The Running Of The Morgans

By Burt Hunter

What connection, you ask, between the Running of the Bulls and owning a classic car? Perhaps it is that classic car owners and bull runners, like poets and madmen, have a different view of reality.

In my case, the connection was this: in 1998 our good friend Tony Newton persuaded us to go to Spain for the Morgan Club de Espana tour of La Rioja. Afterward, driving our extremely rare rented Morgan Mondeo, we drove north to the Basque Country and Pamplona. There, caught up in re-reading The Sun Also Rises, and perhaps fueled by one too many Riojas Altas, I vowed to run with the bulls when I retired, to celebrate my manumission. (While in Pamplona, we also concluded long-distance arrangements to buy our ’66 Morgan SuperSport from California).

In early 2005, I decided semi-retired was good enough, so mounted on my sturdy steed Passat, and accompanied by my own Dulcinea ( She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed), I rode north to meet my fate in the narrow cobblestoned streets of Pamplona.

The Running of the Bulls takes place in Pamplona, Northern Spain, on eight successive mornings beginning July 7 of each year. Each morning, several thousand usually young and seldom sober mostly men run in the encierro in front of, along side of, and behind six thirteen hundred pound very angry fighting bulls. The course extends less than half a mile from the bull corrals to the Plaza de Toros, where the same bulls will be fought in the corrida that evening.

In the process:

--drunks sober up quickly;

--testosterone-fueled young men learn they are no match for animals ten times their weight and twice their speed;

--many are injured and occasionally killed (the day I ran four people were gored, and sixty others were injured); and

--old men learn that the dreams of their youth might better have been left as dreams.

Bull-running, like Morgan-running, requires a certain amount of “willing suspension of disbelief” (as well as a certain amount of stupidity). Having said that, even irrational acts such as these can be conducted more safely with organization and discipline. I approached the “encierro” with the overweaning goal of not leaving a rich widow on the morrow. To that end, I developed a set of survival rules I call “The Thinking Man’s Guide to the Running of the Bulls”.

The rules are:

• Run Sober
• Run absolutely sober
• Don’t drink at all the day before

(I had a non-alcoholic beer with my pre-run dinner)

• Run on a day when there are fewer runners. The first two days, and Saturday and Sunday, each will have eight thousand runners. The net effect is not unlike sardines in a can trying to escape a hungry shark. I ran on the fifth day, a Monday, when there were about two thousand runners.
• Observe the runs before you run. They are broadcast live on Spanish television each morning. We also rented a room on the course through Pamplona Adventure Tours and observed an encierro the day before I ran.
• Arrange for an experienced runner to walk the course with you

(I had difficulty convincing my guide that my goal was not to be the feature story on A.M. Madrid, but rather to survive unscathed)

· Memorize the course. I walked the course nine times before I ran, and can still name the stores and bars along the way

· Diagram the course, and rate the safer areas. The streets are fenced off before the run, and runners are not allowed to leave once the run has begun. My diagram showed where the streets narrowed, doorways which could provide partial shelter from an enraged fighting bull, and balconies and window bars which a sufficiently terrified runner could use to hoist himself above the turmoil.

· Count the bulls as they pass you. This is not as easy as it sounds. Six bulls run in the encierro with six oxen, follow by four oxen, which run

“clean-up”. The bulls should be readily distinguishable from the oxen, which wear bells around their neck and have balls on their horns,

(and nowhere else). Reality is a little different. In my case, the counting of the bulls went like this: “One, two, oh sh*#!.”

The encierro is much like being in an automobile accident. People are screaming, the bulls are unpredictable (and often reverse their course), and adrenaline gives a hard, bright edge to everything. Those unfortunate enough to be in the immediate path of the bulls are tossed if they are lucky, gored if they are not, or knocked down and trampled by the bulls and the other runners (imagine an old Volkswagen with horns hitting a crowd at a movie premiere).

Alas, My new-found skills in the encierro will never be used again. She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed, armed with her formidable negotiating skills( as well as an antique derringer), extracted from me a promise that I will never again run with the bulls. What challenges then remain? Finding the Northwest Passage? Turning lead to gold? Finding an honest lawyer?

Here is what I’ve learned, about myself and life, from this experience. That is:

• (1) Bulls are bigger and faster than men;
• (2) Bulls can hurt you a lot worse than your classic car; and
• (3) I am as stupid as I look!

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