Gruesome Greetings,

While we may be nowhere near Halloween, DuuHHH’s Trail 591 was a bit on the scary side. Railroad tracks? Not an issue this week. Private property? Didn’t trespass much this week for a change. Too many checks? Nope. False trails? Long, straight boring stretches? No and no. However…howEVAH… Well, I do not wish to scare you off already, all will be revealed at the proper time.

Let’s start on a high note, a beer high that is and from Santa Cruz Mountain Brewery. As is usual, the pack appropriated one end of the bar and the corner closest to it as their own. This makes delivery of the next round easy and quick. DuuHHH was relaxing on a chair apparently without a care in the world. What we took for confidence was actually a smug case of pre-lay. More on that later. DuuHHH delivered Instructions of Trail. I believe this harriette suffers from a case of chronic ambivalence. Her version of IoT was worth less than my last relationship. They did, though last longer. She outed and the few that had wasted time listening returned to drinking. Upon the passage of ten minutes, we abandoned the bar, with the exception of Choka-cola, and assembled a circle and made our introductions.

Immediately after circleup dissolved, chaos took over. A check at the start had hounds trotting around like they were dizzy. That is, though, with the exception of TIMMY. No, TIMMY is not prescient. There was a far more simplistic reason TIMMY appeared to know where trail was headed; we’re back to the aforementioned per-lay. TIMMY, upon exiting his house headed for prelube today, followed a trail of flour partway. Apparently DuuHHH does not know where TIMMY sleeps so she pre-laid a section of trail near TIMMY’s crib.

We uninformed hounds finally found trail on-left on Ingalls Street to a check at Fair Avenue. Trail was soon located on-left on Fair but soon made a hard on-right onto the accursed railroad tracks. Just past Almar Avenue, a back check turned the troops on-back. Once back to Almar, trail was located on-right to a check at the intersection with Mission Street. This check was solved easily but not because it was simple. It’s just that no one wished to wait for the light on busy Mission so on-left was tried first and proved successful. So we again crossed Fair (thanks for the pointless circle jerk, hare) and then we were directed across Mission and to on-right on Grandview Street. Just past Escalona Drive beside a small park is a locals-only walkway leading to what is basically a greenbelt originally cleared for the laying of the (huge) sewer line from UC on-down to the treatment plant on Bay Avenue. The area is maintained now for little more reason than a number of homeless encampments, a place for neighbors to dump their garbage and for certain cruel, vindictive Surf City hares to punish the pack with.

Consequently, it was with the utmost distaste the covey careened into the chaos of what we have named University Terrace Park Greenbelt. University Terrace Park is the official name of what most of us call Meder Street Park. Of course, to paraphrase Shakespeare: A sewer by any other name would smell just as foul. There are but a few ways out of this ring of hell into which DuuHHH has cast us. One, the obvious way all the way through to Meder Street; two and three are two steep on-lefts and on-ups out of this pit. The last is a locals-only on-left first utilized by TIMMY that leads to Alamo Avenue. As I reached the second possible on-right way out, I took note of the FRB’s, sad and dejected, coming on-back. dBASED exclaimed, There’s a REALLY long back check up there. So, as if being subjected to this cesspool trail wasn’t bad enough, we were forced to double-back along almost the entire length of it’s malodorous mile. This week’s featured picture does not do sufficient injustice to it’s ugliness and can of course not begin to imitate it hideous scent. Thanks, hare.  The pack split fairly evenly between the two on-up on-outs. Except for TIMMY again that is. TIMMY believed DuuHHH would use the locals-only exit and he was correct. This treacherous on-out and on-up is barely fit for a friggin’ mountain goat but certainly not a human being.

Everyone did make it on-up though more or less unscathed. Trail took an on-left on Alamo and then the first on-right onto Flower Street and came to a check at Western Drive. Spooge Bath took an on-right as TIMMY returned from the large apartment complex directly across the street. Spooge Bath soon sounded the on-on though neither TIMMY or Puff believed it. And sure enough, TIMMY soon yelled False Trail! while Spooge Bath vanished into the distance. This is Spooge’s second screw-up in as many weeks. Will someone PLEASE give Spooge a Chalk Talk next week!! Forget trail marker, I don’t think this man could even read a book of matches.

