The Feeling

What is "The Feeling?" If you've ever gone to a summer camp and done the so-called trust fall where you stiffen your body and allow yourself to fall backwards while hoping like hell that your partner is going to catch you, then you know the feeling. It's that feeling you get when your falling towards the ground and it seems that your collision with the earth is inevitable. That feeling you get right before the other person catches you...that's "The Feeling." People who crave this feeling aren't addicted to gambling, or to being drunk, getting high, having sex, or any of the other cheap thrills your imagination can conjure up. It's the feeling that ties all of these things together that we are addicted to. The feeling is just as addictive as any drug and potentially just as deadly. It was the feeling that kept me going halfway through a 1600 mile bike trip that I didn't train at all for...that need, not even desire, to reach the top of the hills at any cost. The feeling I get in the boxing ring when I land a good combination and the opponent staggers backwards. The feeling of "removing" a keg from a fraternity party and getting it into the freshman quad. The feeling I get when I ski down the double black diamond that's covered in ice which I have no business being on but which I feel the need to conquer. The feeling of bluffing with pocket 5's. The feeling of going to the free-throw line with no time left on the clock and your team down 2. The feeling of standing on top of a table and challenging a bigger opponent to chug a beer in front of thousands of people...and winning. It's that feeling of exhilaration, of adrenaline, that keeps me going. I live for that feeling.

Oktoberfest: Part 2

After experiencing the adrenaline rush of standing on a table and drinking in front of thousands of people the day before, those of you who know me probably assumed the shenanigans would only multiply the following day. Good assumption. We make it into the tent around 9 and the first round is served at about 9:30. On this particular morning we are lucky enough to have, sitting at the end of our table, one of the largest German men I saw at Oktoberfest. He is about 6`6 and nothing short of massive. Anyway, he finishes his first liter (note this is about 3 beers by the American standard and it's much stronger than regular beer) at exactly 9:37 and then precedes to order another one. I am very impressed and make quite a fuss. I urge him to chug the rest of it, and Hans, as we named him, wanting to put on a little show, begins to chug. As he progresses, more and more people turn around to observe and to shout their approval. With about 1/5 of a liter to go, he simply stops drinking, which makes the crowd horribly upset. I don't like it when people are upset, so I step up to the plate; I grab my beer, jump up on the table, toss off my hat, and begin to drink. The place erupts, and once again that feeling of adrenaline that is as vital to my survival as food and water shoots through my body and i down my liter like a champion. Well the place settles down eventually and our waiter comes by and asks me if I'd like another. My response? "Of course. Are you joking?" My beer arrives about 5 minutes after I order it, and at this point a thought pops into my head that was more of a joke than anything else. I turn to Jon and say, "How funny would it be if I did it again?" Well Jon's reply is not at all what I expected. "If you chug that beer the next one is on me." Mike, overhearing this, chimes in that he'll pay for the one after. Now I am in Arts and Sciences, not Wharton, but a little quick math tells me that one liter at 9 euros x 2 x 1.5 for the exchange rate means that if I take this bet I will be making about 30 dollars in 20 seconds, which is a damn good deal. I mull over this for a little while and as I'm about to tell Mike that I will accept, an idea pops into my head. I observe a table of Germans sporting some fine leather leiderhozen standing on their table belting out drinking songs and it hits me: Why drink a liter by yourself when you can challenge German men to drink a liter with you? At this point I approach the table of Germans, wearing, by the way, a felt set of green suspenders, a button down white shirt and a green hat. I should share with you that in my experience, at Oktoberfest, you are judged not by the color of your skin nor by the content of your character but rather by the quality of your leiderhozen. A man with a handsome pair of hand-me-down leather leiderhozen is respected and embraced, whereas we, in our cheap felt leiderhozen, were...well, not respected. As I approach the table, the Germans look at each other and begin to laugh. One pipes up, "maybe next year you find some real leiderhozen," which the rest of them find hilarious. I am not amused. My response is what anyone with a competitive spirit would have said: "Maybe next year you learn how to drink." A hush falls over them. "Who wants to challenge me," I offer, thrusting my liter into the air for added affect. After a few seconds of silence it becomes clear, much to my dismay, that nobody is willing to go up against me. They make up a host of excuses none of which I really care to listen to so I call them all cowards, and walk away in disgust. Fortunately, in order to get back to my seat I must pass by Hans, which reminds me that I need not have looked further than my own table to find a worthy opponent. I have jon translate for me, as Hans speaks little to no English, and he accepts my challenge. We both stand up on the table and the crowd erupts in cheers. We "post" (the German word for cheer) and begin drinking. About 8 seconds in I'm halfway done and he is about 3 quarters done but here he makes a critical mistake. He stops to see how much I have left, and I, sensing the moment of opportunity upon me, down the rest of my liter for all I'm worth. 4 seconds later I slam down the glass, victorious by no more than 1/2 a second. I shout out the first thing that comes to my mind: "USA!" Fortunately the crowd did not hear me over their screams of excitement.

