Running With the Bull(s**t).

Part I - The Decision

What’s more cliché than a guy doing things the “Heming-Way” and booking a train ticket to Pamplona? Probably the fact that he never read a word of Hemingway in his life. It is often said to trust your gut. Too often, the proverbial “gut” replaces “God” and one thinks the universe is talking. I suppose the Overton window for religious mania has expanded, but let’s digress before things get weird.

July 2019 was a lot of things, but for me it was an escape. This excursion of my life found me in Valencia on an internship. The sun was baking me alive inside the apartment, and my host family was opting for the open-air variety of A/C with the windows wide. They were a quaint unit of three; a fifteen-year-old boy who was bussed between piano lessons and soccer practice by his Barcelona beauty queen mother and ex-pat from England step-father. They really were lovely.  This particular day was host to re-runs on TV of the daily Running of the Bulls during San Fermin, the festival for the patron saint in the northern regions of Spain, in the crooks and valleys of the Pyrenees Mountains. On screen was a torrential stream of white shirts and red scarves tumbling over each other in the narrow channels of cobblestone roads, chased by beasts. I contemplated trying to grab a last-minute viewing from a balcony in Pamplona. The festival was in its last days with only a few bull-runs left. One quick look on Airbnb was enough to see that I did not have the funds for a luxury view to the bloodletting. And then it hit me, like a taser to the gut; what if I ran?

The moment we are faced with risk, we analyze. We digest and regurgitate a response. We conflate and negotiate the cost benefit, the opportunities, the ones and zeroes and the integers in between. I did none of this. I let that taser cook my insides until I convinced myself there would never be an opportunity like this again in my life. Premature? Yes. Probable? Probably. Impulsive? You bet you’re a**.

 I told no one of my true intentions. I told my family, both back home and my hosts in Valencia, that I was just watching from a balcony and taking photos. We dined on a paella of rabbit, roasted lamb, and snails. I can still taste the char of the yellow rice and the tinge of cumin in the rabbit today. Top three meals of my life.

Part II - Catching the Train from the Beach

Spaniards know how to enjoy life. They know too much. My first few nights out with friends were a baptism in true nightlife. Clubs are clubs, music is music, but it was the expanse of it all that took me. The purpose of the daily siesta was not just for kicks; it was so shop-keepers and restaurants could keep up with the chaos of the evenings. Weekend or weekday, Valencia came alive at night, a nocturnal city of pubs and bars, busses running people from a food spot to a dance spot to a bench where more than a few would be sleeping off their stupors. Laughter everywhere, not a single night is spent without hearing a cacophony of laughter around every mosaic floored corner in the archways of the old city, a new glass of wine greeting you with each plate of tapas that pass you by. The night prior to leaving for Pamplona, I should have been sleeping. It was a Wednesday, 11pm, and I was meeting some friends for a birthday celebration. I told myself just a few hours, my train left at 9am the next morning.

The next ten hours are not a blur, not in the slightest. What I will say is that anyone who is planning on going to Valencia should go to Aquarela if it is still there, just once. A rite of passage in the city it seemed. A three-story mazed-mansion of a club that sits on the beach. When the sun starts to tease the horizon, we heathens flood the sands in low tide and watch the sunrise. In true euro-trash fashion, I was sitting on the beach with a disheveled collared shirt, loafers chafing the back of my ankles, and a dead watch. I watched as the situationship next to me waltzed into the water as the pink hue of sunrise began to crest the water line. What was left unsaid was left for me to think on in the sand. What was cheeky was left looking back from the wake.

Suddenly realizing that I was due on a train north in an hour or so, I caught a bus back to the apartment to grab the bag I packed the day before. I remember sneaking in so as not to wake my hosts and quietly grabbing my bag to snag a taxi. I must have thought I was James Bond, but I am pretty sure I knocked over the AC remote in my haste. The city was waking up slowly, indifferent to the pounding in my head and the wooden planks that had replaced the soles of my feet. My hangover started when my feet hit the station. I bought a liter of water and a comically large chocolate croissant, and waited for my train with ten minutes to spare. Ten minutes to either regret the night prior, or psych up for the days to come. I like to think I chose the latter, but once I hit my seat at the back of the caboose, I promptly fell asleep.

Part III – Coyote Cream Hills

The journey to northern Spain by rail begins in Madrid, sprawling outwards from the urban nucleus of the country. As one leaves the city limits, the atmosphere changes. Gone are the museums and banks that line the thoroughfares. Gone are the thoroughfares. In the haze of my resurrection from the night prior, I laid my eyes on what I can best describe as the Spanish Desert. Cloudless skies enclosed the depths of the rocky valleys through which the train slowly side-winded. Coyote cream hills dotted with thorny shrubs and long stretches of flat cracked dirt leading to the peaks of the Pyrenees in the distance. It was so empty and slow, so serine and peaceful. In my desert travels through The Middle East and South Asia, I have felt the premonitions of death by thirst, the many centuries of humanity that were lucky enough to adapt and thrive in the most inhospitable of places. But here, in the short Spanish Desert on a side-winding train, I would happily trade my water for wine and watch the rains come over the peeks. I imagined Don Quixote as he saddled up and picked his adventure for the day, setting out into the hills to slay beasts and collect gold.

