España Day 2, Part 1 - Running with the Bulls!!

What. A. Day. 5am to 3am non-stop, with only an hour-long nap. But an incredible day nonetheless.
So Justin was kind enough to not wake me up for my 4am lookout shift and we all woke up at 5am to head down to the action - for the running of the bulls. We gathered our belongings and tiredly headed in the right direction. Boy - what a sight. EVERYONE was still out, most of which had been partying all night, and the place was a landfill - trash everywhere, up to your knees in some places. Wow.
So we quickly found a parking garage with a bathroom, where we changed clothes, freshened up a bit, and proceeded to get kicked out by a couple guys who thought we were there to find a friend's car and were upset and we weren't.
We trudged through the trash and people to get to the area where the bulls (and David and I) would be running just 2 hours later. The track works like this: it is 400m, rather short, and the people who run are in two groups: one group is for the hard-core Spaniards who want to become bull-fighters and they line up at the beginning of the track and taunt the bulls. The second group starts further down the track, but still gets to run with the bulls, though it's not quite as intense. Our plan was to find this second group.
After saying goodbye to our stuff (we handed it to Lauren, Jacque, and Justin, who would be heading to the stadium to watch from the stands), David and I parked ourselves at Dead Man's Corner - an area where the bulls traditionally swing wide and hit the wall before turning and moving on. The plan was to stay on the inside corner and out of harm's way.
But of course things changed as the police proceeded to push everyone off the course in order to clean the track. Uh oh. In a split second decision, I decide to follow some other Americans, lose David in the process, and run around in a loop, eventually make my way back to the track, sneak under the fence (the police generally look the other way) and get pushed into a massive crowd waiting to be let back in. Just before 8am, everyone does a prayer to San Fermin (for which the festival was named) and hopes for the best. I stake out a spot on the inside corner of Dead Man's Corner.
Ten minutes later - the cannon sounds, which announces the release of the 6 bulls (and their steers - also big cows). I wait for a bit and then decide - hey, what the heck - I'm going to run. I begin running and about a minute later - Vroom - there goes bull #1 to my left. I hit the wall and take a breather. I'm not feeling so hot right now - sprinting on very little water and food consumption made me feel I bit sick. But I pull it together and make my way down the track and enter the stadium.
Entering the stadium, with people cheering all around you in the stands, made me understand what Gladiator must have been like. Coolest feeling EVER. There are probably about 200 other people in the ring with me at that time, and shortly, bulls #2 and #3 come zipping by - very close to where I was standing - but they ran straight through the stadium to the stables on the far end.
The rest of the bulls came within 5 minutes - doing the same thing. And so I thought it was over - time to go home.
WRONG. Then they let out each of the bulls, one by one, and they run around the ring with ferocious fury - chasing after anything that moves. The first bull caught me off guard - after a close encounter, I sprint to the wall, where most people hang out, and proceeded to watch person after person get owned by the bull, thrown up by its horns and nearly trampled afterwards. Crazy.
They released the 5 other bulls after - and magically about halfway through, I find David sprinting toward me. We were reunited - and at that point, we were both saying - "Yeah, I think I've had enough bull." So we head out of the ring, but still watch people do crazy stuff - get their pants yanked off by the bull, jump over the bull (a talent dubbed "hurdling"), and run around screaming to the wall.
What a sight. The only downside was that I did not have my camera, which I had given to Lauren, who stored it with the rest of our stuff for the day. I wouldn't get it back until the next morning. :(
So it was complete - we survived - and David and I went to buy a victory bottle of wine and waited for the others at a designated meeting spot. You could say we bonded, man to man time, haha.