(Hans and I)

Well at this point our waiter comes by, and they are, for those that have never been to Oktoberfest, notoriously stingy. They are known to withhold change from 10 Euros and take advantage of drunk customers. Well my waiter asks me if i want another beer, and at this point, having downed 2 liters within a half-hour of one another, I say "I think I'll wait." But his reply is: "This one is free," leaving me with no choice but to accept...there is no beer like free beer. When a camera crew came by our table my need to be in the spotlight yet again outweighed my better judgement and I hopped up on the table and took down my third liter of the morning. The crowd now loved me. What can I say? Sometimes you just win on style

  

Chugging a liter to the delight of thousands

Oktoberfest: Part 1

After having my shoulder torn out and my face pressed against glass as an angry mob surged forward towards beer induced bliss, i was in desperate need of a beer upon entering our tent. Oktoberfest is one of the best things that has ever happened to this world. To the 20 year old Fraternity boy, there truly is nothing better than 12 hours of drinking beer whilst surrounded by beautiful women in revealing outfits. ahhhh. Where was I again? Right.. So at 10 AM on my second morning of Oktoberfest, the masses were cheering for German soccer teams, Americans were singing the national anthem, the French were retreating...all was as it should be. At this point, a rush of adrenaline overcame me and I made a rash decision which would quickly be rewarded: I grabbed my liter of beer...a thousands ML's of liquid delight...I stood on the table and yelled as loudly as I could, "Are you ready to fucking drink!?" At this point quite a few people (about a hundred) turned around and looked at me. With the crowd at my back and a beer in my hand I knew what had to be done...I began to chug. The original hundred had now begun to cheer and hundreds more follow in suit. As I finished that last sip of beer and began pumping my empty jug into the air whilst being cheered on by thousands I can say with full sincerity...I love being the center of attention. 

Pending this, en route to the bathroom to empty my bladder, I was hailed as a celebrity...gigantic German men were slapping me on the back saying things I couldn't understand but nonetheless exciting me tremendously. I should note that the reason I was wearing a green tep shirt was that the white shirt I had worn the day earlier that came with the outfit had been what I'll call a "victim" of aggressive drinking (note: do not pregame oktoberfest...especially with 7 shots of vodka).

White Out

I thought i knew what it meant to be high. But I was wrong. On running into each other randomly on the streets of Amsterdam, Ashley, John, and I split a gram of some fine amsterdam blueberry mary jane before my walking tour. Some of you like to get high. And I'm not sure if in your smoking history you've ever experienced what came over me that day. We were sitting around the coffee shop and i felt like i wasn't getting high. So i kept smoking...and smoking.... and smoking. Finally we leave the shop and start walking down the street...John was talking to me. And gradually, his voice began to fade out. I was vaguely aware of what was happening to me but mostly just confused. At this point my vision started to give out and I started to see things as wavey, as if I was looking into some sort of distortion mirror. My vision slowed down and my pulse jumped. At this point I must have blacked out for a few seconds because my next memory is of opening my eyes to find that i was sitting on a hydrant in the middle of the street while John and ashley were 30 meters in front of me completely unaware that I was no longer with them. Anyway, I struggled to keep up but I didn't actually feel like I had control of my body...it was almost like i was above my body watching it move, but i couldn't really see that clearly. Very scary but at the same time quite awesome. Anyway so I decide to go on this walking tour alone. The tour begins and there I am, standing in the back giggling to myself knowing absolutely no-one. I follow the group around and somehow I don't get lost, but at a certain point I realize that while I can make out the shape of my tour guides body and some of his facial features, I can't understand the words that are coming ouit of his mouth and I have no Idea what he has said for the last 2 and a half hours. If you asked me to recount one fact about amsterdam that I learned on that tour I don't think I could tell you. Finally it dawns on me. The reason I dont understand what he's saying is because he's speaking in dutch..at some point in the two-and a half hour period where I experienced a complete marijuana induced white out I had mistaken a Dutch group for my own group and followed them around.

