Wanderlust! The Adventure Continues!: Ole! Ole! Ole! Running With the Bulls in Pamplona

Last year around this time, a buddy from work convinced me that running with the bulls in Pamplona would be a good idea. As the time got closer, I got more excited about the prospect of risking life and limb on the streets of this Spanish town. Just think—Sangria, massive parties, and sunshine! What could go wrong? Well, that buddy got orders to Texas and wasn’t going to make it after all. By that time I had already purchased airline tix and was already mentally committed to heading to Pamplona. I was going no matter what.

When my dad caught wind of my plans, he wanted in too. As long as I can remember, he has been talking about running with the bulls during the Festival of San Fermin (the official name of the whole thing) and actually tried to make it happen last year. This was his chance and he took it. My cousin Andrew from CA, who is regarded as the family daredevil, also decided to come out for the event.

I’ll skip right to the good stuff—Running with the Bulls. Well, we pretty much stayed up all night on Wednesday night and decided to run on the morning of the 9th. They release the bulls at 8 AM and all the runners needed to be in place by around 6:45 so taking the early train into town was out of the question. Anyhow, my dad and I took the night off from drinking and tried to get a little sleep wherever we could (city park, cathedral steps, etc). Andrew, from what we could tell, went on a bender and when we found him the next morning, he was sleeping on a piece of cardboard on a street. Good times!

Once Andrew woke up we made our way to Santo Domingo street where the workers were busy preparing the course. They’ve got to do this because the night before the streets get littered with beer bottles and trash from the incredible parties that rage all night long. Around 7:30 the streets were packed and we anxiously awaited the first rocket that signaled that the bulls had been released. Up to this point, I wasn’t nervous at all. With around 15 minutes before they launched the rocked, my palms started to get a little sweaty and my heart was starting to beat fast. This, I thought to myself, is going to be freaking awesome! These weren’t nerves…this was pure excitement!

Boom! The rocket exploded high above the crowd signaling the release of the bulls and the crowd went crazy. Because we picked our starting position about halfway through the course, it took about 60 seconds before we could see the stampede of bodies and bulls barreling towards us. My cousin, always the daredevil, seemed committed to waiting until the very last second before sprinting away from the bulls. I waited as long as I could and yelled to Andrew that I would see him inside the bull ring and started running down the street. A few more seconds past and honestly, the rest was a big blur. I do remember seeing the first bull charge right past me. It was a massive brown one with a big cow bell clanking away. After he passed, I tried my best to get the heck out of the way to avoid being gored. I was able to get off to the side and the rest of the herd passed on through. There were about a thousand others who had the same idea and we were all able to somehow squeeze off to the side and cheat certain death. I imagine it was like being a hockey player being checked into the boards.

After it was all over there was an incredible feeling of elation. We all made it into the bull ring, the Spanish sun was shining on us, and most of all we were all glad to be alive.

After Pamplona we made our way to Madrid. I will probably talk about this incredibile city in a different post but in sum, I was able to link up with my old boss Julio. He was el jefe when I worked at Westwood Studios in Irvine during my video game production days. He now lives in Spain and was an incredible host while we were in town. Unfortunately he has his eyes closed in this pix but this is the only one we took.