Many of the usual hashers were out of town with the Lanna Hash drawing several FRBs, and the pollution putting off hashers like Mr. Poo. Nonetheless the ranks were swelled by some visitors duly given the Horny Monkey welcome. We assembled, and the bus arrived, we were ready to set off.. Only one thing missing – the hares!!! Square Rooter and I did some jogging around sniffing for the On-Out, and fortunately found it. Still no hares! I found some powder in the car and Horny Monkey stepped in to give a hare brief as we guessed what might be install for us – actually the idea of setting off and having to guess what checks might mean was appealing, but sure enough a few minutes late the hares showed up and gave us a second hare brief that repeated the initial one – minus the V checks.
I jogged off feeling good – my legs were fully recovered from the mini-marathon, I was sober (mostly), and having hared with Superbitch a few times, I thought I might be able to figure her out… Lets see how this goes! At the first check I picked wrong first, but got back to the powder as most of the pack set off slowly – was I going to have to do all the checking today? I hit a few checks right and then we hit a tough circle in the bottom of a creek bed. Trying to outsmart the hares I headed backwards and the pack regrouped until Square Rooter led us onwards.
Fortunately the next check was back to the left and I hit the trail a short distance ahead of Turkish Delight. TD wasn’t happy and tried to chase me down, shouting and grumbling like a Dutchman! I wasn’t going to let that happen and opened up the legs so I didn’t have to hear him moan. At the next cross check I went straight and TD had to take one of the false trails. I was feeling good, but the calls were getting fainter behind me. At the next circle I wasn’t sure where to look, but lucked out on trail and from then on I couldn’t put a foot wrong – I hit every check right and I called On-On even though I knew nobody could hear behind me… There were some great checks in there, but for whatever reason I outguessed the hares.
The ante-penultimate circle check came and went – it’s significance being only to let me say ante-penultimate! The penultimate check took us back on ourselves as we turned back towards the A – the paper was almost visible from the trail, so I wasn’t fooled. The final check I got wrong, but after a lonely hash I had time to get back on trail and back to the ice cold beers before Chuck Wao came running up 10 minutes later. It doesn’t happen often, but today was almost the perfect hash (for me).
Circle time, and well, it was right on formula… We had several visitors who were willing victims for the HM punishment machine. Most of the awards were given out, but I struggle to remember the reasons behind them – apart from Pamela’s crash as the blood is still pouring from his leg. The CSH3 is a very welcoming hash that pays a lot of attention to its visitors and the Willys / Arms were plentiful. Almost as plentiful was the number of more regular hashers who weren’t brought into the circle and were left as casual observers (Stumbling Dyke, Big Top, Me, Sloppy Rod, Geisha Gash, Barbindoll, Blow Dry, Just Cumming…). Just saying, but on a serious note the hash needs to distinguish between virgins who are likely to come back, and one off visitors. Protracted circles that are centered around people we will never see again simply exclude the very members who come each week.