by Princess Di(arrhea)

Hashers from SLV and beyond met up at Monty’s Log Cabin to give the Labor Day weekend an early kickoff. Speaking of kickoff, it was an unusually tough time prodding the kennel out the door of the cozy cabin to do trail. Some were sidelined due to previous beer-related incidents. Some just had a whole lotta drinkin’ to do. Maybe it was comfy barstools? Anyhoo…

Hash 649 brought us the first signs of autumn. It was kinda cold out, we brought flashlights and there’s a pumpkin patch in old Monty’s yard. I called it a ghetto pumpkin patch, but was corrected right quick by Hugh Heifer, “it’s a redneck pumpkin patch.”

It’s The Great Redneck Pumpkin, y’all!

The drinkin’ was getting off to a good start with TIMMY!!! and his gibson. ‘Round these parts, they must not know that he is not to be trusted with a martini glass. This time he managed not to drop it in the dirt. Before we knew it, we were all getting a good buzz on, which is always a good idea when you know religion is going to be held at a church. Deep Stroke, our harriette, blessed us all and scurried off in a heavenly cloud of pink dust. Halleloo!

Thmp-Thmp’s chalk talk teaches us that 1 gross = 1 buttload

About half of the kennel saddled up and hit the trail. We headed pretty much directly to the Henry Cowell entrance and cut right following the park’s trail along the creek. Virgin Amy was soon hitting her first shiggy with mucho gusto. She gamely slid down a marked steep sandy embankment and clawed her way back up like a natural. TIMMY!!! and Hairy Fuck 2.5 didn’t fall for that diversion and kept moving on. Further ahead, Puff the Magic Drag Queen was constantly blowing his whistle. He was definitely on the right track because an Olde English 40 oz. 8-ball check was just ahead. And there it was–on a picnic table, in the woods, sitting next to a paperback book. Felton keeps it real, yo. Virgin Jon polished off the bottle like a good chugging DFL should while scoffing at the lightweight swigs of his predecessors.

Refreshed and back on trail, the pack continued to wind through the park’s dirt paths. The checks were mercifully simple but the pink flour got a bit dicey through some ivy-carpeted shiggy. It didn’t take long for Puff to start blowing his whistle like a crazy train again, scaring off deer and pissing off hippies. I was so distracted a mountain woman chiding us for noise making, we were lucky Hairy Fuck saw the true trail arrow that showed our way into Roaring Camp. Flour led us down the railroad tracks and through a maintenance yard.

Puff’s sultry FLASHdance

Amid some confusion and chaos as we exited the park, hare Deep Stroke dove into a patch of poison oak to avoid being snared by Phyllis Driller. The chase continued through mountain neighborhoods as we dodged rural traffic like shifty ‘possums. Lord, were we happy to finally see the beer near mark! Then trail just kept going. And going. Past the Jehovah’s Witness Kingdom Hall construction site, past welcoming-looking driveways, past a few party porches…what gives?

We were suddenly at religion at St. John’s Catholic Church.

As we shrugged off the missing beer check and pillaged the beer cooler in the parking lot, churchgoers started to arrive at the parish to do their do-gooder stuff that they do. Banana kindly asked if we could stay. As long as things were kept to a dull roar, the answer was yes. !!!SUCKERS!!! The party carried on as we moved to the other end of the parking lot.

Banana disallowed “frat rules” as he RA’d (I suppose we played “church rules” instead?) and Puff was our magical beer fairy. Zippercised and Wheaton Whacker, our visitors who drove ALL DAMN DAY direct from Seattle, managed to make it to our little hashlet despite being pulled over by the fuzz. They brought a few nifty little songs along with them, too. That’s just one of the benefits of going to hash choir practice. Yes, they really have that kind of thing in Rain City. It was like the harmonizing hash voices of angels were paying us a visit.

Banana did a round of salutes to half-minds near and dear to his beer-drowned heart. TIMMY!!!, Phyllis Driller and Get Up and Run Bitch all got a special “I love you, man.” Phyllis should’ve down downed for missing catching the hare, but she couldn’t manage to snare a beer, either. Poor Virgin Jon’s joke was jeered and Virgin Amy’s joke was wildly cheered: “Knock, knock. Who’s there? YOUR MOTHER’S A WHORE!” That’s a pretty clean joke for us, but as Get Up and Run Bitch said, “we’re being nice to the church.” We also kept the songs a tiny bit less less foul.

Come to find out the beer check was supposed to have been at the JW construction site, but there was too much action there. I’m glad we’d kept on going. St. John’s church was quite tolerant of us degenerates. And for that, let us pray…