Rooter’s birthday adventure, and boy did he put some effort into it! We’ve run from that runsite a bunch of times, and I was fairly confident I knew all the trails around – Rooter proved me wrong several times! He was a generous hare, today offering us multiple wimp trails and a hare brief that was long enough that I could arrive late, get changed and still get out with the pack.
We set off, with Kwazi running ahead, but not even getting to a check before refusing to move another inch until someone found trail. We did, and Brownie was off… Do we need to run? Already? Damnit! A circle, and I didn’t want to check left, but it was my obligation, so I idled along, and when I did find the powder, just ahead was Brownie and 3.5inch, cutting onto trail. We were back to the road we’d driven in on, and most wanted to go right. I went left, and around the corner found powder, another circle and then up the hill a bit, more powder and Dyke Converter blaring music while he lugged around bags of mud. Random!
An excellent check followed. We were all over the place searching! Music to entertain us! I went up the hill, and back… I could see Taste My Buns being very thorough down the hill to the right. Finally I headed through the shiggy to the left, and ahead Blows Herself was discussing how she had found powder… She wasn’t calling “ONON” as is tradition, but hey we were on to another circle. Suckit and I checked down to the left, and I found pink paper on the trail to the left, while Suckit found a circle to the right. We figured the pack would appear sooner or later and started checking the circle – the pack didn’t appear, and we didn’t find trail off the circle. Finally we followed pink paper backwards and saw the pack in the distance. Seems we had followed one of the wimp trails backwards and finally rejoined the main group – not a short cut, just parallel to the main trail, and trust me, that wimp trail was shitty shiggy! Rooter went to a lot of effort to hack out a trail, that wasn’t used by many…
Back on trail and a V check by a temple. Oh inspired my dear Rooter. How about a V check, where somewhere (perhaps) to the left there was a hidden back check, while to the right solid powder for 200m or so, and then nothing. Finally we found a pile of pink paper under a stone tucked neatly in a freshly watered flower bed by the temple wall. Did you pay someone to wash away the powder? We assumed it was a circle, and the FRBs charged forwards. Sometime later, closer inspection revealed a FT. So now, having wasted a bunch of time, we had a V check with a checkback (maybe) one way, and a FT the other. My head was reeling, but finally someone picked out some powder we hadn’t seen before and we set off, while most of the FRBs were still down the bottom of a hill wondering what the Fuck was going on.
I somehow got into the mix, with Cumalot and HRA and we hit a bit of a scramble with “QUIET” written at the bottom clearly by our hare. What did that mean? What were we doing? WTF? This was all new for me, I had a suspicion we were creeping through private property, and a shortwhile later when a pack of 20 vicious dogs were set on us, I think we were right. I had a stick to waft at them as I edged backwards. Crap Thai was escorting the rest of the hashers through a gate, while I held of the dogs like a hollywood action hero. Crap Thai and I ducked through the gate and slammed it shut in the face of the evil canine hoard, like Indiana Jones escaping with his hat.
Onwards, and there was a 2nd Wimp Rambo split. By chance I got there with HRA, and well, we talked each other into the Wimpier option. A wimpier option that promptly hit some devilishly difficult checks. The rambo runners were nearly upon us before we solved them. Finally we found trail and HRA led the way to the ONIN. HUH? ONIN? Where the fuck are we? I know this area, and I can’t figure out where my car is! A bit further and another ONIN… Huh? This was a road, so we were closer to home! A final ONIN to encourage us up the hill to the beers. Very nice set Rooter – very confusing, good use of regular stuff, and some clever mixes of stuff that was new to me. A well engineered run, a great circle, and fun ONONON.