This Kind of Crazy

"If ... he could no longer endure the realities of ... life, he found a way out in his mental life– an invaluable opportunity to dwell in the spiritual domain, the one (they) ... were unable to destroy." - "Man's Search For Meaning" - Viktor Frankl (1905-1997)

Sometimes you "have" to do something a little bit out of the ordinary. A little bit on the crazy side. I've often heard talk of persons with multiple personality disorders; the term "crazy" is bandied about with such indistinction. Each of us live multiple lives & have multiple personalities, depending on the role we need to play: As a coach I provide wisdom & guidance to athletes, sometimes through a bit of bad judgement of my own. As a runner I look for a good story to entertain friends & family. Somehow the thought of how to talk about some of this kind of fell together on a four & a half mile easy trot the other morning...

The story really starts a little after two o'clock in the morning last Tuesday; I woke up wanting a soda. This might sound a little strange for a guy on vacation in New Orleans; I hadn't had a soda in over a week. Neither water nor beer was going to help me get back to sleep. However, all I had was two twenty-dollar bills, so I had to get change from the hotel front desk. I took my wallet & rode the elevator down to the lobby. "No change for a twenty," says the desk clerk. Here's where the fun begins:

Rather than return to the room for my shoes & risk awakening my (sleeping) wife, I plan to walk the two blocks - in a pair of baggy shorts, t-shirt & in stocking feet - to a convenience store on Canal, purchase my soda, & walk back. This should take no time at all. A great idea, right? Lesson: Not everything stays open all night in NOLA; what is open late on a weekend is not always the same on a weeknight. Canal Street is EMPTY on a Tuesday morning at 2:15 a.m. I begin to tick off on the map in my head where I can go, & walk another two blocks to a shop which should still be open.

I encounter a guy in Army Camouflage Utilities with a roll-on suitcase. He stares at me like I am truly insane. He tells me he just got off the plane from Afghanistan & trying to make his way home - why his route was by way of the French Quarter makes as much sense to me as my stocking-clad search for soda pop does to him. Actually, I understand him more than he does me.

Every so often you feel compelled...don't ask the logic behind compulsions of this sort; something like this happened about a year ago at the Beachcomber, in Waikiki. The specialist, in exchange for cab fare, would gladly point me in the general direction of a 24-hour soft drink purveyor. Now there are two of us in a modern-day "Wizard of Oz" situation. Lions, & tigers, & bears...

We chatted as we walked the three blocks; talking about family, our jobs, stuff like that. The store, like any place which remains open when most sane people on the face of the earth (not getting paid to stay awake) are normally asleep, has a small group standing outside the door. Naturally, they all marvel at the (obvious) fact I have walked around without shoes. The only answer I can give, naturally, is: "it's a long story." The only ones who fail to look in awe or wonder, strangely enough, are the gentlemen who benefit financially. Gee, you would think a guy carrying forty bucks would be welcome in their place. Not like I'm going to steal anything. Maybe they are concerned because of a recent rash of barefoot runners.

I hand the Guardsman a twenty to pay for the soda; he asks me to wait outside the store. He comes out seconds later with the change. I give him cab fare, which he hands to the cabbie - who followed us over to the store. I quietly snarl at the logic of his action, but the hack driver is not driving anyone who isn't paying, I guess.

I take my soda & walk back toward the hotel. Half way back from the convenience store, I encounter two couples strolling back to their hotel from their evening of debauchery. Not only do they ask the obvious, but begin to take photos, as though I am some kind of freak. Hello? Who is the sober one here?

Sobriety is great, even at three in the morning. The grating & sidewalk, on the other hand, is trying my soles. I was almost certain barefoot running was not for me when that "Born To Run" book came out; now I know. All my friends could say, when I recounted the tale for them that evening, was that I was a little insane. Looking back at the act, a few days later, it was a well-intentioned development of positive karma covering an illogical selfish desire...something for which I would have gently derided my wife had she told me the same tale.

