That's Bull....

Monday morning here in the tropics, kids at school, laundry is hanging, see it?, no, the pool is not running off the edge, that's just my angle today, stayed up too late watching "The Reader", need to have 10 posts to get on the ex-pat blog directory so stepping up the pace...and 9 and... Andy gone to the border to give them all our money and see if we can get the black panther back. When I say "gone to the border" think "gone to Hell" as that is the closest metaphor. Border towns are teeming, dirty, swarms of uncivilization that can instantly turn you into an obsessive compulsive anti-bacterial soap lover. Dehydrating yourself is the best border strategy so as not to need the "facilities". Hungry? Forget about it. Last time we went we came home with dirt even in our ears thanks to a constant barrage of windblown dirt and dust. Yuck. When Andy got there Friday he found a sticker on the truck window saying it was abandoned like an unloved pet and about to become the property of the aduana, translation: thieving tax agency, and I guess they would have soon given it to the employee of the month had Andy not shown up to visit. This in spite of the fact that it is impounded in their own secure lot where they put it and is accruing a daily fee! So, fingers crossed half-heartedly after 4 months and counting of false hope and premature labor-like anticipation.

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I heard on Radio Doce this morning that the March winds are here which is funny as I thought these were still the Papagayos minus the steroids but guess they magically morphed at some unknown transitional point, like maybe when the calender page flipped, hmm... One hit wonders heard lately that should have stayed locked in the archives include "Afternoon Delight", "My Baby Takes the Morning Train", "Fox on the Run", and "Roseanna". Others I could actually sing along with included Bread's "Guitar Man" and the not so old "Drops of Jupiter" so you can see the ratio is easily 2:1, cringingly horrible:happy to hear. I also heard that lame America song, whose dazzling lyrics include "Oz never did give nothin' to the tin man" and what the heck was that all about anyway? First of all, I always thought they said "Odds" until this latest "aha!" moment but whatever because it makes no sense either way and is a very dumb song that I never thought too much about. Tropic of Sir Galahad, say what? And speaking of when we actually used to say, "Say what?" as in "Rollercoaster, of love, say what?" Ha! I wonder if the Ohio Players are here in CR too! Remember sitting glued to the radio hoping they would play some favorite song and straining to hear the lyrics? I remember writing "Stairway to Heaven", my first book! And now you can figure all that blather out immediately as the internet posts them all, for better or worse. Hopefully this will be an added incentive to song writers to sober up and write some good stuff, all that hippety hop nasty crap not withstanding. Stay tuned for more blasts from the past. At least I will be in great shape for my 30th MHS reunion this summer! I wonder if my hair will still shape into wings... Say what?!

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Which brings me to my topic of the day, Bulls... Saturday nite marked the beginning of the next round of Fiestas which move from town to town. The last round were the Chrismas ones and now we are gearing up for Semana Santa, holy week. Not sure how they are Easter-like in any way, except perhaps for the prayers sent up by the bull riders and chinese food eaters. I took Micah to meet his friends and Eileen came along for her fiesta debut. We took up our position in the stands, which are constructed fresh for each town's fiesta and resemble those toothpick projects my kids had to make to see which design could support the most weight. People hang off and sit all along the fencing that comprises the bull ring itself and try to bravely kick the bull when it comes by and this fiesta crowd was particularly large, Villa Real being a bigger town, so that when the bull ran by the people lining the inside of the fencing all rose with synchronicity like a pop-up book or the wave at a sporting event! In addition to lining the fences, the inside of the bullring itself was filled with macho men with liquid courage, typically the local firewater guaro, coursing through their veins. There are usually some gringos in there and, this being Spring break time, there were a few tourists and college kids too. You could practically hear the scratching of their pens on the postcards home, "Dear Mom and Dad, ...gored by a bull..." All around the outside of the bull ring are carnival games, candy apples, flying swings, cotton candy, dancing parlors, fried dough, flying pigs, and your typical fiesta fare found everywhere else in the world, the only distinction being the language all the ex-inmate workers speak. One funny aside, under the "supervision" of his Dad, Isaiah spent all his money one night at the Brasilito fiesta on some crazy game and finally won a bottle of wine! He and his buddy Jackson, also clearly a minor, wandered the fiesta proudly with their prize alcohol for the rest of the evening and were the talk of the school as half the teachers were there too!

