jake Burke, I heard that I would “drink 2€ bottles of wine, your shoes will be drenched in Spanish urine, you will be robbed of something, and you will sleep in a park surrounded by drug-addled English tourists.” Just my style! My only previous viewing of the event had been clips in Sportscenter’s Not-So-Top-10 about once a year in which some unfortunate guy’s mangled body was being tossed in the air by an animal 20-times his size. Seeing the festival firsthand is a whole different beast though - it was remarkable just how right Jake was.
What I didn’t know about it was that this wretched manifestation of human incompetence is a world-renowned festival honoring San Fermin. To honor him, thousands of clueless Americans, hammered Irishmen and babbling Spaniards gather themselves in the town while donning the same traditional white and red garb, nearly drink themselves to death at night, and only then proceed to throw themselves in front of massive animals in narrow alleyways. To adequately prepare yourself, you need to be ready for all three of these things.
In Bordeux two days before the run, I planned on picking up a pair of white pants to add to my white “proud to be an American” shirt as my garb. We rolled into a place that must have been some sort of fohawk magnet, because everyone in there had one. Along with shiny jeans that would have fit me in 5th grade and button-downs that would make Enrique Iglesias dance in his grave (is he dead?). My options were some version of capris that looked like a skirt stapled together at the bottom, pleather white pants with a convenient zipper pocket, skinny white jeans, and some reasonably plain white shorts. Went with the shorts, waited in like for about 80 seconds and gave up, threw them on a pile of deep v-neck shirts and got out of there. Had to get out.
We arrived at the train station the next day without a ticket because that would have been way too smart and far too well planned for our likeness. Sold out. Everyone was going to Pamplona for the last day of the festival. So I contemplated jumping a rope and illegally hopping on the train first, and finding wild Andalusian horses to bareback to the promised land second. In the end, Goose played the empathy card and gave a beautiful, puppy-eyed Spanish soliloquy to the ticket senorita about his sister waiting for us in Pamplona alone. Boom. We’re on. 8 hours of travel later, we arrived. My clothing situation was solved within minutes as they apparently have stores dedicated solely to this festival (debatable business model…), and our food situation was solved when Goose treated his sister Andrea and I to “the last supper” around 9.
Returned back to gear up, and that’s when I decided to throw on the HuskGuys.com (my other, more awesome blog. But if you didn’t know that we probably aren’t that good of friends and I probably don’t actually like you.) threads. With that, I felt unstoppable. Unconquerable. Suddenly I was praying to the Gods that they imported some Texas Longhorns for the next morning’s run just so I could rip their stupid horns off, bring them back to Texas and shove them up Mack Brown's… anyways, I was ready. That was until I decided I needed to watch some “game film”:
So now that I knew if a bull fell on top of me its horn wouldn't stab me but corkscrew into me and be “tearing flesh and wiping out vital organs” on its path, I was more ready than ever! But Goose explained that there had only been about 13 deaths in 100 years, so I liked my chances.
That night, we headed to the heart of the festival underneath a sky lit up by fireworks. We arrived and walked the course, which felt like the Green Mile. Met a kid named Sam who was traveling alone and after we bonded over some rash sarcasm toward Texas (which I call "The Nebraskan Litmus Test") we became best friends for the night. We proceeded toward the heart of the festival near a part of the course called Dead Man's Corner (fitting), and were immediately bombarded with the incredibly pure scent of foreign urine puddles. On our walk, one man literally just dropped the pants right in front of hundreds of people and peed on the wall. Nice. Good night in the making.
A couple hours after I stepped in a pool of vomit (seriously) slowly seeping into the cobblestone, we found ourselves in the streets hanging out with a hodgepodge of English and Irishmen. I bonded with a professional English rugby player over Newcastle soccer (which consisted of him legitimately slapping himself in the head and letting out roars of approval), and then I met a nutjob of an Irishman which set up the story of the night.
