Do you Remember way back to Hash 756? Occasional Rapist, Wicked Retahted, and Dang Fu Grip (acting as hash historian and RBCB) started us off at Castaways where they pour a pretty strong cocktail. D’BASED went around trying to get everyone to join Life 360 so we can all see where everyone is. He says it’s so we don’t lose anyone in the woods again. I think it’s an elaborate plan to snare hares who forget to sign out. Most will remember, but there’s going to be someone who doesn’t. It’s the long con. The hares were off! They told us to look out for a liquor check and some hidden facts about the Hash founder “G.” This hash fell on his birthday.
We all circled up out back. We had a surprise backslider, the curly haired offspring of Mother’s Little Feltcher and Sausage Slam. They came with stroller in tow. However, it wasn’t the stroller that slowed down the pack. It was out complete inability to solve the first check. We looked every conceivable direction, some people logged a full mile before we even found on two. We finally found the trail and the pack was off.
We found the liquor check out on the railroad tracks. It was some kind of pink strawberry mash (perfect for your scribe). There was the only fact I ended up seeing, but I’m told it wasn’t the first. We spent a lot of time on the tracks (hurray something new and different for us). We had to climb a ridiculous fence. Then we ended up going down toward Capitola Village. I’m sure that some people were a little skeptical when trail pointed down the wharf. Perhaps they remembered the YBF that caught Dog Breath and Twisted Fister last time we headed out this way. As it turns out, the first beer check was located down at the end of the Wharf at the Wharf House. There was only one employee for the whole front of the house and she didn’t give a whale’s fart about us. There were no pitchers, so the hares provided a few pints for us to share. But that’s ok, we could buy some cocktails! Or not. I’m not sure who you had to blow to get a drink around there, but we all wondered off before figuring it out.
We gave the hares a few minutes to set the rest of the trail and then followed them down the coast. The final beer check was at Privates Beach. Dung Fu Grip and Dog Breath stripped down to swim in the uncharacteristically warm Santa Cruz water. Then we dragged the coolers back up the stairs and headed to Wicked’s casa for religion.
There was a nice spread with chips and dip and home made hash courtesy of Dung Fu Grip. We sat around a roaring camp fire enjoying some well deserved beer. Timmy served as RA and picked Twisted Fister as Beer Fairy. Hugh Heifer got called up for yelling on-on when she should have said on-one back at that first check that confused us so much. Wicked had invited a few virgins, and not told them anything (of course). Virgin Randy did the whole trail in flip flops. Both Virgin Randy and Virgin Preacher told jokes. Then it was time to call up the hares!

Here are Dung Fu Grip’s fun facts about our founder:

Here are my fun facts in order of appearance:

1. Hashing is based on the British school game “Hare and Hounds” or the Paper Chase c.1800
2. Modern Hashing originated in late 1938 in what is now Malaysia, organized by Albert Stephen Ignatius Gispert (G) and 11 others
3. The “Hash House Harriers” take their name from the Royal Selangor Club, or “Hash House” where several hashers lived
4. The original 4 tenants of hashing are:
1. To promote physical fitness among our members
2. To get rid of weekend hangovers
3. To acquire a good thirst and to satisfy it in beer
4. To persuade the older members that they are not as old as they feel
5. G was killed in action on 11 February 1943. However, the original hashers reformed after the war and the second kennel was created in 1962, and spreading from there.

The inner historian would like to point out that this is a drastically simplified version of the events, and liberties were taken to increase the prominence of G, as while he is the holy martyr of half-mindedness, he was merely a first amongst equals in the original hash house.

Hash # 751 (AKA Another fucking D’BASED Obstacle Course)

For this trail, we met at Aptos St. BBQ.  Aptos is generally a bit of a nightmare to get to during rush hour traffic, but it was particularly difficult for the hashers coming over 17.  Highway 17 had been closed in both directions all day, so cheers to everyone who made it down there……eventually.  Apparently it is legal to drink on the sidewalk if there is a planter box.  So there we are.

The hares, D’BASED and Occasional Rapist took off in either direction.  Now I realize that the smart money would have been to follow Occasional, go through whatever false or backcheck we found, and continue on to find the rest of the trail.  But none of us is all that smart, so we followed D’BASED on true trail.  That led to a big ass hill down into the creek.  Here are Shallow Hole and TIMMY!!! going down the hill:

I did not choose to go down that path because I felt like it might lead to me being sad and broken, but but I could see down onto the creek and it looked like everyone was having tons of fun.  They looked especially overjoyed by the many creepy underpass tunnels they got to wade through.  Soooooo sorry I missed that part.  Also, there was lots of wading through the creek.

While all the cool kids were down mucking around in the creek, a few us found a parallel route and met back up with the trail where it came up under the overpass in a spot where Twisted Fister has set beer check a few times.  From there, trail headed back up toward Kauboi and we all realized how easy it would have been to shortcut.

Although we knew we were close  to where religion would be, trail pushed up the hill.  Would we go to Butt Balls’s house?  No.  It was another week of trudging down into Nicene Marks.  From there it was a series of increasingly difficult obstacles, punctuating a beautiful run up a dry creek bed.  We can thank the drought for not having to get our shoes wet again.  Here are some of the dangers that blocked out path:

There’s this one.

