March 12th, 2010
Bitwrathploob took it a bit easier this weekend. He saw the tourist sights in Toulouse and even took in some modern art.
Bitwrathploob had another hard weekend with the Kiwi boys in Scotland. We flew into Glasgow for a few drinks and to watch the Rugby World Cup matches on television.
The following morning we had to give him some strong coffee to aid his recovery.
Then we took a few photos in Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Before we went to the All Blacks blackwash of Scotland in Edinburgh.
He met a long lost cousin from New Zealand.
Finally We flew back to London but not before Bitwrathploob met some friends at the airport.
BITWRATHPLOOB arrived in London safe in sound last week just in time to make the flight to Lyon to watch the All Blacks demolish Portugal 108 to 13. Sadly the little fella drank quite a few minis on the flight over and never made it out of the hotel all weekend. This weekend he is going to Glasgow and Edinburgh. We have had a long chat about responsible drinking and finishing off your own bodyweight in spirits from bottles that come up to your neck. I think he got the message.
With luck he will also get out and about to see the sights in London in the next two weeks.
Twenty-three days ago, the BITWRATHPLOOB arrived in Spain. During his short visit, he got to eat some tapas, visit the Guggenheim Museum, bathe in the sun and crystal clear waters at the beach, and even run with the bulls. That sounds like an adequate Spanish vacation to me.
Let’s take a quick photo memory tour back over his visit…
Like an overachieving parasite, it’s time for the BITWRATHPLOOB to move to a new host. He will now go north, and a little east, towards a small town that the Romans called Londinium. The next Keeper of the ‘Ploob (KP) is a friend and ex-colleague of mine named Carl Hubbers. Hubbers is a bit of a world traveller himself, and it just so happens that the BITWRATHPLOOB is in luck. Due to an unfortunate congenital condition (being born in New Zealand), Hubbers is a rugby fan. For those of you outside Her Majesty’s Commonwealth, the 7th Rugby World Cup is currently taking place in Europe. In the coming 6 weeks, Hubbers is planning on attending games in Lyon, Toulouse, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Paris, and he has agreed to take the BITWRATHPLOOB with him on these journeys under one condition: that the BITWRATHPLOOB support the New Zealand rugby team, the All Blacks (not as racist as it sounds). As a result, the BITWRATHPLOOB will be able to check off 4 countries in 6 weeks with one host. Ideally, the ‘Ploob would spend only two or three weeks with each host, but I think that exceptions can and should be made for such great offers.
The only bad, dark, horrible, terrifying part of this plan is that the one weekend that Hubbers and the BITWRATHPLOOB will not be traveling to see a rugby match, they will be here in Spain attending my wedding. Isn’t that ironic, Alanis. Hopefully we can keep the BITWRATHPLOOB out of the photo album so I don’t have to explain what a bucktoothed rope-armed troll-haired pantsless wood bear is to my grandchildren.
¡Buen viaje, Señor BITWRATHPLOOB! ¡Y no vuelvas nunca jamás!
Oh, and we’ve got an inventory page now, showing what little treasures the BITWRATHPLOOB has picked up in his travels.
One of the reasons for the BITWRATHPLOOB’s extended stay in Spain has been to allow him to attend an encierro, or “running of the bulls”. If asked to name a Spanish tradition, the vast majority of tiny minority of people that can find both their own country and Spain on a map will say “running with the bulls”. Thanks to Ernest Hemmingway, every July, the festival in Pamplona gets some new airtime worldwide. What most people don’t know is that these bull runs take place in small town festivals all over Spain throughout the entire year (the icier months are avoided for obvious reasons).
The annual town festival of Ampuero is held every year in early September. Ampuero is only about a five-minute drive from where I live, so the opportunity was too good to pass up. I present to you some photos and the actual video evidence of the BITWRATHPLOOB running with the bulls.
First of all, Ampuero is here:
The empty bull run as seen from the entrance to the bull ring. 90 minutes to bull run. We had to get there early to secure a good vantage point.
The way most bull runs work is that the bulls are moved to a temporary corral on one side of town. The streets are lined with wooden fences with slates just far enough apart for a slim human to get through but not a bull head. The fenced-in path leads from the temporary corral all the way to the town bullring. They usually fire off some number of firecrackers to signal some subset of the following events: 1) bull run about to start, 2) no, really, get nervous! 3) the gate has been opened, start sprinting, 4) the last bull has left the corral, 5) all the bulls have finished the run. Some towns, like Ampuero, either don’t have the facilities to make a temporary corral or the layout of the town is not suitable, so they start and finish the run in the bullring, with the bulls and runners doing a circle through the town.
60 minutes to bull run. Good thing we claimed this fence position thirty minutes ago.
Several marching bands went by in the run up to the bull run. Everyone was pretty excited.