I thought of my own beasts to slay. What was I doing in Spain? I still needed to finish my bachelor’s degree. Marred by failures and trying to force a motivation for a career in medicine, this trip in the hills of the Spanish Desert felt one-way. I never had a “death wish”, but I sure lived like it. But why? Where did it begin? Somewhere inside me then, and even now, my dream was to be Indiana Jones, dodging traps in the ruins of a Mayan temple. Funny enough, there was that one time in Belize…but that’s another story. I knew this train had a destination, and I knew my goal for the next two days was simply to survive San Fermin. Passed that, my future was a blur of hopes and dreams with no direction or channeled ambition. No guidelines or guard rails. What the hell was I doing? I was running with the bulls**t.

Allow me to take this time to speak on grace as a concept. It wasn’t until my later twenties, well after this episode you are reading, where I learned what grace meant to me, what it means in practice. The drive to see and be on the edge of what is acceptable risk led me to witness the fringes of society. The fringe in not necessarily where things all fall apart. It is where your present sense of observation is so raw that what you see is truth in motion, where you see motion for what it is. A higher power, call it God or particle physics, expounds entropy into the atmosphere around us. The streets of Jerusalem, tribal customs of Pakistan, in the spreadsheets of Fortune 500 companies, in the pits of a heavy metal concert dodging fists; these fringes are where I found grace. I see grace in the way light will break through a storm cloud; but I need to see the storm first. I see grace in the way my heroes have navigated their struggles, but I must see the struggle first. I see grace in the light of an orphan’s eyes when he befriends a stray dog and smiles for the first time in years. I search for grace in the most unlikely places, where one would think it is snuffed out. But that is where it is much more potent. Perhaps this is my flaw, for I lack the skill to see grace in my immediate environment. I’m trying. These days I see it animals—dogs, cats, and birds mainly.

Part IV –  ¡Viva Pamplona!

The train approached a lone and barren station six hours into the rails, coming to a creaking stop. We disembarked and I was utterly confused. We were in the middle of nowhere, not a town or a kiosk in sight, just a few benches and maps. I came to learn we were waiting for the bus. When it arrived, we took our new spots and rode on for another two hours on a lonesome road. The coyote cream hills began to fade and I started to see fields of crops and wine vineyards. The desert had given way to townships, cottages, and villas overlooking treelined gravel paths leading to horse stables. I could have sworn I saw ol’ Donnie Q. himself guiding a donkey plow. The terrain had been flat for most of this bus ride, but as we approached Pamplona, that changed too. The hills came back, but now there were layered with old stucco homes and their terra cotta roofs. The streets were tight, a mixture of old cobble-stone in some parts and newer asphalt in others. The bus arrived at the station just a mile into the edge of the city from the south.

I stepped off the bus and saw a man in his all-white uniform with the proverbial red sash and scarf passed out on a bench holding his head in his lap, balancing a bottle between his kneecaps and forefingers. And then another near the curb next to him, both waiting for the River Styx to take them home. The city was not booming, at least not where I was. The true San Fermin was a few miles into the city center, in the Old Quarter. The hoots and hollers of “Viva Basque!” were echoing from the arena and bars in the distance. I would make my way there eventually, but in those first moments off the bus, the only thing on my mind was a greasy kebob wrap, fries, and two ice cold cans of Coke. The sun was starting to set as I walked towards my Airbnb. I was greeted by the homeowner and led to a shared room where I met Boston (not his real name). Boston had just finished six months of backpacking across South America and was finishing his gap year off with this bacchanal in Basque Country. A few years older than me with the infectious smile of his Greek ancestry, we bonded over being the few native English speakers around. We were both set to run the next morning. We promptly made a pact, both being alone and attempting something with a high potential for grave, if not lethal, injury. Someone was going to have to call someone’s mother in the worst-case scenario, so we could not let each other out of our sights. ¡Viva Pamplona!

