A virgin hare – which means weeks of panicking in the desperate hope that everything works perfectly! Slippery was a nervous wreck for an hour or so before the run as he busily counted people as they arrived in the desperate hope they reached the magic #40 – which would trigger the reduced entrance fee to Ratchapreuk. He shouldn’t have worried, over 50 hashers showed up. Knowing we would be going inside Royal Flora, meant we knew it would be a flat run, no mountains and probably not the longest run/walk. The hare brief consisted of promises that we could short cut, along with some confusing new checks.
Then we were pointed across the car park in the direction of the park entrance. Cunningly the hares had extended the run by using the car park half a km from the entrance! Once inside the first circle was pivotal to know which way around the park we’d go – I got it right, left it was. Immediately I did a little loop around a garden just to get back to where the short cutters could see me.
At the next check there was a large lake, which surely we’d go around? Nope. After a few more loops around in circles we had Belly Dancer leading Big Top and others straight lining their way to keep up. The trail took us up some stairs, but at the bottom there were arrows pointing in all directions. What the hell, I’ll play the game and run up the stairs only to run around a big circular balcony while those below watched and laughed. Again Belly was at the front, and his competitive spirit pushed him to run through a check back to find inevitable trail further along, calling us to confusion as we doubled back on the trail in the wrong direction.
When Turkish Delight and I finally figured it out we found Skid Mark and Humperdick already ahead along with Angry Inch. How they managed that I have no idea! We doubled back past the temple, and again were completely confused searching for trail which had perhaps been washed away. All of a sudden it was Just Cumming as the FRB – wtf? How did he get there? Humperdick stood grumbling about the dutch windmill missing an arm as we ran through the international gardens. Finally heading back towards the entrance with Skid Mark and Turkish Delight, and with Unplugged, Plan and Big Top short cutting their way towards us.
From the looks of facebook this morning, while we were busy running, most of the ladies just went for a photo shoot in the park, posing in front of different flowers etc. Either way it was a very different hash. When hares try to do something different, it always takes some extra efforts, and is also prone to turning into a fuck up! This time, they’d thought it out, and it worked – lots of smiling faces for the circle. OnOn.