10 minutes to bull run. The police (and common-sense self preservation) made everyone get off the top of the fence. The BITWRATHPLOOB looks a little nervous.
The bull run commenced at exactly 12 noon. Bull runs and soccer games are the only things that happens on time in Spain.
After the bull run, the streets were filled with people and music and drinking. This is the main downtown drag of Ampuero that the bulls ran down.
A system of pounding in enough wedges makes the fence posts pretty solid.
The bulls ran across this bridge. They had to put up a barricade along the side so that neither bulls nor humans would try to jump over the railing.
By 1PM the whole town was dancing and drinking and having a good time.
Two dimensional representations of my fiancée), the BITWRATHPLOOB, and me. The weather was great! (finally)
We saw this “vaca loca” (mad cow) toy that was “disturbingly cute” in a BITWRATHPLOOB sort of way. Neither bovine spongiform encephalopathy, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, nor any sort of muscle spasm disorder is anything to joke about. But it’s all okay if it’s a stuffed animal.
Ampuero’s town church.
Slightly blurred vision as the BITWRATHPLOOB and I get a little tipsy in front of the church.
And now….. for the moment you’ve all been waiting for……
In case you thought that was pretty tame and you’re wondering why I didn’t run with the bulls, let’s just say that, in Ampuero three years ago, some of the bulls got separated from the group and gored two runners to death [Spanish], and the same thing happened last week [English] in another small town.
The weather finally improved, and the BITWRATHPLOOB was able to enjoy a nice day at the beach in nearby Laredo, Spain. Laredo’s beach is 7 km long and is extremely wide, even at high tide. Spaniards from all across the north of Spain spend their vacations here.
In order to truly communicate the natural beauty of Laredo’s beach, I had to find a spot on a nearby mountain where I could take a shot looking down onto it’s unique shape. So I headed up some rural roads and ended up stopping at a dead end where there was nothing but a radio tower. The road and tower were completely surrounded by a barbed wire fence. Behind the tower, I found a human-sized hole in the fence that I could get through if I crawled. Once on the other side of the fence, I headed a couple dozen paces to where I could see the beach and heard a startled “MOO!!”, and the local bovine resident looked up at me. Watching more closely where I stepped, I continued towards the beach side of the hill. And that’s where the following view hit my eyes…
How beautiful is that? It goes right out to a peak and then curves back around.
Here’s a wider one with a bovine extra bonus on the right. Click on it to see notes in Flickr.
The BITWRATHPLOOB overlooks Laredo’s impressive beach.
Tall grass.
Then we headed down to the beach. We went almost to the tip to have fewer people walking around thinking that I broke out of the asylum.
Mommy, what’s that thing crawling around on that sand dune over there?
I’ve never been on a beach with such fine, white sand.
Heading towards the water. No pants to roll up for wading. What a time-saver!
Reflected ‘ploob.
Uh oh! Here come the waves!
The BITWRATHPLOOB wets his coat tails.
Bathing in the crystal clear water.
The BITWRATHPLOOB asked to be buried up to his head in the sand. He said this is called an “Inverted Ostrich”. I obliged.
On the way back home, we stopped by to see some of the decaying floats from the Batalla de Flores (Flower Battle), an annual event in Laredo with a competition to see who can make the most impressive parade float using real flowers. They are made out of wood and styrofoam, and then the flowers are added at the last minute, of course. The winning floats each year are put on display like this until all the flowers fall off.
Hard to tell which face is scarier. One of them definitely smells better, though.
Surreal! This is kind of how I imagine the BITWRATHPLOOB’s dreams (the ones where he’s not brutally slaughtering me).
A terrifyingly scary monster. And some sort of dragon.
Can you spot the pantsless wood bear in this photo?
Octopussy. Can you spot the ‘ploob?
And finally a little video treat for you here at the end…
The one must-see attraction in my area is the architectural masterpiece that is the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, and it’s continually flowering puppy sculpture that sits out front.
But first, when in Spain, one must sample the local tapas, little snacks put out on top of the bar to be eaten with your drink order.
Somehow, the BITWRATHPLOOB started hovering in midair over the bar. The barman got spooked and asked us to leave.
The famous Puppy, a sculpture by Jeff Koons.
The Guggenheim Museum, currently showing work by Anselm Kiefer and Albrecht Dürer (which apparently is Alberto Durero in Spanish).
Puppy Profile 1
Puppy Profile 2
The Guggenheim Sign.
Fancy Architecture
Late in the day, the BITWRATHPLOOB cast a long shadow of pure evil.
The Nervión River.
The façade of the Guggenheim Museum is pure titanium.
Me and His ‘Ploobness.
The BITWRATHPLOOB felt right at home with the nightmare-inducing modern art like this arachnid sculpture called Maman, by Louise Bourgeois.
Flowery puppy rump.
Ti ‘Ploob!
Here’s a short video about the BITWRATHPLOOB’s museum visit.