Life is good

Amsterdam: The Mushroom Affect

The word psychedelic was first used by the Greeks as a way to describe a drug that makes manifest a hidden but real aspect of the mind. Yesterday morning I woke up, sat straight up, and in so doing slammed my head against the top bunk bed I was sleeping under. In this state of confusion and intense pain, I said out loud to nobody in particular the first thing that popped into my head: "Lets do drugs." An hour and a half later, myself and three others who responded to my rhetorical statement were walking through the door of the shop where we were to buy the mushrooms. The guys I was with had done shrooms countless times so they opted for the Hawaiians, the most potent form of mushroom with "intense visual affects." The woman recommended that I take the Tai mushrooms but my friends feared I would experience no visual alteration, a fear I shared. Against her suggestion and my better judgement (its debatable whether or not I even have any of that left), I purchased the Colombian Mushrooms. After a short bike ride, we cozied up on a park bench and started on our mushroom-sandwiches. At this point, one of the kids i was with whipped out a fat blunt. I looked down at the box of magic mushrooms on which were written three simple rules: 1. Do not mix with alcohol. 2. do not mix with other drugs 3. do not eat more than one box. So naturally I smoked this weed and was high in the sky in no time. After an hour or so of sitting around in this park, I was noticeably altered. For one, when I closed my eyes, strange shapes of magnificent colors were rotating in amazing patterns. Beyond this, I would compare it to a really really good full body high. Everything moved slowly and was a bit distorted, and everything was hilarious. The stupidest things would send us into fits of laughter which were actually so intense that I was crying at times. Anyway, at this point we made our way to the Van Gogh Museum.

The "reducing valve" concept, first described in Aldous Huxley's book ""The Doors of Perception," explains that psychedelic drugs reduce the brain's filtering ability, and thus one will experience mind expanding, or consciousness expanding,, as the drug "expands" the realm of experience available to conscious awareness. I have seen Van Gogh's before...I painted as a child and a teenager, and even did a replica of "Starry Night" for my 10th grade advanced drawing and painting class. But my experience in the Van Gogh Museum was unlike any other experience I've had with art. One of the most striking things about Van Gogh that distinguishes him from most of the other post-impressionist painters is the flow that his paintings have...they make you feel like you can actually be swept up into them, especially if your mind is open to the realm of possibility beyond the normal physical limitations imposed by our logic oriented brains (aka your on drugs). In this heightened state I actually traveled into his works...I walked through the corn fields and felt the breeze on my face...I smelled the flowers and felt the rain on my back. It was, I kid you not, one of the most powerful experiences of my life, which is actually a sentiment that 1/3 first-time mushroom users share after their first trip.