I guess we all are a little bit crazy, here & there. The compulsions we feel can force us to run fifty marathons in fifty states, or do ultra runs on mountains...or to do truly harmful things to ourselves & others around us (I consider marathons only harmful to young or inexperienced runners). I guess the difference between (near-) rationality & lunacy, to the kind which can enable complete strangers (even those entrusted to care for us) to treat us like a lesser being, boils down to our ability to clearly tell the story, rather than letting someone else tell it.

If someone asks why you're crazy enough to run, tell them. Just make certain to keep the message simple.

Sometimes You Just Have To Say...

...the statement I was going to use (borrowed from an old friend, Christian Beine) can have positive & negative connotations. This weekend, it's a little bit of both.

It is not often I go to New Orleans in a month which is not spelled with an "R" somewhere within or at the end. Sure, there's the August trip to do the NOH3 Red Dress thing...that's a situation where I kick myself while pulling funky, nasty sweaty red dresses out of the back of my car, asking the un-askable question: 'What in the world was I thinking when I registered for this?' Then I realize I added a few too many words to the front end of the sentence & should have started the question with: 'Was I thinking...?' Naturally, my wife reminds me it is all in good fun.

This time we went, not to commemorate a hasher hook-up (I never knew that was the story behind the RDR!) but to take part in a variation of a ritual steeped in lore & tradition, immortalized by Papa Ernest Hemingway in the last three chapters of his novel, The Sun Also Rises. Seems someone felt like there was a need for another reason to party in New Orleans & the Fiesta de San Fermin seemed like as good a reason as any. I never knew the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona was part of a religious festival, but I guess when you're in a nation as Catholic (with a capital "C") as Spain, nearly everything has religious undertones.

And when you have the amount of spare time to research stuff I do...in between doing real work...you do have the opportunity to learn the history & significance of things. I think it makes the experience that much more meaningful, personally. The San Fermin web site, http://www.sanfermin.com/, not only had photos & commentary about the history, but even a little bit about Hemingway's visits there through his middle age. Even better, the site was set up in Spanish, Basque & English...with links to an on-line store for shirts & stuff. Hey, even the Euros feel the need to be capitalistic. Every so often.

But I digress.

Bulls are deeply tied into Spanish culture, long before even the Umayyad (sic?) Caliphate took over the Iberian peninsula. That much I recall from some multimedia thing I watched while I was studying Spanish in college. Somehow, I guess there was some machismo thing going on in the ability to avoid getting stomped or gored by some bull being taken down the main drag to it's eventual death in the bull ring. Not quite certain where San Fermin falls in there, save for the fact he's the patron saint of Pamplona, in the province of Navarre.

I guess during the seven or eight days of the festival these bull breeders in the region send eight of their fighting bulls to die for the pleasure of Spanish aficionados. And the last 800 meters or so of the trip is through the center of town to the bull ring. Barricades abound. Oh, & did I mention the very slippery cobblestone surface & the hard ninety-degree turn near the end? First time I had the chance to see this was not long after I first moved to Pensacola; Outdoor Life Network (now called Versus) would show it in the afternoons...guess Craig Hummer & Al Trautwig needed something stranger than cycle racing to commentate upon, huh? Bizarre thing to watch a ton of angry hamburger try to take a hard right on cobblestones...slide like he's on ice, & BANG! Into the barrera.

All right, so New Orleans' San Fermin is a little more kind & genteel. At least for New Orleans. First year's encierro had a few hundred participants & maybe a dozen "bulls," well, roller derby chicks with horned helmets & whiffle ball bats. This year, the third, had around five thousand participants & probably a hundred "bulls" from all over the southeastern U.S. And the blend of tradition & whimsy is perfect.

The start of the encierro is at the northern end of the Vieux Carre', winds through the Quarter, and finishes in the Warehouse District. The event started officially at eight o'clock, but if you weren't at the corner near the balcony at 7:05 the odds were good you were not going to have a good spot for the beginning of the festivities.