He told me two epic tales: 1) the last person to die on the course was an old woman who peeked her head through the fence to see if all the bulls had run by and upon doing so received a fresh horn through the skull. 2) The only person to ever run the entire course did so by climbing up walls in the alleys. Both seemed really likely. Next, with a look of "I have no idea what I'm talking about" crossed with "I'm going to regret this tomorrow" in his glazed over eyes, he went on to confidently claim that he was going to be the second ever to complete the run (although plenty have completed it). Obviously I had to challenge this, so I dared him to prove it and climb the wall across the street.
I've made some dumb bets in my life but only a few where someone's life is legitimately on the line. He looked back at me one more time as if to ask if I was really serious, and although I absolutely was not he promptly started climbing a plastic pipe attached to the wall like a palm tree. The key word here was 'plastic.' With the pressure he was putting on it climbing in the manner he was, it was simply not going to hold. No way. After he was about 8-10 feet in the air and the masses were gathering below the Irish manmonkey, the pipe SNAPPED IN HALF and sent him propelling off the wall as if a grenade just exploded within it and he landed flat on his back, to the horror of hundreds of onlookers. Obviously at this point our group's first reaction was to double over in laughter and I almost crumbled into the dried puke and pee beneath my feet until I considered he could actually be hurt. I looked back up and there he was on the wall again, back on the horse, finally reaching his destination of a porch about 15-20 feet up the building and receiving a warm round of applause. 0 chance he completed the run in the morning.
A couple hours later we all encountered a wave of exhaustion. At about 3:30 we made our way to a park and I made two important discoveries along the way while going to pee in a not-so-private location behind a skinny tree: 1) an empty shopping cart and 2) a pile of human fecal matter. This allowed the night to officially eclipse both Lollapalooza and Notre Dame RV Weekend as the most vile event I've ever attended. I took the shopping cart and we arrived at the nearby park to nap amongst the homeless, even though we had checked into a hostel just hours before. This is when one of the worst decisions in the history of sleeping amongst the homeless was made. After I climbed into my turned-over shopping cart "for protection" (best decision, not worst), Sam decided to put his Droid phone on TOP of the cart "so that I couldn't reach it to snooze it." This was like communism: good idea on paper but just NEVER going to work as planned. Normal intuition, not 3 a.m. intuition, would tell you that even if I DID wake up while a criminal was laughing at us and easily snagging the phone off the top of the cart, I wouldn't have been able to grab back for it because I was trapped in the stupid animal cage of a shopping cart. So we (miraculously) woke up 2 hours later down a smart phone and Goose's old camera, which was ingeniously placed on the ground next to us. Excellent. No documentation of anything would happen that day. No need to get caught up in that though, we had more important things to worry about. So at 6 we proceeded for coffee and viewed the bulls in their pen one more time (conclusion: they were not small). About 15 minutes before the first rocket my heart rate kicking up a notch when the mob of people packed like sardines in a plaza were jumping rhythmically singing "Ole, Ole." 10 minutes before - Goose, Sam and I reach Dead Man's Corner, our start spot, heart jumps up another notch. 5 minutes before - stretching, press taking pictures of us, heart rate up another notch. The daze from the night before and the lore of the entire event were preventing me from realizing what I really needed to: this was really happening.
Our goal was a ~350 m stretch known as Dead Man's Alley: a notoriously narrow alleyway starting with the famous 90-degree turn Dead Man's Corner and ending with the stadium. I wanted the stadium. 3 minutes. We start wishing each other luck and I take a look up Dead Man's Alley to see thousands in their white and red and thousands more packing it in on their porches overlooking the street. This was the point of no return. How could I know what was going to happen next?
One minute before the first rocket. I look down at the rolled up newspaper I was holding and notice sweat marks. I'm excited yet curious, confused yet anxious. People are doing calisthenics around us, others saying prayers, others kissing or tapping a San Fermin mural for luck. This suddenly took a turn from "Haha, I'm running with the bulls!" to "Jesus Christ. I'm running with the bulls." 30 seconds. The runners go weirdly quiet. Everyone knows what's about to happen. Some have done it hundreds of time, but the pre-race jitters aren't like a normal track meet. Your path is going to be anything but strait, anything but flat, and your life is on the line if you make one misstep. Death is rare, but it doesn't feel like it. 15 seconds. Goose starts jumping up and down with anxiety, Sam joins. I'm standing still soiling my pants.
