New year,

Same old… We have now began our twenty-third year of existence and have done so on a rather interesting excursion. Pink Cherry Licker, Dung-Fu Grip and Fap Jack billed this as the Wizard Staff Hash. It took three wizards to pull this thing off but in the end it was the pack that REALLY got the staff. Maybe that should be ‘shaft’.

It is now completely dark when we arrive at the start and this past week the pack remained in the dark when it came to precisely how this outing was to operate. That was not entirely due to our incompetence either, most of the blame goes to the hare trio. They even appeared somewhat confused as to how many Beer Checks there would be. Enough of the preliminaries though, the quicker we wade through this thing, the quicker we can bathe and wash the memory of it away.

Here we are, standing in the dark at the gaping mouth of Arana Gulch dodging maniacal bikers as they careen in and amongst the pack. Our canines are going crazy as they scent coyotes, skunks and cow manure. Our chances of surviving the evening with no casualties is decreasing by the minute. The GMs are the last to arrive and park in a red zone. Most hashers are appropriately attired in their finest(only?) wizard attire and they have all brought their shafts, even the females.

Just as it got dark to the point we needed flashlights to see each other, the hare trio strode to a nearby bench and hopped aboard. Here they delivered disheveled, disjointed Instructions of Trail saying a hare would be found at each of the five Beer Checks. We were told, Don’t spend any time at these interim Beer Checks but make sure to drink your beer and tape it to your growing staff. Sounds difficult to not take any time at a Beer Check but drink a beer nonetheless. There was, reputedly, an ‘official’ Beer Check where we would find all the hares. Just wait till you get an eyeful of where the beer was stashed though. Hares-out.

The next 15 minutes was passed attempting to make sense of what Instructions of Trail REALLY meant. This was done mostly by making jokes of what the hares had said. To clarify, this was not that we found what they had said was funny, this was just an example of how humans frequently joke about things that they either don’t understand or that simply scare them.

Circleup for Introductions was called for by co-GMs Cumz Out My Nose and Broke Bench Mountain resulting in responding barks from: Flour For Anal Bum, TIMMY!!, Bacon Queef, Just Foot Pussy, Steamy Baanorrhea, Hareless, dBASED, Occasional Rapist, Rubik’s Pube, Snake Me Anywhere, Just John, Cum You Will Not, International House of Pussy, Clearly Not A Hooker and Puff the Magic Drag Queen. Our happy canine contingency consisted of Scratch and Sniff, Swamp Rat, Junk Puncher and Spot’d Dick. Pack out.

Following the hares, we strode deeper into Arana Gulch, took the bridge towering over Hageman Gulch and took an on-left onto Harbor Drive. Harbor appears to have no outlet as it ends at a dual home driveway. As I approached I saw TIMMY!! wandering aimlessly wondering how he’d lost trail. Eventually he saw the hare arrow pointing him on-up the driveway to a narrow easement kindly provided by the homeowners allowing access to Fredrick Street Park. In we went.

We went on-left in the park and on-down to the Upper Harbor. Did anyone notice the person to the right using one of the outdoor barbecue grilles? A warming fire maybe? Once in the harbor, it was on-right and on-in to our first Beer Check manned by Fap Jack.

From there trail continued south and made an on-right onto the accursed railroad tracks and then on-left onto Seabright Avenue. No Beer Check at Brady’s Yacht Club though, we passed right by and when Seabright ends the pod was pointed on-left onto the remnants of East Cliff Drive. This treacherous traipse was traipsed until the Third Avenue stairs. Here was written: To the lighthouse. Many of us, however, myself included, took the cowards way out and took Atlantic Avenue to the jetty avoiding sinking in the sand. Once at Walton Lighthouse, we observed Dung-Fu Grip looking over his kingdom from on high. Or is that WHILE high?

The pack reassembled here on a mercifully windless night and added to the height of their staff. Amazingly, the water hazard on the jetty entrapped almost no one. The braver (drunker?) amongst us felt compelled to clamber over the tetrapods comprising the breakwater. Through sheer dumb luck, no hasher slipped down in between them to take an inadvisable dip in Monterey Bay. When our business was concluded here, it was back along the jetty past the original location of Aldo’s and continuing to the stairs on-left leading on-up to the Murray Street bridge and on-right over the harbor. Once across, it was a 270 degree turn taking us under the bridge we just used and into the Upper Harbor area, again, but on the opposite side from our first visit this night. Fast forward to just past the steps leading on-up to Mello Lane. Here we would find Fap Jack again manning another Beer Check.

Staffs again grew longer here. On-out was continuing through the harbor past the palatial yacht belong to Cumz Out My Nose and Broke Bench Mountain. No visits there this time though, we continued along. Just as we began the on-up on-out of the harbor area, marker made the merry members of this madness on-left onto the elevated walkway over Arana Creek but then an on-right into an area closed for habitat rehabilitation. I know some PEOPLE that need rehab too! Apologies for the digression. And so we stumbled along and then onto a narrow ledge above what is laughingly called Arana Creek. When the tide is out as it was at this time, it’s little more than a mud bog. While you may consider this a scenic side trip, reserve your compliments for the hares until you learn where the libations were stashed at this Beer Check.

Yes, friends and non-friends, the beer was across Arana Creek from our current location and accessible only by risking life and limb by utilizing a fallen tree as you see Snake Me Anywhere attempting in the picture above. This was incredibly dangerous yet all that undertook the undertaking succeeded and without taking a mud bath in Arana Creek. An extended period of our lives was wasted here and we waited until all hounds were found. Once all put back together, we continued along the same path, after correcting a misstep by co-hare Pink Cherry Licker onto a dead end trail that is. After scaling a slick boulder, we on-upped into a more or less civilized trail that deposited us back where we began this fiasco. Owing to the close proximity of inhabited houses, we move a little deeper into the park and assembled our religion machine with dBASED at the helm. Here’s a sampling of down-downs issued this evening: the person with the longest shaft was rewarded; a Best Wizard award was issued; the GMs for planning an excelent AGM; those that dropped their staff were punished; those that did all the Eagle trails were mocked and Cumz Out My Nose for completing her 400th hash with us. Oh. I damn near forgot. The hares. Many multiple Beer Checks almost, ALMOST made us forget what a hideous trail it was. But not quite.

On-on-on was staged, and rather successfully I might add, at Taqueria Santa Cruz conveniently located directly across Soquel Avenue from One-Double-Oh-Seven Club. I have no personal knowledge of anyone actually crossing the street to enter though. That puts the frosting in this Hash and on this Trash.

The preceding was a factual accounting of actual events though possibly not as they actually occurred. One should never let the facts stand in the way of a good story. Do not allow the profound to be the enemy of the interesting.

A Scribe’s sole purpose is to provide entertainment to their kennel mates. Whether or not they are successful in this endeavor is still a subject open to debate.

I chose not to complicate this Hash Trash with facts thereby allowing me to extract almost any end I desired. It was with this motive in mind I recounted the events that comprised Hash twelve-18.

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 fifteenth day of November in the year of our Hash two-thousand twenty-two.

Submitted with all respect due,

Puff

the

Magic Drag Queen

Surf City H3 Scribe