July 19th, 2008
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 Bitwrathplood 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:
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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.