Part V – The Rocket Goes off at 8:00

The route of the Bull Run spans 875 meters through Casco Viejo, the Old Quarter of the city. Twelve animals in all, six fighting bulls and six steers, run on ancient stone roads wedged between irregularly sharp corners and sloped inclines, funneling into a 100-meter bottleneck through the gates of the Pamplona Bullring. At 8:00am sharp, a rocket is fired in the air signaling the release of the bulls from the pen at the starting incline of Santo Domingo, where they are at their peak energy. Here is where you see the bravest of runners with sponsored jerseys and retro Adidas Sambas stretching their legs and saying a prayer. To buy down the risk of being trampled or gored, one must be strategic about where along the 875 meters they will start. You cannot outrun a raging bull. You cannot outrun six. The name of the game is to pick your spot and run with them side by side for a brief period as they split the red sea of people in front of them. My research showed that the safest starting point for beginners was on Calle Estafeta, a 300-meter stretch of road sandwiched between the high walls of shops and houses that shuttled the beasts and bodies towards the arena. It seemed safe because I could hug the walls with a layer of people between me and the bulls, let the torrent pass for a few seconds, and run my way into the arena with the rest. Boston was on board.

7:30am. - Approaching the archways of Caso Viejo was like walking to the Colosseum. The buildings stood side by side with few alleyways to break the stream. A hum of chatter and clatter was building as we walked towards the bullpen. Six black and brown bulls huffed steam as a police officer gave a quick pat-down and ushered us around the corner onto Santo Domingo. The balconies were stacked on top of each other two, three stories high, filled with people in their white and red, drinks in hand with cigarettes in the other, looking down on a sea of people in the same uniform. We weaved through the bodies, between delegations of Brits, Japanese, and everything in between. Cresting the hill, we waded through the bedlam of Plaza del Ayuntamiento, Town Hall Square, into Dead Man’s Corner, a sharp ninety degree turn where the bulls are known to ram themselves into the barricades with their inertia and ride the barriers. The barriers have gaps in the rails for runners to roll, jump, or crawl through if they are unlucky enough to get caught between a rock and a raging bull.

7:45am. - We came to Estafeta. Hundreds of white and red uniforms on the ground and in the balconies. The hum had been replaced with a pulsating roar; wine was spilling from the rafters. I studied the faces of my fellow ground fools, seeing if anyone looked like they knew what they were doing. I looked at Boston, trying to see a trace of any nerves, but he was stone faced. Jaw clenched just like me. Someone handed us some rolled up newspapers. My sword?

7:50am. - We walked towards the latter half of the stretch and found a place to stand on a curb hugging a wall. My adrenaline was dumping now, and I needed to bounce on my toes and stretch my legs. Thank God for the newspaper. All around me I saw runners twisting their swords and swatting their open palms, thighs, napes of their necks; it was a way to channel the nerves. The soundscape was a thudding of newspapers, laughter in place of loud silences between friends, festivities of libation above and the sheer unknown terror of the beasts below. I was in the fringe.

7:55am. - My eyes found a shop window maybe twenty meters in front of me to my right on the wall I so desperately hugged. Three people with beer glasses hung out the window stacked on top of each other like sacks of flour. Courtside seats. My escape, just twenty meters away. I grabbed Boston’s arm, pointed to the window. He nodded. I closed my eyes.

7:58am. I said a prayer.

7:59am. I can taste last night’s kebab and fries.

8:00am. Boom.

Part VI - Bulls in the China Shop

A roaring thunder of cheers blasts my eardrums, everyone around me is jumping up and down now, a few doing some acrobatic knee tucks to the chest. Boston has his aviators on and is flapping his lips like a mustang. Even behind his blinders, I can see the beady like focus of his eyes, wide and deep in their sockets. Animals all around me, me among them. The spectators are frothing above, growing louder and more fervent. I locked eyes with one balcony canted left to the first story above me.

Time dilation. The arms of the spectators are all pointing down the street to the left, a bracelet slips off a wrist and crashes to the stones below. I turn my head left. I see the stampede of people before anything else. A wave of white and red are careening my way. It’s time to run. We dash off in front of us, keeping our shoulders adjacent to the curb as much as possible. The cheers from above are now mixing with screams of terror and testosterone behind me as I jostle my way past the open window without even a glance. I’m committed now.

I steal a glance to my left and Boston is still with me. He lost his glasses. We lock eyes and dare each other to steal a glance behind us. Bad idea. In less than a second, I slam myself into a hulking mass of man in front of me and Boston rear ends me. I shimmy my way passed the behemoth scraping my shoulders on the walls to my right, and that’s when I hear the bells. When the bulls break through the crowd on their route, they are led and followed by steers with their clanging cowbells. You will hear the herd before you see them. You will see the people before you see the bulls. You will not find anymore open windows. I tightened my stride and kept moving forward. The crowd is thick in the middle of the street while I stay close to the walls. The bells are ringing and the steers are mooing. Pressure is building on the street like a clogged artery. And then the sea splits, walls of people flood the sides of the cobble floored channels, pressing me against the stoned facades and ripping my shirt. The hooves are booming on the ground just mere meters from me. Boston’s hand is on my shoulder and he is pulling me to stop. He throws me against the wall, pinning me like a loose piece of paper about to fly away in the winds. It took those bulls just two seconds to clear through our portion of Estafeta. As quickly as the bells came, they went onwards through the bodies ahead. We looked back and saw 300 meters of heaving runners, some nursing a twisted ankle on the ground, some taking oxygen from a paramedic. I can only imagine if we had started our route from anywhere else what the damage would have been to those we saw, to us.