We left the museum and blazed yet again to kill time after eating the second half of the box, in my case what was left of 35 g of "colorful and slightly visual" mushrooms. In about an hour a new feeling much more intense then the previous one overcame me. At this particular moment in time, we were on our bikes, a terrible decision on my part. In the course of 5 minutes (or maybe it was ten? or Twenty? I had no concept of time or, as usual, direction) I hit two different parked bikes and briefly believed a trolley bus was chasing me. I was also under the illusion for quite some time that the black kid in the red shirt who was biking in front of us for a while was out to get me...even though I couldn't explain why. His body expanded and contracted in front of my eyes, which was awesome/alarming/confusing. While some people claim this "paranoia phenomenon"' that's associated with mushrooms is the reason nobody should do them, I was actually quite entertained at the time. How often does one have the opportunity to see a minority expand and then contract or be chased by a trolley car? Very amusing. At last we reached our destination after countless near death collisions with moving vehicles and pedestrians, most of which I can't actually remember and was told about afterwards. Our destination was the first and only bar I would go to that night...It's called the grasshopper. It is also a coffee shop...and yeah, you guessed it, I blazed again. At this point I was messed up...and to make matters worse the guys had ordered me two pints. Why I drank those I couldn't tell you but after breaking 2 of the 3 rules on the box of the mushrooms, one thing was clear...I was fucked up. I somehow stumbled up the stairs to the bathroom to piss. On the way out some guy and girl were fighting about a coin the guy had thrown on the floor and the bathroom attendant/tax collector was joining in on the side of the girl. As I attempted to leave this battleground, this semi-attractive-until-she-talked southern woman somewhere between 25 and 30 touched my shoulder and said: "My are you cute." This shocked me, and I was frozen, unable to move or respond. Like in second grade when a girl approaches you in class and you don't know what to say...that kind of frozen. The only thing that was going through my head was: "No fucking way this is happening to me right now," as if some terrible tragedy had befell me. She kept talking to me although I don't remember what I said or if I even responded at all, but at a certain point I told her verbatim: "I cannot deal with this...with you, right now. Please let me fall down the stairs alone." She then asked the natural question: "Are you Okay?" I'm about to say yes when it occurs to me that in fact I am not. "No. I am not okay." She says: "Drugs?" I say: "Lady, You have no idea." At this point my vision gets shaky, similar to the feeling one gets while looking into a distortion mirror, which fortunately subsides after a few seconds. She asks me where we're sitting and I, for some reason that I still cannot tell you, decide to tell her exactly where we are sitting. She says she'll meet us down there in a few minutes. At this point, I book it down the stairs somehow managing not to fall. While our table was right at the base of the stairs, it took me 5 minutes to find the guys. I reach our table out of breathe and announce that we have to leave. The guys ask me if I got in trouble at which point I just start laughing. It took us 10 minutes to stop laughing before we were calm enough to pay for the check at which point we got the hell out of there before Mrs. trailer trash couldmake it down there. We decide it would be a good idea to change for the night so we go back to the hotel but at this point the alcohol has hit me and I'm flying. I am no longer capable of riding a bike and so I walk my bike in a zig-zag path down to our hotel, again taking out pedestrians and parked objects along the way. When I get to my room I lie on my bed for a minute because the world is spinning. Every time i close my eyes I see these little grateful dead bears prancing around along with other multi-colored shapes and, as you probably guessed, I found this hilarious. At this point I had managed to remove my shorts from the lying down position but I had not yet put on my jeans. So here I am in a hostel room with 9 other people who are getting ready to go out and I'm lying on my bed eyes closed laughing to myself....oh, wearing only boxers and my "real men wear pink" T-shirt. Eventually I passed out after remembering to set my alarm (Somehow), but when I woke up from what was supposed to be a 2 hour nap it was 9 am the next morning. I promptly got high and sat down to write this...

The Tijuana you don't read about

As we walk up the street with Tony, our new-found-friend, the distractions are many:

“Senor, you want a taxi?”
“Amigos, come with me. I have great drink specials for you.”
“Come, you want to buy gifts? I will show you. Special price.”

I pass by an attractive girl who looks to be in her mid twenties. She is wearing a short skirt and high heels, and she smiles at me. Naturally I smile back. Tony, observing this, urges me along. “She’s a hooker,” he says matter-of-factly. “300 of them line this street every night.” Downtown Tijuana is what you’d expect from a border city in a third world country; crowded sidewalks and busy streets, flashy signs, tourist shops and food carts on every corner. But Tijuana has something that many border cities don’t: a warning from the State Department about the safety of U.S. Citizens. The State Department issued an alert in May warning travelers that the "equivalent to military small-unit combat" is taking place across the southern U.S. border in Mexico and that Americans are being kidnapped and murdered there. “Recent Mexican army and police force conflicts with heavily-armed narcotics cartels have escalated to levels equivalent to military small-unit combat and have included use of machine guns and fragmentation grenades," the report said.

We continue to walk. I keep my eyes fixed straight ahead of me as we pass by a couple of Tijuana policemen, notorious for their corruption. A few blocks later we pass a man being arrested on his car as the police search him from head to toe for drugs. Cars drive around him without slowing and nobody seems that surprised or concerned.

Tony is the newest edition to the Tijuana exploration party that began as Eric and myself. Tony is a 60 year-old American who has lectured at a number of universities and now spends his time teaching English in Tijuana. By charging 20 pesos a kid per hour, he can make about 20 bucks an hour teaching ten kids. Coincidently, the 20 dollars an hour he makes is 14 dollars and 70 cents above the minimum daily wage in Mexico.

