Category Archives: CSH3 – Saturday

Luring a large crowd to the runsite by promise of cake, we had a big turnout at the lake near Alpine Golf Course.  I missed the hare brief, as I was trying to get money, but the gist was we could expect anything…

We set off along the edge of the lake, and Turkey was keen to get to the first check first. We had 2 relatively new hares to Chiang Mai, so I wasn’t sure how well they would know the area – would they have found the nice trail that cuts between the hills, or the great trail that runs through the gully behind? In short yes… The first check had Turkey going wrong while Brownie, Chuckie, me and later to be called “Pays by the Inch” trudging along ahead. Brownie was setting a quick pace, with only Chuckie going along with him. A circle check had me and Brownie checking down by the canal – nothing until PBTI called to the left. I hacked my way up to the trail that cuts through the hills. Nice.

I was a little behind the FRBs and the next circle check had ABB written all over it. A bit past the obvious trail, making it a back check, except it wasn’t a back check, and there was no powder on the trail I thought they’d use. A bit of a meander through some trees and there’s a great circle check just down to the left on a bit of a road. This was the “back check”. Being a bit behind I had the chance to get it right and HRA, NOYB & I headed towards the steps, with the following trail, and me heading ahead just below them. A circle check at the bottom of the steps. I was there first, and felt like I was playing poker against the hares – I called their bluff and headed right. Everyone else went all in and headed up the stairs. I got about 100m or so along a little trail, and there was something white on the ground… With people running up the stairs, I really didn’t want to call them back unless I was absolutely sure… So I checked and double checked. Did this powder taste the same as the other powder we’d had? How far had they climbed in the wrong direction? Was there a second blob? OK, it’s an ONON call. Excellent diversion.

The trail headed up the hill, and as Brownie breezed past me he got to a check, but intelligently managed to follow me down a not obvious trail to the right, along with Chuckie. Somehow we’d got HRA to go up the hill and the other FRBs to fan out to the left. We cruised back down to the canal and Turkey joined us. We light heartedly berated the Turk for short cutting, only to see Graven appear ahead off us calling about a circle. There was much confusion. Chuckie and I pressed on, doing our best to follow trail, and spent much of the time on trail, until we got to the road. It is possible there was some other trail somewhere, but we found plenty!

Back down the road, along the canal, over a barb wire fence, a turn to the left… And then something that the hares were never punished for in the circle. A blob of powder off on the trail to the left… We headed off to the left, and nothing… Finally we found trail going straight – it was a mini ‘non-check’. And there was the lake. Should I go for the promised swim? Or walk back the shorter way? Today I took the easy option.

All in all, a great run. Some excellent checks. A new German restaurant for the OnoNon.

A familiar area at the back of the Ag Centre, so I was confident if the run was too tough I’d be able to short cut back. My legs were sore, but not as sore as they are today! Anyway, the A site was the ranger station which nobody uses – something to do with ghosts – after the run we had a ritual where we moved the ice 10m to the left to appease the ghosts, and Wooly Jumper kept seeing someone hiding in the shadows asking us to leave before 7pm. I didn’t see anyone!

Anyway, we set off… NOT in the direction of the hills, but towards the fields of the Ag Centre! Awesome! We cut through the nice flat meadow with the odd check which had 1/3 of the pack following trail, 1/3 of the pack paralleling to the west and 1/3 of the pack paralleling to the east. Sadly I was in the East group with Pet my Pussy, and the trail turned abruptly west, towards the hills. A gentle climb past some of the faculty buildings and the pack was split. I couldn’t run, but could hear the FRBs off to the left. With a good idea of what the hares were going to do, I cut along the trail at the bottom the hill – and I was straight back on trail. At the lake, the trail headed around the back of the lake. I cut off under the lake, and found myself back on trail, this time ahead of the FRBs.

At the next couple of checks I beelined back towards the A site, each time finding trail, and one time finding a large brown snake. The pack were somewhere behind me, I heard the odd call as I passed the “ONION”. Brownfinger and Piggy came racing in as I chatted to the hares. Good job! There are some great running trails at the Ag Centre, and we haven’t used them for quite a while now.