At (probably...I haven't worn a watch in six months, so time is relative!) 7:55, the caretakers of San Fermin's statue marched up Rue Conti, led by a squad of drummers. San Fermin was then followed by a flight of rolling Elvi on mini-motorized scooters. Once San Fermin was installed in his proper place, the Padron stepped out onto the balcony of the Three-Legged Dog & gave his welcoming speech. This was immediately followed by the kneeling & invocation of the participants to (who else?) San Fermin, asking him to guide them safely ahead of the bulls. Immediately afterward, unlike the real encierro where a rocket is launched to send off the runners, we were sent down the course.

The pace for the run was closer to a dawdle. Enough for us to think, 'heck, no worries...this is going to be an easy little Saturday morning jog in the FQ.' No sooner did that thought cross my mind than we made a left-hand turn through what appeared to be a barrier of spectators standing in the middle of the street. At that point I looked to the right.

Ever watch those old movies where Godzilla, or some fifty-foot tall, radioactivity-enhanced thing rises out of a body of water and begins to stomp its way into a major metropolitan area? Think about the people (who have screams of terror dubbed in) as they look back at the creature about ready to turn them into a grease spot on the sidewalk. That's the look we all had. Why? We just turned onto the point of the course where the "bulls" were waiting to be released. Screaming? Absolutely. Like a seven-year-old girl, I was.

We began to run like Kenyans at the Classic. And behind us we could hear the plastic 'whonk' sound of whiffle ball bat meeting body part, which only made us more panicky. My wife took the smarter plan of action, and stepped off the course onto the sidewalk. She told me while she thought this was all in good fun she was not in the mood to be whacked in the fanny with a plastic bat. So, she managed to come through the day un-bruised.

On the other hand, I received the beating of a lifetime, the sort I hadn't received since nearly failing middle school English grammar so long ago. It could have been a grounding, but noooo... These hits weren't just gentle 'whacks.' Some of these girls were out to make up for ex-boyfriends or something...one of them had a forehand which would make Serena Williams proud. I still have the mark.

Of course, with all that humidity & sweat flying around someone's going to lose a bat, & someone's going to lose control. One bull & I ended up in the San Fermin in Nueva Orleans version of a Mexican Standoff; she lost grip of her bat, which fell to the ground at my feet. I picked it up: Any other situation would call for payback. However, the second rule of the run, 'Do Not Touch The Bulls,' applied. So, I shook the bat at her with a small amount of menace, then smiled and handed it back to her. No good deed goes unpunished; she responded with a swat in the keister & a blown kiss for my reward.

While some of the NOLA roller girls were probably familiar with the terrain, it's hard to say whether the imported "bulls" were as well-prepared. The pavement can be rather unforgiving if you don't keep your wits about you...while the cobblestoned last two blocks of the encierro provided payback to the "bulls," there were a few places on the course where I watched "bulls" succumb to the laws of physics or crash into "innocent bystanders." If you're standing on the side of the road for the express purpose of watching this particular spectacle, the term "innocent" does not apply, in my humble opinion. Some guy complained about a bull causing him to spill his drink all over his shirt. Neither bull, nor runner, nor fellow spectator felt the least sympathetic.

The bulls quickly realized trying to roll over cobblestones would lead to accidents which could put this years' Tour de France to shame, so they lined up in a gauntlet formation & proceeded to beat upon the runners who had the temerity to run behind them on the course. The sound of whiffle ball bats could on that block from Tchopitoulas to Julia leading to Ernst Cafe' for blocks around. I rejoined my wife, who was standing at the entrance of Ernst Cafe cooling off. We watched for a few minutes the spectacle of runners staging photographed whacks with imported & domestic bulls, then retired, like Hemingway & his companions once did, to our hotel room to prepare for the next stage of our Fiesta experience.