Today (7-7) is the Feast of San Fermin, featuring the running of the bulls in Pamplona.

Score during the first half hour: Bulls 6, Runners 0.

In my impetuous youth, when I could run like the wind, had endurance for days, I actually thought about heading to Spain and running with the bulls.

Now that I'm smart, I'll run to the bathroom.

Is there video anywhere?

I love this event, every time the bulls get one, you will hear me cheer "TORO!"

quote:

Originally posted by Broadside:

Is there video anywhere?

Quite a bit. Enter "Pamplona 2025" in Google's search window and you'll get a bunch of links.

I only checked out one video, but it looks like most of the runners were trampled by other runners and not by the bulls. The bulls looked like they were chill.

How about the running of the bulldogs?

I've been chased by pissed off bulls and it ain't a whole lot of fun. I've always wanted to go and watch though. Perhaps sit outside of a cafe and smoke a cigar ala Papa Hemingway. Yes, I think that I would enjoy that.

Love to cheer for the bulls.

Reading James Michener's "The Drifters" in my youth really made me want to go.

My motorcycle was nicknamed Pamplona after telling my friend it was like riding a raging bull.

Cheers~

I'd gotten out of the service and was traveling around Europe with an army buddy. We stumbled into Pamplona on advice of another buddy and we ran with the bulls on the last day of the fiesta. Turns out, that is Bastille day in France, and it's the one day you especially do NOT want to run as the thousands of extra wine imbibing drunken partying frenchmen crowding the narrow streets will often cause trips and spectacular pile ups.

Which is just what occured feet away from me. We were in a resturant eating the previous days kill (stew-extra tough) later in the day when the Fiesta came on the national news. I had the pleasure of watching myself on the news miss the @40 person pile up (which the herd ran right up and over) only by the seeming grace of the good lord.

The news verified that the bulls were much closer to me than I had believed. I thought I was clear by maybe 2 yards, the video made it appear that the lead bull was @ 1 foot away when I turned out of the main track. I could do a mile in @ 6 min back then, a bull does it in @ 2 min if that tells you anything. Seconds matter and that's how fast it seemed to happen.

It was a great time, I was so high I wanted to go do it every year, but never have gone back.

As a young man serving in Germany, a friend and I were headed to the train station to go to Pamplona to run with the bulls. We heard an explosion and a couple of German cops told us to go back to base, there was an attack. A military intelligence office adjacent to our compound had been bombed. I missed Spain, and fortunately no one was injured in the bombing. In Spain, I'm sure I would have been trampled at least. I'm smarter now, but as the Goblin King said in Labyrinth, "One wonders at your standard of comparison."

quote:

Originally posted by egregore:
How about the running of the bulldogs?

Ha, I would have thought those were fightin words up there in Volunteer country.