With some of the boys out of town, and many of the ladies down in Phuket, the CSH3 was still looking strong to celebrate Sups’ birthday. With virgins to keep us satiated, we set off at the back of the Night Safari. I led the way up the hill with NOYB and Poo following on. A trail paralleling the main road, and we were climbing steeply over a ridge back to the road behind the Night Safari. There could have been a few more checks, but apparently sups was trying to stop anyone possibly short cutting and avoiding the hill he had in store for us.

I didn’t see that coming… Sups on his birthday and he takes us up, up, up, up… A steep climb (on good trail), before a steep descent back towards the A. Graven, Sloppy and I were together on the descent, until Sloppy slipped away at a check, and with a straight on finish we couldn’t chase him down. All in all a great run, a tough set, and just what we wanted. 8-Bit didn’t agree and came in crying with Terror Byte complaining about what a bad run it was – he has clear hash potential!

Great food from the ladies and a friendly circle where Sups tormented our virgins. Lets hope they come back!

Turkey, Turkey, Turkey… 12k down the canal road, we were in the quarry past the temple. Plenty of good running to be found around here – what would Turkish have in store for us??? For the hare brief he randomly picked Horny Monkey to give it ‘because he speaks better English’… When asked where the Ononon was, it seemed nobody knew and I was starting to wonder if we would go running and drinking at all!

Finally we were off and when we found the first paper, quickly we ran into a false trail. Back the other obvious way and on to a circle check. Sloppy was leading the way and got the prime pick, checking left. Horny was right on my tail as I went straight – why didn’t he try right? After 150m or so the call came. A female voice, so it wasn’t Sloppy… It must have been right. I looped around behind a house, but silence from everywhere… Damnit… I kept going, and finally arced back to that circle. It had been left, and I guess Sloppy was a silent running Turk. Ack. Turkey was there changing the circle to an OnIn, so I guess we would be back there sooner or later.

10 minutes or so into the run, I set off in pursuit and it seemed an eternity before I started reeling in hashers. I past some ladies and then found Just Cumming on his own in the woods. It was really fun running, good trails. At one point I did take a closer look at the paper to see if I was still on fresh paper, but it seemed fresh enough. Finally I was back to the wall and with a slightly confusing check the arrows were pointing back towards the A. It seemed short, but believable until a host of hashers came storming back towards me… WTF? Confusion reigned. Apparently we were not on trail – the paper was from a Bunny Hash run, not from today. I don’t know why they thought that, so kept going. I nearly ran OnIn, but got back to the first circle, which was now and OnIn, and spotted trail leading to it from where I’d checked in the first place. Sloppy wanted to go back, I decided to go backwards…

I then went backwards around his excellent run. Peace, quiet, solitude. Nice! Then a distant cry. Getting louder. Getting closer. Square Rooter appeared at a check. I gave him some inside information and then confused everyone else by running backwards past them.

If the goal of haring is to confuse people, then Turkey you succeeded! Nice job.

Graven teamed up with Brownie for the start of a GI Maejo epic… 12 months ago, Graven and I set a couple of runs on the same day, out at Maejo, so having spent time with Gravey out there, I was curious what he had in mind. 12 months ago, we set one run that turned out to be pretty good, and one that was pretty crap – turned out Gravey modelled this run on the crappier one!

With 10 minutes to run time, I was starting to worry – at the runsite with the boys, and finally Belly Dancer showed up… No sign of the hares or other hashers… Finally with minutes to spare, 3 songthaews showed up along with a bunch of cars… Times like this, hashcashing is a challenge! I managed to get things organised and ready for the hare brief. It wasn’t brief… While the hare brief is designed to reduce confusion when out on trail – this one didn’t…. If you want to do the whole trail, do it, but if you want to do a bit less, then follow the guy in the blue shirt, and if you want to do a lot less follow the other guy… When should we follow them? I happened to be following Brownie at one point, what did that mean? It was all so confusing!

