So the boy went out to set his first haring, good on you my son! He could have chosen anyone to be co-hare, and he chose Horny Monkey… wtf? At first glance it seems like a strange decision – seriously? out of all the hashers you picked Horny? On reflection, it’s genius… If it is a crap run, he can easily blame Horny for not letting him do a good one…. If it’s a good one, he can say he set a good run even with Horny holding him back!
They went out to scout on Tuesday, and then laid trail today. On Tuesday there was a performance where they suggested it was going to be “Steep”. I nominate Game Set and Snatch for an oscar, and within moments I doubted we would be going up the hill. Suspecting the lower trails, it was a challenge to get some more info from Noyb. He’s normally coy and cagy, but he was clearly excited, and started to open up! With a few probing questions I knew we would be going over the dam by the Kalae Rest restaurant, and over the wall by the gate that would be closed by the time we got there. He had even told me there was only one more check after we got to the junction where the road turns to the left and the trail goes straight on (in turned out that was where the false trail that ultimately thwarted me was).
An elaborate hare brief covered most of the checks that would be ahead of us. The only one they didn’t mention was the H3 hold check – where we are supposed to wait for 3 people to get there? As it wasn’t mentioned in the hare brief, and I was the first one there, I just kicked it out and carried on (yes I confess!).
We started with a deathly scramble down the waterfall, and hit the road. Chuckie behind me predicting what was going on – it’s his old hunting ground too. The first false trail was predictable, and then we headed straight towards the lake – I knew there was a chuckie check near the lake so he could through the sticks into it. I got a couple of checks wrong early on, but when Chuckie went up the hill to another predictable false trail, I led the way to the check on the dam. I carried on, and then when it was called went the long (but quicker) way around along the road. Intercepting trail again, I led the way up some steps, confusing the short cutters that followed Turkish Delight (welcome to Sundays TD).
From there it was straight to the gate, over the wall and back along the trail. Why oh why did he put the false trail at the end??? Why would he do that to me?
Nice job.