Can't Catch a Break

I want to tell you more about Pamplona and The Festival of San Fermin, but man. . . I have more trouble than Carter has liver pills.  

That's an obscure reference that many will have to Google, I think.  

I was mad to write more about my Pamplona adventure, and I wanted to get back to my own home and find some photos from those days.  But. . . my mother needed things and the day didn't get off to the start I thought it would, so I was out later than I wished which meant I needed to get back to my house and take my Xterra to the shop for my appointment at noon.  

I made it just on time, and the mechanic wheeled the overheated car inside to take a look.  I didn't think I should stand over his shoulder while he was working as if I knew anything, so I stayed in the office and chatted with his wife.  After he'd taken a good look, he said it was the radiator cap.  He showed me that it didn't have something that other caps did.  I was confused, then I remembered--I'd dropped the original cap into some obscure place in the engine that I couldn't access, so I went to the auto store and bought a new one.  Hmmm.  He was going to order a new cap, but I said I lived only a mile and a half away and that I would drive it home and go to the auto store in my mother's car to get a new one.  I didn't want to leave my car there and walk home.  So he filled the radiator with coolant and said there was no charge.

By the time I got halfway home, though, steam was coming from under the hood.  I began to wonder if it was really the radiator cap or if it wasn't maybe the water pump.  I'd buy a new cap first and see if that would do the trick, but I had my doubts.  If it were the cap, why did the car only begin overheating after the mechanic had done all that work?  

Things weren't looking so rosy.  

I went to the gym.  The maids would be at my house in a bit.  After a workout that I cut short because I was worn out with things and didn't want to do a couple miles on the treadmill, I drove back to my house.  But I was too early.  The maids were still there.  What to do?  It looked like they were getting ready to pack up, so I took a drive down the Boulevard.  When I got back, they were gone.  

I sat down at the computer and searched for images.  I pulled out a hard drive labelled "Travel" and inside was a folder titled "Spain."  I looked through it but there weren't so many images.  I decided to look for the missing photos.  

Which meant I had to empty the closet in my study.  It is stacked with folios and folders and bits and pieces of other things that had to be piled on the office floor.  And of course, inevitably, the Spain images were in the very last box on the bottom of the pile.  Inside a black shell box with "Spain" written on a white sticker were twenty or so plastic sleeves holding thirty-two slides each. 

I took them to the light table to see.  Why had I not scanned these before?  I would now, but I didn't have very much time.  I found the scanning tray for slides and loaded it.  Five slides at a time.  I took it to my scanner in the bedroom that has to use an old computer that will run the no longer produced software.  

The scanner and the computer weren't communicating for some reason.  Shit piss fuck goddamn.  I started and restarted the scanner and the computer numerous times panicked that somehow the software had been corrupted.  There is no way I know to get it again.  Then, after half an hour, I realized I had plugged the wrong cable into the computer, not the one coming from the scanner.  

Ecstasy.  It still worked.  

But scanning is slow.  I set the scanner to a lower resolution output to try to speed it up, but it still took twenty minutes to scan five slides.  While the scanner was working, I showered.  When I got out, I loaded five more and went outside to clip my nails.  Twenty minutes later, I had nine slides.  The scanner had failed on one of them.  No time.  I loaded five more, and took the nine I had to the big computer to work on them in Photoshop.  

I was trying to set the stage--the streets of Pamplona.  There were so many more to scan, but time was running out.  

In twenty minutes, I went out to load another five slides.  That is when I noticed a wet spot on the rug in the dining room.  WTF?  Had the maids spilled the bucket when mopping the floor.  Then I heard something.  I ignored it, then heard it again.  I looked at the ceiling.  It was stained and cracked.  I stood over the wet spot and felt a cold drip.  No, no, no, no, no!

I went into the attic to take a look.  I checked the drain pan.  Dry.  But next to it, water was dripping out of a--I don't even have the vocabulary for this--some pipe or duct that was covered in a thick white sealant.  I put my hand there and felt the drip.  I rushed back down the ladder and got a pan.  Back up the ladder, I tried to fit it under the drip, but there was something blocking it.  I managed to get it partway only hoping it would catch the water.  

I called the HVAC company that does all my work.  It was after five now.  Closed.  My nerves were shot.  I called my mother to tell her I would be running late, but she was telling me she was sick.  She didn't understand a word I said.  

"You'll have to tell me when you get back.  I can't hear you."

I thought about the rafters in the attic.  It is a tall attic, twelve feet to the peak.  Yes, those rafters would hold a man's weight.  

I turned the a.c. up so that it would not run much, packed my shit, and headed back to my mother's house.  

She said she wasn't hungry.  She'd eat some soup.  I was punky.  I made a cocktail and sat for a minute.  I tried to tell her about the car, the a.c. leak, but she couldn't or wouldn't hear me.  There was no succor for me anywhere in the world, I thought.  There is nothing for me but strife.

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“What if this goes on for another 10 years?” one caregiver said. “How long am I going to be able to maintain this?”

Families, it says.  It doesn't mention the ones totally on their own.  

Cocktail done, I went in to make soup.  My mother came in just as I was about to serve. 

"Do you still have those hot dogs?"

I did.  Two.  I fixed them and put them on buns.  That is what she ate, not the soup.  

"You said you weren't hungry.  Didn't want to eat anything.  I could have made a real meal."

"Oh. . . sorry." 

All night, I worried.  I went to bed, but couldn't sleep. I got up at midnight and took an Advil PM.  Woke at six, drowsy, dopey.  Made coffee.  Shit--I was out of milk.  Out of my mind, I got in the car and drove to the store.  Now, coffee by my side, I tell my never-ending tale of woe.  

I just called he HVAC people. They will come as soon as they can.  My day is now going to consist of waiting for them.  I am not sure this is going to be an easy fix.  After that, I will have to deal with the ceiling.  

While they work on the a.c. I will try to scan more slides.  The Festival of San Fermin lasts all week, so I can still report in real time.  After the festival, on my way to meet my girlfriend in Cannes, I saw part of the Tour de France which is going on now as well.  It was quite the summer, really, and I hope I have the stuff to tell it well.  With photos.  

I made a mistake which feels like a grievous error.  My mind is slipping.  It was not 1985 when I was in Pamplona, but 1989.  I know that now because I looked at the framed poster I have from that festival. 1985 may have been my summer spent in Peru.  Or wat that the year we climbed in Ecuador?  Yes. . . the memory wanes . 

I was not a practicing photographer then, however, and had with me only a little Olympus point and shoot camera.  I shot slides because that is what you did then before digital everything so you might, perhaps, get some of your slides into one of Brando's big slide show parties.  I've told you something about those many, many years ago, and I will retell that here again, too. But slides from a point and shoot camera are not the best and scanning them is problematic.  I forget who developed them, but whoever did it did a lousy job.  And as I say, I had not taken serious photos for a number of years at that point, and so. . . we will do the best illustrations we can.  

Here is what I did, running with the bulls and getting inside the ring as they entered.  It was a little surreal. 

I can't find much on the the suelta de vaquillas once inside the ring, but here is a short clip of it.  You see the "bull jumping" that is a sport of its own.  This clip is from many years after I was there, and in the past, not so many people were let into the ring as the doors to the tunnel closed when the last bull entered. 

Yesterday, it seems, three people were gored in the Running of the Bulls.  It seems a stupid thing to do, I know. . . but somehow it seemed the only thing to do at the time.