Finally we were released and with a host of elite hashers, it was hard going to get to the first check. 50 ish hashers headed off into the jungle Familiar trail, we quickly got onto the trail up to the ridge line. A couple of decent checks took us away for a bit, but it was clear pretty early on where we were headed – particularly given the warnings in the harebrief. It was a run I’d done before in reverse. We got to a wimp rambo split, and after a brief sojourn on the rambo route, I cut across to where I knew the trail was headed. With the hares out in force trying to keep us going in the right direction, I joined up with Bart Plug and Cum A Lot, and finally we caught up with Gorf, who was alone and completely befuddled by a sneaky check.

The trail literally fell away off the side of a mountain – straight down off the side of the hill, with hashers hanging on to trees. Fortunately we made it down alive, to the side of the lake for a short OnIn back to the beer. With so many runners the Beer Monster had to do a quick beer run, but we managed to get through the circle. Fun, but tough! There must be a good run there, but I’m not sure we found it 12 months back, or this time!

Trouble on the hare line, Chucky? Panicking, Mr Mainwaring? Worried the virgin hares were not going to turn up? That’s all right, old chap. You just bugger off to Chiang Rai and leave good old overworked Doctor Byte to sort it out. Oh, and you too, GM, Mr Poo, sir, and the rest of you absent Committee arseholes. Not to worry, eh? Dr Byte will do your jobs too.

Well you needn’t have concerned yourselves – not that I expect you did – the irrepressible Dr B had it all in hand (ooh, erh). Having disappeared up their own arseholes for a month or so, the Scandinavian Virgins – Scaly Gladiator and his dad (time for a Hash name?) – finally came good (ooh, erh), and called Dr B to arrange a scouting day, for he had also agreed to act as their “Hash Consultant”. How many flaming jobs do you want, DB?

Well, the story goes that the first thing the Virgins wanted was a beer. So, four large Leo’s later, off they went, Hash Consultant in tow. And presumably, a great many more bottles later and the run was finally set, emerging like a ghost ship from the thick bank of alcohol fog that had formed in the collective half-mind. In fact they must have been so pissed that at some point they forgot just how far they had wandered away from the A site, and when they finally returned to it the run was set at not much shorter than 10k. Jeeeeeesus! How many beers did that take?

Anyhow, the Virgins had the Hash Consultant do the hare brief – burble, burble, hic, hic, something about round checks and sticks painted white. Nothing about how long the run was going to be. Visitors from Guam and Austin Texas looked anxious, but I did my bit to reassure them by telling them that the experienced Dr Byte wouldn’t let the Virgins fuck things up too badly . . .

So we were off. Well, I say that, but then I must say we were almost back at the A again before the run had really begun. In fact we had only run about half a k around the lake when we almost tripped over the songthaew. Surely not. Not this short. We could have gone back but we soldiered on and soon found more trail. And then the run really got going. And it was indeed a runners run, with very elaborate, devious checks, which the Hash Consultant had no doubt been significantly involved in setting. In fact they were so cunning, I found myself out in front then right at the back so many times I lost count. Does Nothing said I passed him five times during the run, but it felt more like ten to me. The trails were pretty good for the area around Mae Joe golf course, and bye and large we came in pretty close together – which was pretty good given the distance – although Miss Piggy was seen running in from a different direction with a knowing look on her face.

And then to the circle, run by DB as acting GM, of course. Time to splash the Virgin hares. But wait, the Virgins insisted on splashing the Hash Consultant instead. “It was all his fault.” And of course we all agreed it must have been his fault. After all he was in charge of everything – GM, Hash Cash, Hare Raiser, Beer Monster, Haberdasher, On Sec, Hash Consultant . . . A damned good circle: DB in excellent comedic form; songs and games from Guam and Austin; wings for me (yeah!) and Tasty Buns for being “the fastest,” which did not go down at all well with the Gravy Monster.

All in all it was a great day’s hashing – a long, well-marked, well-checked run followed by a short witty circle. An excellent Virgin attempt by Scaly Gladiator and his very amiable father, supported by that self-styled Hash Consultant, who will no doubt stand for election as Hash God as soon as the opportunity arises.
I

(Brown Finger)