Wherefore Art Thou…

By Golden Balls

Velcro Lips’ Romeo departed these shores on the day of the run, leaving a tired and emotional Velcro to set the run on her own. Louring clouds and light but persistent rain, coupled with an incomplete recce, presented the hare with an unappetising smorgasbord of calamity covered with a big dollop of fiasco sauce. So out went the appeal for a co-hare, and, 15 minutes later, a bright and breezy Ms Lips was announcing that the run would go ahead. But who was the new Romeo?

Golden Jelly and Catch of the Day made the run smartly, arriving in good time in their car despite being women, followed by Gunpowder Plod, Eunuch, One Eyed Jack and Golden Balls in a taxi from Central. Clouds still loured and light rain still fell, only now it was dark as well. “I hope I see you again!” was the somewhat disconcerting farewell bid from Velcro as the intrepid six set off into the gloom.

I won’t describe the trail, except to say that it was excellent, 95 percent off-road on splendid trails and with enough climbing to keep you honest (high point 399 metres). Catch of the Day was the initial front-runner closely followed by Eunuch. Without a lot of checks the pack fractured very quickly, with One Eyed Jack sandwiched between the FRBs and the back-markers Golden Balls and Golden Jelly. Plod had dropped off the radar. Eunuch was back in 1:10, One Eyed Jack 1:29. It would be 1:45 before all the runners were bac

After crossing much splendid terrain the run finished on a greasy downhill section through trees to the road, and – voila! There was Velcro Lips offering a lift to the very muddy yet strangely gilded back-markers. “Are we still friends?” she enquired earnestly. For she was sore afraid she had pissed off the pack with an awful run.

On the contrary. A great run, and one that is to be repeated for Shek Kong Hash on Sunday, May 4. If you missed it on the Northern, make sure you catch it on the lesser hash.

And Romeo was – who would have thought? – Plod.

Some sort of gay verse virus seems to be spreading. Dram succumbed first with his A Momentous Day, now it’s Plod. This is what he subjected the stoic pack to after the run.

 

Bridgebuster!

With the Easter holidays reducing the pack somewhat, it was good to see a few unfamiliar faces turn up to Golden Jelly’s farm. Camel was the unexpected SP, while Seamus O’Pressed fronted up from England. There was even a visitor in the form of Fuk Rogers from Pittsburgh. Once numbers hit double figures the pack set off while Fartypants sacrificed his own run to drive out and locate Velcro Lips, hopelessly lost in the lawless NT dogroads, neck extending rabidly from her skylight.

As the pack set off uphill through the dragon fruit, Golden Balls employed his craft to short-cut the first hill and arrived at the check on the road just as Eunuch descended to it from the hill. Trail then went up a burnt hillside, contouring through the charcoal shiggy on steep rubbly ground. Coming down off the hill to a dry flash-flood creek, Eunuch pulled away, not to be seen again. The pack closed up in the obstacle course of the stream bed, negotiating rocks and climbing under or over branches: Stingray, GB, Walky Talky, Catch Of The Day, Seamus O’Pressed. Emerging to a track, GB found the way. One Eyed Jack materialised from nowhere to follow GB while Gunpowder Plod had fallen off the radar. As the pack approached an ancient wooden bridge, used since time immemorable by generations of toiling villagers and providing nurturing social links between brethren either side of the river, they witnessed the highly memorable sight of GB crashing through the wooden beam supporting his stupendous bulk and pitching headlong into the raging torrent below…

Well not quite. At this point, weaving through winding village paths and rural trails, the pack split up, with One Eyed Jack, Walky Talky and Catch of the Day pulling ahead and GB, Seamus O’Pressed and Fuk Rogers forming a solid trio in the rear. Stingray had been abandoned on a cunning trail dead-end. Markings led out to Lok Ma Chau Road, past the turning for the lookout and into the “forbidden zone”, opened up last summer and famously hashed first by the Northern on opening day.

Approaching a dog pack outside a house at the end of a road, we saw a friendly local keeping his dogs at bay as we passed by and went up steps to a graveyard. Trail led out of the graveyard and up through trees and then to scrubby hillside. Fuk Rogers, who had been anxious that there was some shiggy (‘It’s not a hash unless you come back blood and mud splattered”) gave a passable imitation of a bowling ball as she rolled down a steep descent. Again. As we ascended the ridge, Shenzhen spread out behind us like some Earthbound galactic star-formation zone, Stingray ambled past, muttering estuarinely about toilet paper leading nowhere. Then on the ridge, a miracle! Velcro Lips appeared in front of us like a vengeful Brienne of Tarth in fealty to the hare, who was bent on us doing her checkback. “Sod that for a game of soldiers,” said Seamus O’Pressed as the four hashers went down a cutting into waist high scrub. Down, down, winding around and suddenly there was the back gate into the farm and there was the pig sty and there was the beer, guarded by Camel, Fartypants and Luk Sup Gow.

