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Wo! A Hum-Dinger!
A City Trail. Starting from the Zoo! You cannot get more central. And like a sucker, I volunteered to collect the cash.
I recommend everybody try their hand at collecting the cash if Hash Cash is not around. You will soon realise the Saigon Hash is NOT a money-making operation. We only charge the bare minimum to pay for beer at the Closing Circle and Beer Stop. Everything else is entirely optional. I'm impressed to report Just Michael made a return appearance after his first Hash last week – could we be converting him to the cause of Hashing? Fuckin Shane also made a return annual appearance after 1 year in Aussie.
All appearances are of course welcome and all new Hashers are always welcome. But on with the trail… This one was a live Hare operation. ie the Hare(s) were not dead. They had opted to lay the Trail "live" – 10 minutes ahead of the pack. So the Hares (Alowetty and Non-Stop Cock), headed off, over the bridge beside the Zoo.
5 minutes later (we cheated), the runners were off. We were in hot pursuit, and the Hares were …gone. The problem with a live Hare is if their marking is crap the Trail is screwed. Such was the sage advice from Cock-A-Leeky. And of course, he was correct …
My experience of live Hare trails is minimal but after this run I'm converted!
It was great fun! We lost the trail, and the marking really was …CRAP! What else can you ask for on a Hash? A bit of chaos. A bit of exercise. A bit of creig. A few insults thrown at the Hares and life in general. For example, a puff of white flour looks like white paint. A puff of white flour looks like white polystyrene take away packaging from a distance.. A puff of white flour looks like somebody's garbage. (There was a lot of garbage around). And no puffs of white flour looks like we lost the Trail.
Well, that was because we had lost the Trail.
Then. Somewhere along Dien Bien Phu Highway, someone found a puff of white flour. It was not much. It was small. Maybe it was not flour? We kicked it. It spread out. It was flour-ish. Was it from the Hares? Was it the Trail? VERY unclear. But as we had lost the Trail, it gave us hope.
You hear about Hashes falling apart………
But the Saigon Hash is made of strong stuff! Our runners held together. This was team-building stuff. You know what hamsters do in a cage? Peddling faster and faster on a never-ending wheel? Well, the local residents obviously thought that is what your runners were. We were trapped in a loop. We ran it one way. Maybe we got it wrong? Maybe we should go in the opposite direction. So we did. The residents were getting to know us well.
The marking along those straight Hems with no possible turn-offs was exemplary! We did not need that though.
What we needed was the marking at the turnings! OMG!—which, of course, we did not get.
The trail went cold at every turn. Damn Hares! They did not need a 10-minute lead. 5 minutes was more than enough to leave us muddling in bewilderment. If those Front Running Bastards (FRB's) has pressed on, they would have been lost also. I guess they had worked it out – they were as screwed as the young men at the back of the pack. So the survival instinct kicked in. Hang in together, boys! Of course, there were no girls running with the pack this day. Only Alowetty holding the flag of feminism, Haring, from the front. You gotta be careful of feminists. Extremists. But the boys can handle themselves. I mean the 60yr old boys and the 80yr old boys. Experience is what you get on the Hash.
We worked out that the trail was VERY badly marked.
Furthermore, we worked out the only way we were going to handle this one was to check EVERY goddamn turning. The problem with 2 Hares running Live together is they can mark two different turnings at the same time. And lead you down one of those Hems that get smaller and smaller and are a dead-end. And back you go. Hamster stuff. 2 Hares are indeed dangerous.
The FRB's surged ahead. Normal. Maybe they found the route. Generally they did not. They had started to work it out. They needed the wisdom of the young men at the back. As they came running back from whence they had ventured, the young men had already checked out the turnings to the right, maybe not to the left. So the FRB's headed to the left. Between us, we eliminated the false trails.
I'm guessing Alo Wetty,was behind those false trails. Feminism. False hope. Nirvana is around the corner. But not quite yet. Sounds familiar. Wisdom of age.
But the boys pressed on. Searching. Looking. And, …..amazingly we would find another puff of flour. Somewhere, along some Hem. I had no idea where the hell we were of course. I was just in this to survive, also. To follow the sweat as it dripped off my nose and the shoes of the guy in front. Maybe I saw some flour. Sometimes. The locals were – as usual, totally bemused to see these foreigners. Sweaty (obviously). Muscular (maybe). Hairy (definitely). Confused (absolutely). Running down their Hems. What were those guys escaping from?
But the locals were friendly. High Fiving. Asking us to play football. Running beside us for at least half a Hem. The Hash had arrived in their Hem – to return again? I think we left a favourable impression. But the kilometres had clicked by. We were now in familiar territory of Phan Xich Long. How we had got there I have no idea. We were now 7.5km into the run and still no BEER STOP!! Sacrilege. The trail was sort of still there. We were still picking out puffs of flour from amongst the garbage. For the first time we took matters into our own hands and declared our own Beer Stop after 7.5km. And very welcome it was. Saigon Special – in the bottles. The real stuff. Paid for by Cock-A-Leeky. Looking smug. "I told you so" written all across his face.
Time for a breather. Recharge our batteries and decide if we simply return to point A or press-on in the spirit of the Hash. Which, of course is what we did. Suckers. To the real Beer Stop only 700 m from where we had decided to reconsider our options. But remember, guys! Women are never happy. It's in the chromosomes. Somewhere.
We SPRINTED to the proper Beer Stop. To find Alowetty and Non Stop Cock. No remorse for their Trail laying but with an invoice for the Hash Cash. One Beer. One Bollocking. And said invoice later the Hares charged-off in a completely illogical direction. Suckers to the core. We decided to follow. FRB's (of course) got carried away.
I'm pleased to report the young men at the back held it together and kept the pack coherent even though we were stretched out over a 1km. An achievement as we headed into the gloom of dusk along the Canal beside Hoang Sa, back toward the Zoo and Point A. 10km + for the run. 11km-12km for the FRB's. No idea about the distance of the walk. But the walkers were back at Point A, 45minutes before the runners and they had drunk a lot of beer at the Beer Stop. S, 5km? Overall, another great success for the Saigon Hash and a great male-bonding afternoon for the runners.
TBH – it was good fun and the Hares deserve thanks for putting out and being prepared to lay a very interesting trail through the Hems of District 1/ Phu Nhuan/ District 3/ Binh Thanh.
On, On!
3 Shitty Tits,
GM, Stand-In Hash Cash & last but not least, Stand-In Scribe.