As a famous 20th
century philosopher once
said “Mankind is at a crossroads. One path leads to oblivion, the other to
total destruction. I pray we have the courage to choose correctly.”[1]
I my own case I have always chosen the path in life that I hoped would provide the most fun along the route. Often the search for fun has led me to some
peculiar—but, nevertheless, fun—situations.
Take my recent sailing trip through the stunningly beautiful Azorean Archipelago.
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| Azorean Coastline |
The sailing part of
that trip, I will not get into because that was just more or less the kind of
fun anyone could have sailing anywhere with a blind captain, a broken foot, unpredicted 15 foot waves and 35 mile/hour winds, volcanic islands with rocky shorelines and
miniscule harbors that you could not imagine squeezing into in a bath tub rubber
ducky without crashing into something hard and pointy.
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| Entering a Typical Azorean Harbor |
No, the sailing part was only run-of-the mill fun.
The interesting part was how the Azorean people chose to have
fun.
What they do, more or less on a weekly basis, is release a
very angry bull out onto the town streets without warning, at least without any
warning to English-speaking tourists.
Like me.
How they make the bull so angry is a state secret,
but I am guessing that they poke him in the balls with a long stick or
something like that. Anyway, he gets exceedingly pissed off at humans.
The streets in Azorean towns are very narrow, with high
walls on either side or sometimes house fronts right on the street with little
or no sidewalks. I think that this is because up until about 10 years ago the streets were
mostly used by horses and horse carts. It’s not all that modern a place.
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| Azorean Street |
The upshot of this venue is that any bull in the street gets a really good shot
at any idiot human standing in the same street.
Normally, this would have been no problem
for me because until recently I could outrun most angry bulls, at least in my
imagination.
However, I had broken my foot falling down on a boat and was
wearing a clumsy plastic cast. This left me at a huge disadvantage when all the
other fun loving pedestrians took off running away from the bull as fast as
they could.
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| Bull in the Street |
I stumbled along, not
having that much fun, until it was just the bull and me at street level. At first, I thought I could
best him by playing possum. I could lie down on the street, I thought, and act like I was
a worthless corpse. Another idea was to climb a wall. I elected the latter
because—who knows if the bull could satisfy his lust for fun by throwing a worthless
American corpse around?
So up the wall I scrabbled, not too effectively until two
merciful Portuguese fishermen got me by the shoulders.
Victory! I thumbed my nose at the bull, feeling a massive flood of
adrenaline.
Unfortunately, I do
not have any close up pictures of the bull because by the time he was really
really close, it was time to pocket the camera and plan an escape. Below and to the left is a shot, taken shortly after my encounter.
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| The Bull I Defeated |
So here is the secret I discovered. You can have fun in any
culture doing all kinds of things the locals do that you might not otherwise do on a
daily basis at home so long as you can get that adrenaline going.
Unlike other bull fights, the Azorean kind are fair because the bull can also easily find ways to have fun.
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| Fun for the Bull |
I wish to thank the two Azorean men who lifted me out of range of the bull. Next time I see them, I am buying both of them a case of beer.
Also my thanks are due to the skillful British and Irish captain and crew of the yacht, Indaba, who successfully navigated the Lilliputian Azorean harbors without running aground one single time or hitting any other hard objects, while I watched the maneuvers anxiously with my life vest safely attached, prepared to jump off and swim at the first crunch of fiberglass.
[1]
Woody Allen.
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