The crowds who cheered for blood just moments ago now roared with praises of glory. Handkerchiefs, rice, cigarettes all rained down on us as we trotted the rest of the way towards the arena. I jogged through the portal into a circular stadium filled to the brim with onlookers, music blaring from speakers. Hundreds of us runners meandered the dirt floor of the area, hugging and patting backs, congratulations all around. I looked around for Boston but couldn’t find him. Oh well, I thought, we survived. I’ll find him.

They started to close the gate we came through. The music stopped. On the opposite end of the arena, directly across the gate I triumphantly just ran through, another set of gates opened. At the foot of the gate was a pit where I saw people started to lay flat and pile themselves on top of each other, like a puddle, and there was Boston, laying in that puddle. San Fermin was not done with us. Before I had time to find safety, I heard the bulls charging with their guttural groans in the shadows. Two bulls came raging through the gates, jumping and clearing the puddle. Bedlam does not even begin to describe the state of affairs. Two more bulls came jumping over the puddle. I was in a sea of amateur matadors with four angry bulls charging and blasting bodies with their horns left and right, and I was caught standing dead center. Boston was nowhere to so be seen, but a good forty meters from me was a bull. He was a sagebrush brown with coyote cream horns. His head turned in my general direction, and I saw a pathway towards the walls of the arena where I could scramble up and be pulled to safety by the ringside spectators. I looked back at the bull, and he was moving. I turned to run, driving my foot hard into the loosed dirt to pivot. I was about to be Usain Bolt, until I slipped two steps in. It was like I stepped on a banana peel. I fell face first into the dirt, trying to catch myself with my hands and busting open my middle finger in the process.

Time dilation. I blinked twice, hard. Without looking behind me or around me, I slammed my hands into the dirt and pushed myself up. I see a sheen of some red on my kneecaps and small rocks stuck in the skin. I set my feet as I rise and run, keeping form to pump my arms for momentum. My right hand rises to meet my periphery, its dripping blood and caked with dirt. The wall is getting closer; my heart is cracking against my ribcage. My foot hits the first step-post on the wall, my left-hand drapes over the lip and my right hand, bloodied with the dirt of Pamplona shoots upwards for a savior to rescue me. I am hoisted up and away from the dirt, from the ground, from the streets, from the bulls. Someone is patting me on the back and yelling in my face, someone else thrust a cold glass of beer in my hand. I down it and look out into the arena, looking for the bull that might have been chasing me. I found him, he had zigged one way as I had zagged the other and was terrorizing a troupe of people some twenty meters off to my left. He found his target, a man in his mid-thirties trying to juke and dodge his way to safety towards the beast. I watched that bull plant his hooves, take two powerful strides, and catch the man behind his legs with his horns, sweeping him off his feet a good five feet into the air. He rotated 180 degrees, red sash flapping and glinting the sun off his face from the sweat and sheer panic in his eyes. He landed on the ground head first, snapping his neck a solid seventy to eighty degrees. Five men jumped the wall and picked him up, hoisting him over the to the paramedics.

We had no business being with bulls in a China shop.

Part VII – Aftermath

The next ten hours are a blur. “Adrenaline” was the word of the day, of the year. San Fermin had been bested and it was time to find Boston and celebrate. I looked into the crowd, laser focused. Like telepathy, he was meandering the grounds doing the same and we locked eyes across the arena. Like a bromance movie, I ran to him and hugged him, clinked glasses, and we made our way into the city where the barriers had been removed. The bars and restaurants and shops were spilling into the streets and flamenco musicians were playing music around every corner. Tapas of prawns and freshly baked bread were paired with glass after glass of beverages. Boston made himself comfortable in a corner with a new lady friend and yelled across the bar to me, “¡Viva Basque!”. Viva Basque, Boston. Viva Basque indeed. 

I was hoping that by writing this story, I would have come away with some sort of life lesson, some central mantra that I could pull and incorporate into the man I am today. To be sure, next time I will book a balcony a few years in advance. Yeah, that’s it. That’s got to be the lesson, right? Prepare better, be less impulsive? Seems too obvious. Clearly, if you mess with the bull, you will get the horns. So, as I look onwards to the many bulls in the arena of life, I think its better to run with them than against them; lest you run the risk of getting trampled on and laying in a pile of bulls**t.

Los Toros Bravos