Hashers were appearing from all sorts of wrong directions, but nobody died. Ale was quaffed, stories swapped, and some obscure ritual engaged in, but it didn’t matter. A fine trail by Golden Jelly and Camel.

 

All China Nash Hash / June 13-15, 2014

Xiamen – a pleasant place. This is an eminently do-able event from Hong Kong

Link to event website

Logistics: high-speed train from Shenzhen North to Xiamen, about 3 hours 45 minutes. Return the same way. Stay at Bailuzhou Hotel on the lake, which is the hash registration venue, half an hour by taxi from the train station

Cost estimate:

Early Bird registration (until April 30) RMB600 = $750; May 1 onwards RMB800

Train return ticket US$62 = $485

Hotel @ RMB310-458 (Beijing Hash package) = $390-570/night = $780-1140 / weekend

Total $2015-2375 (based on early bird registration), plus visa cost.

The organisers are having problems with Internet and you are advised to contact Vince Lee personally at saexp@hotmail.com

Jakarta Hash Challenge

Team event involving 42km of hashing outside Jakarta. Local Turd, who ran with us a couple of weeks ago, put us on to this. He’s in a team with Billy Jizz. If interested, best go through him: mike_1959@hotmail.com

Link to event website

A Momentous Day

By Dram

 

The run at Tai Mo Shan marked the first of what is intended to be regular (around every two months) Saturday runs by N2TH3 ( the normal weekly N2TH3 runs will continue to be held every Wednesday evening).

Golden Balls and Golden Jelly were hares for this first run which was well attended by a goodly number of hashers, including GB’s mate Nick, supported by 5 dogs. The start was at a sitting out area near the Tai Mo Shan upper carpark. The weather was glorious and after a long-winded and somewhat confusing briefing by GB (recordings are available for those with sleep difficulties) the pack set off up the steep paved road for a kilometre or so before the trail branched off on to well marked paths along the grassed hillside. This gave a good opportunity for the more able bodied among us (not me) to break into a run. Perfect hashing territory but this wasn’t to last as after a couple of kilometres the trail went into some of the densest bush (up to about two metres in height and no defined paths) I’ve encountered in all my days of hashing. Trail was marked by toilet paper and after stumbling a few times I found chalk markings on the ground/rocks. Goodness knows why the latter markings, as the bush was so thick it was almost impossible to see the ground let alone any chalk markings. This section of the run (400 metres ?) took considerable effort to get through but we finally broke through on to open hillside and the wimp/rambo split. I took the former but both trails appeared relatively easy to follow and after some splendid trail running joined together again for the on home back down the paved service road.

Golden Jelly had arranged an excellent selection of cold beers and softies as well snacks. After milling about chatting for an hour during which the GM deigned to turn up with is family it was decided to hold the circle and not wait any longer for the laggard runners, Velcro and Indy, who waltzed in almost immediately, the latter bleeding from leg wounds. The pack broke up about 6pm with many heading off for an on on in Kam Tin.

An excellent day and sincerest thanks to the hares Golden Balls and Golden jelly for their great efforts.

The second Saturday run will be hared by Stingray at an as yet undetermined date in about two months.

A Furious Devout Drench

By Go West

The weather obviously had an adverse effect on the not-so-hardy hashers that missed the run, keeping them away to carry on their alternative perverse activities in the privacy of their own homes.

By contrast, the real tough nuts assembled under the pagoda in Sheung Tsuen Park, Shek Kong, for what was to be a run of great initiative and even greater foreboding through the scrap yards of Sek Kong.

Our illustrious hare, Dram, put in a tremendous effort to set a run under such drenched, nay, biblical conditions, but unfortunately his efforts were wasted as the markings had been washed away. So the briefing outlined the intended route which the five runners, Eunuch, Golden Balls, Screwless, Mango and Go West were supposed to attempt to emulate. Needless to say, Golden Balls and Screwless managed to find the correct route through villages, across fields and up by Beck’s yard through the yards (deleted: a short cut, and were unfairly rewarded by being first back to quaff beer – ed). The remainder, on the other hand, dismissed the savvy pair’s suggestions and went hopelessly wrong (deleted: were victorious in running a true rambos run and really earned their beers without fear of retribution – ed.)

The circle followed which included a renaming of Screwless by the stand-in RA, Golden Balls. Due to certain email exchanges over recent days, and with hat tipped to G-Spot, he was renamed “Roger the Lodger”. Good luck, is all I can say.

The conversation then turned to Britain bashing by the hare, who, uncharacteristically, refused to stop sitting on that large fence called Hadrian’s Wall when being pushed for which way he would vote on Independence for the Scotch. Instead, he chose to blather on about pollution and the north/south divide in England. He even got into a heated debate with his fellow northerner and late-comer, One Eyed Jack. We really needed the GM there to calm this potentially explosive situation.

Toodle pip.