Reversing course of course found true trail. Trail went on-down the huge Western Drive hill to cross Highway 1 and then on-left onto what is actually the last few blocks of Mission Street. It was along this dreary stretch just past the Ark Animal Hospital we found our hare lackadaisically slurping away on Beer Check beer. On-in was back to the area beside the railroad tracks out the back door of the Cellar Door restaurant and Bonny Doon Vineyard tasting room.

Vince, by virtue of the fact the lazy bastard has refused to hare, has been appointed interim Religious Adviser every friggin’ time he shows up at a hash until AGM. Parenthetically speaking, believe me when I say it’s a blessing Vince does NOT hare but be that as it may, he is now unofficial RA.

Here is a brief recap of the errors Vince perpetrated this outing: Shallow Hole was appointed Beer Fairy; Banana Basher was chided for skipping Beer Check; TIMMY saw pre-lay and did not tell anyone; Dog Breath was convicted as a backslider; dBASED for being heard to tell Occasional Rapist “My butt hole doesn’t hurt as badly as it used to”, besides him and the Rapist standing at the altar, they were accompanied by Broke Bench Mountain who related this tale and grossed out the entire pack. The only bright spot in the edition of Religion was the two ladies whom, upon leaving the Cellar Door, moseyed over to see what the commotion was all about and ended up being awarded down-downs for their bravery. They even showed up at on-on-on which was, needless to say, at Parrish Publick House. I usually feel the necessity to cut our hare down a few notches but anyone disliked by their kennel mates enough to be saddled with the name DuuHHH, does not need any further abuse. Well, after a trail like THIS I guess she does so here goes. DuuHHH’s trails initially succeed but ultimately fail due to her principled but chronically flawed personality. Thinking back to the two (unnecessarily) long back checks, I think this trail had more moving parts than a Rube Goldberg mousetrap. I plan to use a pint of hand sanitizer  after finishing this Trash.

A quick aside to this week’s Trash. I gave Smokin’ Semen a lift to on-on-on as he was vehicle-less tonight. As we drove to Parrish House, he said, Puff, this is only my second hash with Surf City but I’ve already come to the conclusion this hash is populated by effing idiots. And, while I felt compelled to agree with him, I pointed out that our kennel is not OVER-populated with such miscreants.

Though I seldom mention anything about the next week’s hash, usually because you are so flaky we never know until just a few days before; I will make an exception this week.

Thursday the eighteenth is our annual charity hash for Second Harvest Food Bank, colloquially called Beat Your Meat because Butt Balls lends his barbecue and his talent to cook for us and Little Anal Annie foolishly allows us to desecrate her lovely Garden Paradise with Religion. The point of this, besides seeing the incredible amount of food some of you can stuff down your gullet, is to raise money for some folks who aren’t doing quite as well as we are. We sometimes labor long and hard over what restaurant to go to and these poor souls are simply wondering when next they get to eat at all. Therefore, to give a little bit of money for something worthwhile, the ante-up for Surf City Hash 592 will be ten bucks, every penny of which will be donated to Second Harvest. Surf City will provide the beer and our over-the-hill brother and sister hashers are throwing in some hamburgers and hot dogs. So, bring a side dish to share and just the amount of meat you intend to devour and ten American dollars minimum. I see no reason you shouldn’t kick in more, Second Harvest can turn one dollar into nine dollars worth of food. It may even make you feel better about your usually-worthless self.

By Special Appointment of His Royal Majesty “G”, this Hash Trash has been compiled and printed by permission of no one other than the author at Santa Cruz, Ca., or elsewhere if need be, on this, the fourteenth day of August in the year of our Hash two-thousand eleven.

On-out,

Puff the Magic Drag Queen