We met Tony at the first bar we stopped at, happy to have a run into another American. As we drank beer and listened to hits from the 90’s, a little girl with long brown hair and deep brown eyes dangled bracelets in front of us. I asked her in Spanish how old she was. “Ocho,” she replied shyly. My thoughts drifted to my own sister, now at a summer camp that costs about 7,000 dollars a summer to attend, a number that is a few dollars short of the GDP per capita in Mexico as of 2007. While I know as well as anyone that she will see very little if any of the money I give her, I’m compelled by my conscience to give her something.

Sometime after lunch, Eric, Tony, and myself decide to take a trip to Rossarito, a beach town about forty-five minutes south of Tijuana. We take the “5-and-10” bus, which is really just a school bus that has been painted green. After an hour, we get out for our transfer and to pick up some tequila and Cubans. We find the Mexico we’re in quite different from the Mexico we left; it’s the Mexico that few tourists ever make it to. Gone are the Taxi drivers shouting their rates and the commissioned waiters tempting us with their two for one drink specials. Gone are the little kids begging for donations. We are now among the every day people. After catching the connecting bus, we settle down on the beach and chase Cuban cigars with Jimador out of the bottle. The sun begins to set over the beach, engulfing children playing soccer in a glowing orange hue. Sounds of laughter are complemented by crashing waves and blaring radios churning out Spanish hits and the occasional American song. So this is Mexico.

As the tequila runs through me, I have to pee. Not a surprise. What is a surprise is the man standing outside the bathroom who wishes to charge me 5 pesos to pee, but since he is one of the few Mexicans I’ve run into that is bigger than me, I don’t object. On the way back to where we were sitting I happened upon a family. One member of this family, noticing that I was a tourist on a beach almost completely populated by locals, asked me with a grin, “porque estan aqui?” I explained that we had biked from Portland to Mexico and that we were now in Mexico to celebrate. He was in disbelief, and he brought me over to the family to explain my story. His brother-and-law, Cesar, was equally as surprised, and he invited me to bring over the other two guys I was with over and have some beers with him and his family. I’m not one to turn down free beer, so I immediately bring over the other two and we get to drinking and talking, We drink coronas and mess around until a cop drives up and tells us to leave the beach (it’s 8 O’ clock and the beach closes at sunset). I hide my beer out of instinct as he approaches. Seeing this, Cesar laughs. “My father worked for the government…no te preocupas amigo.” Cesar then asks us where we’ll be staying that night, and on our mention of the word hotel he immediately cuts us off. “No,” he says. “Tonight you come with me and stay with me and my family.” Eric and I look at each other and it’s clear that we’re both making the same assessment in our heads. The State Department has issued a warning about the kidnapping of U.S. Nationals and this man is definitely stronger than us and potentially armed. There is really no way for us to know if his intentions are good. However, I have a firm believe in the goodness of mankind and more importantly, in my own ability to judge character, so being cocky and more than a little tipsy, I give the nod of agreement, a nod which Eric returns.

When in Rome right? Eric, myself and the rest of Cesar’s family pile into his SUV and speed off towards his home in Tijuana. When it occurred to him to do so, Cesar busted out some cervezas (Mexican beer) and sent them around the back seat. By the time we got to the gas station we were all feeling good. When his family got out of the car to stretch, Cesar got serious. Addressing the three of us, he said, “I’m the man of my house so I have to tell you this…I’m a poor man but I will welcome you into my house because I want you to see what Tijuana is like and not what you see on the news…but I am trusting you. I have a wife and a daughter and my family is the most important thing to me.” Tony reassures him in Spanish that our hearts are pure at which point Cesar apologizes and admits that he has never before taken anyone into his home that he didn’t know, friends of friends or otherwise. He lightens the mood as quickly as he had become serious, and says that tonight we will eat “a real Mexican meal.” After filling up the tank we head towards home. On arriving, Cesar again tells us that he is a poor man, but that, “mi casa es su casa. My home is your home.” His tone was so sincere that none of us had any doubt that he meant it with all of his heart.

