Running of the Bulls - part 1

  Pamplona, Spain
Wednesday, July 12, 2006

After a crappy ride on the bus with barely any sleep the bus pulls into Pamplona at 5:30am. Its chaos. We get off the bus and there are people dressed in all white with their red scarves on all over the place and everyone is hammered. I heard the parties here are ridiculous and by the looks of it, it was true. We had no clue where we were or where we needed to get to. I'm feeling last nights wine, I'm tired, and I wasn't feeling the most energetic about running with some bulls that way half a ton and have sharp horns in 2.5hrs.

We follow the mass of people from the bus like lemmings and get lost on the way, but we find "the" lockers. Basically the way it works in Pamplona is that all the accommodation is booked up (its expensive and it happens way in advance) so if you are one of the scrubs like us, you store your stuff in this building (they turn it into a storage for this one week) and you don't sleep, you just party all night.

We dump our crap off and bring nothing with us. I'm trying to slam some water hoping it will cure the hangover as we walk towards the entrance of the race (there are a few entrance points). We buy our white garb and red scarves on the way (these shops are conveniently open all the time). There is a small crew of about 9 of us from the bus that are hanging together (mix of americans, aussies, and swedes).

So here is how the race goes. The whole point of the race is to move the 6 huge bulls from their storage pen, on the north side of the city, to the arena where later on that day they will be in a bull fight and killed. So everyday for a week a new set of 6 bulls are charged through the streets of Pamplona to the arena. The race starts at 8am and consists of about a 900m stretch of streets where there are very few openings (the openings are the few exit points, there aren't many of them and they are fenced off so that the bulls can't charge through them). There are 3 rockets that go off. The first one signals that the first bull is out of the pen at the start, this happens at 8am. The 2nd rocket moments later means the last bull has left the pen. Once leaving the pen, the bulls charge down the streets towards the arena (the finish). The 3rd rocket means that all bulls have reached the arena and have been placed in the storage pen (this is technically when you are safe). If you want to run, you have to be in "the race street" inside the fence by 7:30am, after 7:30, no one is allowed to enter the race any more.

We are in the race track area by 6:45 and we walk down the street to see what we are getting ourselves into. Not many exit points, should be interesting. We go back to the area that we want to start at. At 7:45 the police open part of the closed off street so that the runners can spread out a bit (there are a lot of runners).

I can't really describe in words (I'm an engineer, not a poet) what the last 15-30mins feels like. I'm excited, scared, happy, sometimes lots of thoughts, sometimes absolutely none and best of all hung over. We give each other hugs and hand shakes, and wish everyone good luck.

Its now about 7:55am, 5 minutes to go. I quickly grab my camera out to take one last picture of Joel and me before the run. As soon as I take my hand down from taking the picture, a cop grabs me by my neck and pushes me through the first fence only to be grabbed by another cop who pushed me through the next fence, and just like that (5 fucking minutes before the start of the race) I was out! I was in total shock, one of the main things I came to do in europe was the running of the bulls and 5 minutes before it started I was thrown out...... I couldn't believe it. Speechless. below is the picture I took that got me kicked out.



I had totally forgotten that runners aren't allowed to have cameras, the cop saw me and threw me out. I couldn't reenter because the race is closed after 7:30. I was super pissed, but I knew that I could run the next day, so not all was lost. It just sucks when you are that close, only to be thrown out. So I saw the race from the sidelines and had to hear about how awesome it was the whole day.

The rest of the day we eat and passed out in the park. Everyone sleeps in the park since all accommodation is full. so we passed out in the sun until it was time to drink again. a trip to the supermarket and we had our drinks in hand, and then party!