I feel like someone would ambush Indiana Jones here.

Then to get out, we had to climb out here.

After climbing out of the canyon, bruised but not defeated,we had to walk up, yet another, big-ass hill to make our way to beer check.  We enjoyed a well deserved beverage while getting strange looks from residents of the neighborhood.  Then down the hill for religion!

It was D’BASED’s birthday so there was a beautiful spread of meat, crackers, hummus, pita, chips, and other noms.  And Cupcakes! It was nice to have something besides the usual hash dinner.  It turned out to also be the birthday of Virgin Ray, another confused soul brought into the fold by Wicked.  He told a joke.  We tried to keep religion short, so there would be time to go have dinner at the BBQ place.  We did have a naming that night.  Because he is such a big wanker, his name is now…..Tiny Wanker.

The luau themed Hash 747, aka Ocassional Rapist’s Birthday Hash, aka the Airplane Hash, started at Aloha Island Grille on Portola. Even though a good portion of the pack skipped out on the Surf City Hash that night to go to Whip It Out at the Ball Game (more like Get Kicked Out at the Ball Game), we still had a great turn out! The weather was beautiful and our hares took full advantage of that leading us around the neighborhoods and beaches and under an incredible moon hanging low in the sky. Anyone who sat inside instead of coming to this hash really missed out.

We started off toward the beach, down a false, and eventually figured out that we were being circle jerked back in the other direction. But it really wouldn’t be a D’BASED trail if there wasn’t a really confusing start. We headed away from the beach, through the neighborhoods, and into the shiggy. We crossed a little creek where Twat Did You Say? Found someone’s burner phone. We went by a lagoon where I got mosquito bites on my sunburn. Then we came out on to 7^th and headed back to the beach.

Just before rounding the corner to beer check, Fingernips and I saw a rat eating one of the flour marks on the beach. So disgusting. What wasn’t disgusting was spread of food laid out for us at beer check. Do it yourself spam musubi, cupcakes, and……beer! We enjoyed our feast for awhile before heading to the next beach over for religion.

Dung Fu Grip served as RA and chose Shady Curtains as his Beer Fairy. Dog Breath’s bowl was somehow broken and now he has to drink out of a half bowl, but Dung Fu took no pity on him and instead poured an entire beer over Dog Breath’s head in retaliation for the incident several weeks ago. Wicked Retahted did his best to live up to his name, by generally trying to hold up the proceedings and push some random lady who hadn’t done trail up in circle. Fap Jack and I got called up for not getter lei-ed. (I swear we had leis at some point). We had three Virgins! Virgin Alex told joke that make sense, Virgin Mel told a joke that didn’t, and Virgin Sean showed his butt. Mortal Enema, Cum Pumper, and Hooker on Cronix, Bitch were called up as backsliders. There were a bunch of visitors. And the hares! We called up D’BASED and Occasional for their shitty trail.

And did I mention the moon?

So………….. Surf City had a Red Dress Run. Was it this week? Ummm… no it was over a month ago. But since I arrived at it super late, I figured I’d be super late writing about it too. My memory of the event is a little fuzzy, but I’ll put up a bunch of pictures of guys in dresses to make up for it. Since puff is much more reliable (there’s such a fine line between reliability and OCD), there are always pictures.

The pack met at The Rush Inn to get nice and shitty before heading out into the beautiful Santa Cruz weather. I assume trail went through downtown because it ended up at a sangria check underneath a bridge along the San Lorenzo River. Yummy, yummy sangria.

Then the hares paraded the pack down in front of the Boardwalk for all of the tourists to see. We went up to Westcliff to find a jello shot/picture check at the surfer statue. He is meant to be a sacred memorial to all of the surfers who have been lost in our waters. So we dressed him up in a red boa and took obscene pictures with him.

From there, the Eagles kept running around the West Side. I gather from looking through the flash that they had some sort of drink check in Neary Lagoon. Meanwhile the turkeys said, “fuck it,” and walked to beer check at the Blue Lagoon. Oh wait, I see what they did there, Lagoon checks all around! We drank, someone lost the hippie because she was hungry, but she turned up at circle.

Religion was on top of a parking garage downtown. TIMMY!! and Dung Fu Grip were co-RAs, because it was just too hard to pick. We had a huge circle, with beautiful early-evening lighting, but I couldn’t hear a fucking thing that happened, because some visitors from Monterey wouldn’t shut the fuck up. They seriously talked through the whole thing. I’m pretty sure Deep Stroke won something. Sluttiest Dress? I voted for her, even though I didn’t know what was happening. I did see one of our GM’s, graciously shove a hariette who had been over-served into the back of her car and cart her away.

And the hares…..Once again a shitty Red Dress Trail was brought to us by the trio of Shallow Hole, Occasional Rapist, and Hugh Heifer. So they were punished with beer.

From there we went back to the Rush Inn where they had promised to make us Spaghetti Dinner. And they did. And it was good. And there was much rejoicing.