The house, as promised, is not that big. There is a kitchen of modest size, a fairly large living room, three bedrooms and two bathrooms for Cesar, his wife, and their 3 children. The house was built on a hill and Cesar took us outside where we could see the lights of San Diego shimmering in the distance. For Cesar, these lights meant opportunity, the chance to give his children the life he never had as a kid. As we stare at the lights, Cesar says to nobody in particular, “One day I want to move to America with my family. It’s like I tell my kids…nothing is impossible unless you say it’s impossible.” Cesar was given the house by his parents and had lived there his entire life. He points at the houses directly below his on the hill: “That one is my brother’s.” Pointing to the one next to it, he says, “That one is my aunt’s.” I stood there inspired by the familial bonds so crucial to Cesar as evidenced by the glow in his eyes as he related to us his proximity to the houses of those he loves. Cesar then whisked us inside. “Come,” he said. “I want to show you something.” Every time we passed by the fridge we stopped to pick up beers…I felt like a Nascar driver taking a pit stop, but I wasn’t bothered by this, as drinking beer is one of my favorite pastimes.

Upon entering the house, Cesar brought us over to a picture of his son, Cesar jr., in a graduation gown and cap hanging on the wall in an ’08 frame, which was puzzling to me as Cesar Jr. looked no older than 10. “You see?” he said to us. “This is my son’s pre-school graduation.” Cesar paid 3500 dollars that year to send his kid to the best private school he could afford. It occurred to me that Cesar was likely as proud that his son graduated as he was that he could afford to send his son to such a school. “My father never did nothing for me,” he said, “that’s why I want to do better for my kids. My whole life I do for them.” We would later learn just how true that was. 5 days a week, Cesar wakes up at 3 AM to drive across the border to San Diego where he works as a welder. While I thought I understood what it means to put your family first, Cesar taught me what sacrifice for family really means, at times getting 3 hours of sleep in order to spend time with his kids after work. At 18$/hour, he makes in an hour what the average Mexican worker makes in a day. Cesar excuses himself to help with the dinner preparations. As Tony, Eric and I sit on the couch in his living room, Tony turns to us and says in admiration: “Do you realize this is all for us?”

As I look around, it is clear that there are now more people here than when we started. The whole family has come to help entertain the guests and prepare the food. When dinner is ready we after called outside (after stopping by the fridge for cervezas, naturally). Awaiting us is a feast consisting of beef, home-made salsa, warmed tortillas, and guacamole made from 3 freshly-picked avocados. Nobody will touch the food until we have done so first. The only thing that tasted better than the first tortilla was the 2nd 3d and 4th one. As we ate, they played Spanish music from the car’s speakers. We danced, ate, and drank well into the morning. The happiness and love in this humble family gathering truly was palpable. When the yawning began around 2 AM, Cesar informed us that we’d be staying in his daugher’s room. All three of his children, aged 6, 13, and 16 shared one mattress in their parent’s bedroom in order that we would sleep comfortably.

The next morning, we were anxious to leave as our flights to the East Coast departed the next day, but Cesar insisted that we stay for breakfast, which was as delicious as dinner was. Before leaving, Cesar pulled us aside and told us that we were a part of his family, and that we would always have a home with him and with his family. In what some call the slums of Tijuana, I found more love than I could have ever imagined. I learned what the term hospitality truly means; I learned what it means to open up your heart and open up your home. Cesar is still making the commute across the border every morning, which despite 24 lanes of traffic takes between 20 minutes and 2 and a half hours. I hope you visit Tijuana one day if you ever have the chance, and if you do, try to make it past the first mile of tourist traps into the real Mexico. Ironically, as of 2006, the murder rate in Washington D.C., the location of the very state department that issued the warning against Tijuana, was higher than Tijuana’s…

Winning on Style

(this is an actual picture of the girl my friend took home...turns out her name was Colo, not "Sally" as she claimed. She was born in Ohio and then transferred to the Bronx Zoo)

The inspiration for this blog came from a particularly intense binge with Kiley on my one-day return to the University of Pennsylvania, my home sweet home. The theme of the night was "Sometimes, you just win on style." The concept is not a difficult one to grasp; sometimes, when it's all going well, when you have that bounce in your step and that glimmer in your eye, you tend to win on style without actually deserving any of the good things that happen to you...the free drinks you are showered with, the bouncers that waltz you right in, the girls that drape themselves on you, ect.  As one of my friends found out the next morning, however, sometimes you can also lose horribly. He found this out upon waking up next to an animal that had actually escaped from the Bronx Zoo hours before she found her way to the bar. Fortunately he had a tranquilizer gun handy and upon realizing his blunder, was able to sedate her and alert the proper authorities before she could pounce on him again. Colo has since been returned to the Bronx Zoo.