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So, the stage is set. Now for the action! The rider and bull burst through the gate where one of two things usually occurs. Either the rider manages to hang on for the allotted time to a simple rope tied around the bull's chest, digging a metal boot spike into the bull's side, enraging the poor beast who bucks and flings him around like a bad case of shaken baby syndrome. OR, and this is what the crowd really loves to hate, the bull succeeds in tossing that piercing pain in his side off his back. Once either outcome is effected, the bull might either stomp on the rider, impale him on a horn or the rider might manage to run off and crawl under the fence or is unceremoniously carried off and stuffed under the fence with some degree of injury or unconsciousness and little or no medical care. Once the rider is dispensed with, the bull continues to chase the macho men around the ring, snot flying everywhere, until the dancing horses enter and manage to lasso it into submission or the bull finds the open gate and runs off into the shoot and truck waiting to transport it to the next night's fiesta.

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The bulls were particularly fierce Saturday night and Eileen and I had watched a few dramatic rides, cold-ish Imperial cans in hand, waiting for the big draw of the night, Chichiri, one of the two most famous bulls in the Fiesta circuit, as he has killed two riders this year. It is difficult to survive a bull horn that enters your mouth and exits the top of your head. They had a brief intermission while they switched bull trucks with some typical colorful Guanacastican dancing and a school band playing whatever beat it could manage on the only two instruments available, drums and xylophones. The field cleared and the macho men all huddled around the gate dancing and slapping each other on the ass while watching up close for the next bull, then signaling its imminent arrival by running away to the other side as fast as possible, so reminiscent of Monty Python - "And brave, brave Sir Robin, he turned his heels and fled..." Out charged a big black bull with no rider! Sometimes this happens, not sure why, perhaps the rider figures out at the last minute that his life is worth more than $20? The bull started chasing after the macho men and had made his way to the opposite side of the ring when suddenly the lights went out in the ring, giving that black beast a distinct advantage! The lights outside of the ring were still on, plunging the bull into the shade of the toothpick stands, giving some real drama to those postcards from the edge! Sadly, they never managed to fire up the spotlights and the bull riding was prematurely ended before we could get our $10 view of Chichiri. We bravely rode the flying swings, screaming like teenage chicas, thinking of every carnival ride horror story ever told and Micah and Eileen dominated the bumper car scene before calling it a night.

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Before I conclude my Monday post, let me just take a minute to update you on that scorpion I evicted in my cleaning frenzy. No, he did not return to sting my nose or bite my toes, as over the hills we go... Oh, never mind. But, it turns out, he does have both a vindictive streak and friends in high places, namely our bathroom, as that same Friday night those ants-formerly-known-as-helpful whose praises I am sure I have sung in past posts were apparently persuaded to take up his charge and our bathroom burst into life with a veritable army of red ants in all shapes and sizes suddenly swarming in the shower, streaming in from the space where the ceiling meets the wall and flying around the house like a really bad segmented body horror show with a cast of thousands! What began as a simple idea for a shower before dinner (after Micah and I swam the beach and I finally figured out that if I swim with a mask and snorkel I don't have a post-swim allergy attack, aha!) became a night time of murder and mayhem and ladders and Andy filling the bathroom with a cloud of BayGon - the nastiest spray available in a convenient aerosol can and that can shrivel a tarantula in seconds, so I've been told. And of course the darned shop vac was clogged with concrete dust from earlier cleaning, ahem, causing Micah to curse with words like the back end of bull.... while cleaning it out so we could attempt to suck them up even tho half managed to be blown back out the other side, something my sweet Miele would never have allowed to happen. I swear I heard a scorpion snickering nearby while I brushed my teeth later, wondering how much residual BayGon was left on my toothbrush...

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K3