Boom! "FIRST ROCKET" Goose yells - the bulls are out. They'd be arriving in about a minute to our spot. BOOM. Second rocket - the last of the bulls are out, along with the last of my croquettes from the night before in the back of my pants. A couple seconds later we see the pansy boys running for us - probably French. The bulls were nowhere near and I convince Goose to wait it out. Then came the second wave. We all start jumping to get a better view. I see a surge of people running frantically around the corner about 75 yards away. I turn left and Goose and Sam are gone. Just how we drew it up! I'm on my own now. First glimpse of a bull and I start out on a jog, dodging people in my path. 5 second later I hear the bells around their necks and they echo in my head. 5 seconds after that, I turn anddd HOLY GOD THIS IS REAL. A pack of six brown army tankers (scientific terminology) 15 yards away. They barrel up the street and wizz past, and when the lead bull caught a glimpse of my jersey I saw him point with a hoof and non-vocally warn his mates not to go anywhere near a boss like me. Still too close for comfort. I think a) my Irish friend is most certainly bleeding to death right now b) I am not faster than bulls. c) I can't believe it's over.
It wasn't. There's a clearing in the crowd and a second pack of six is crushing the cobblestone. Conveniently, I ran into a pack of veterans on the right side of the street. Not the nice, "Oh hey it's you!" kind of running into though, the literal kind. I'm stumbling about and turn to gaze into the eyes of some mammoth "young bulls" (no chance) 20 yards back. I make the split-second idiotic, ill-advised decision to just sprint right in front of them and cross the street. Definitely started running like a gay boy at this point, with my back arched as if that was going to create further separation from their horns. They pass on my right again, and I file in behind them to finally reach the stadium. Surprisingly, this is where the fun really starts.
Being in the stadium is easily the closest thing humanity has left to The Coliseum days. Essentially, once every idiot is trapped in the base of the stadium and gated in on the dirt floor, the bulls are released from tunnels for periods of five minutes. They come out like someone just bit their testes (which is basically what happens, but with a rope), and proceed to maul anything in their path. Quite simply, I have never seen such savage human behavior in my life. The ~25,000 seat stadium was on their feet, going nuts every time a bull would ram an idiot tourist. They loved it. They wanted blood. So there I am standing in the base of the stadium dodging raging bulls with my friends and we have 25,000 locals cheering for our death. Despite regressing 2,000 years in a matter of minutes, humans have never amazed me more.
In 20 minutes we not only avoided the bulls (I put the Rex-Burkhead-versus-OSU-juke on one of those fools) but saw at LEAST 15 losers get run over, speared, or tossed by one of the 4 bulls we saw released one at a time. One guy was legitimately hanging on to the bulls neck for dear life - awful plan and did not make that bull happy. Horn to rib cage. It then set in that we had no siting of Andrea for about an hour. She had a head start but we instantly assumed there was no way she made it to the stadium. So after a half hour of a search party around the outside of it, she turned up with a casual "Oh yea, sorry, I was on the ground of the stadium too." Casual Saturday morning.
With all of our limbs intact and brains semi-intact, we trekked back two miles to the hostel while simultaneously noting the incredible ever-present dank urine scent in random patches of the street and deliriously recounting each of our stories. Passed out for a half hour, made it to the train to San Sebastian with 2 minutes to spare, passed out on the train, made it to our hostel, and passed out on the beach for a couple more hours. Woke up from that in a daze and with a slight headache and crispy red shoulders, happy to be alive. We crushed San Fermin.
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| This was Sam. |
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| Acceptable for brothers and sisters to sleep like this on special occasions only. |
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