Run 192 Monday, April 3, 2000

Hares: Ewa Mobus & Dave Godbold

Start: Various

On-In: The Pourhouse

Guest Scribe: Tiger's Woody

It was the first Monday of daylight savings. A naïve Californian, I hoped for a light-filled, nearly-summer evening that would trigger my springtime euphoria. Not so. It was grey and damp in Brooklyn. Grey like the industrial cement we pounded through. Grey like a landfill. Grey like urban dirt.

I scrambled to the start a little late and made later by the G-host train. I climbed out of the Lorimer station at 7:20, hoping for lingering hares, and scoured the Williamsburg cement for a chalky BH3. Didn't see it. Nor did I see runners, Brits, derelicts or any other variety of hasher. Not that I was exactly on time. But neither could I find arrows, chalk, flour splotches or any telltale signs. This was an inauspicious beginning, especially for someone with paranoid tendencies. Finally, I found a giant arrow emblazoned on Lorimer Street pointing north. I aggressively trotted off to catch the pack.

No pack marks. Now this was a dirty trick. It's one thing to start on time, but to neglect pack arrows and the BH3 and the On In location is unhasherly. It was a conspiracy. My suspicions flourished as the concrete battered my shins. Who told the pack to leave me no traces? Who had I last alienated? Was it because I'd run the chicken the day before?

The first check appeared near Meeker Street at a typically annoying Brooklyn intersection where 5 or 7 or 12 slanted streets come together in the gloom of the BQE. I would have to solve it myself if I wanted to find beer. Block and a half to the right, no marks. No marks to the left. No marks up or down Meeker Street. No marks in front of houses, bodegas, machine shops. I even checked in the dank parking lot below the BQE that looks like it hides rapists. No trail. The grey sky darkened. The cement grew harder. I fumed about pack marks and cursed all hashers.

Just when I was ready to abandon the run and jog home, FRB Geoff appeared with Sucks, Paul, Beth and the rest of the pack close on his heels. They demanded to know what I was doing at the front of the pack. They had begun their run at the Graham Avenue station. (Oh.) Allegedly, the change in start location was a late website revision, and my information was from the day before. Keith Kanaga corroborated the story when he was found later at the On In, but I'm suspicious.

The rest of the pack had as much trouble with that check as I. Hedgehog, John O'Connor, Michelle, John & Debbie, all the usual suspects, searched in vain for some friendly splotches of flour, faded chalk, anything. When we were ready to hoist ourselves onto the BQE in search of the trail, flour was sighted at the far side of a gas station, on the far side of Meeker, in flower planters. (Ewa!) With that bear of a check solved, we toured the local color of Williamsburg/Greenpoint: youths brandishing pipes at us, or at least at me; hungry, drooling dogs with sharp teeth;

McCarren Park; Manhattan Avenue; and then north. I feared the pack was heading to my apartment--How do they know where I live? Had I been followed? Do they listen in on my calls?--but the hares diverted us. We passed through a strip mall, triggering a wave of silicone valley nostalgia, and into the picturesque terrain of warehouses, smokestacks, and pollution manufacturers. The trail turned south, or was it east, to abandoned streets racked with meteorite-sized potholes, broken glass and other urban shiggy. We continued running, mostly in circles, solved more checks, mostly mid-block so the trail could double back any which way. (Ewa!) We continued running, the concrete's assaults on our limbs grew fierce, the grey night turned black.

Finally, finally, there appeared the code all good hashers love even more than a shortcut: Beer Near. We turned a corner and there was The Pourhouse where we were plied with beer and pizza and thrones. Yes, hiding in the corner, looking like they were made for hashers and downdowns, were two thrones faded, floral, garish thrones, swathed in plastic to keep them nice. I was awarded a much-deserved downdown for failing to find the start, as did Alice, who looked for the pack at the Grand Avenue stop. I believe it was a conspiracy and the website's nformation is coded and that everyone but me knows the secret. Nevertheless, I had ten minutes FRB-dom, which is a personal record. Best yet, though, because I'd lopped off the beginning of the trail, I expended less energy to get to the same beer, which is always my goal at a hash.