Despite Mercury finally wrenching itself out of an extended retrograde
cycle, [for an explanation of the hazards of said cycle, please refer to an
earlier CH writeup], nothing has bothered to begin functioning normally. I mean,
look at the stock markets. A record number of rate reductions have managed to
pretty much backfire. Blackouts are threatening both coasts. The elevators in
my building were obviously stolen from the movie "Speed." And in terms of the
Hash, the hareline had not recovered from Ewa's stint as hareraiser; there being
no hare of record until the last possible second, when JM Dave was forced to
step in. And that right there is another thing guaranteed to not work as planned.
Of course, I showed up anyway, but was in a narrow minority. Only about fifteen
people gathered at the start at 14th and 7th, right in front of Flannery's,
from which establishment Dave emerged swearing up and down that it wasn't an
A-to-A. There were two virgins, so Dave launched into a very long explanation
of how to run a hash trail, complete with a very precise demo of every kind
of arrow and false trail mark. All of this fuss would lead one to believe that
all of these marks would have been used to set the trail. Naturally, this was
not the case.
"Too" Long sent us off northwest toward Union Square, where we quickly came
to the end of the trail. This turned out to be because we were following Baldwin,
not flour. We switched into reverse and headed up to Madison Square, and a check.
The trail did go back to Union Square via a different route, but not before
detouring around Gramercy Park, which was a giant circle jerk. It took a solid
twenty minutes for this to dawn on our little gathering of the Mensa society,
by which time the pack was irreparably separated into solo runners and the occasional
twosome. I was standing around hoping to hear an "on-on" when Martin, who disappeared
to Zurich about this time last year, suddenly appeared. We finally found trail
headed down to Union Square, and past Luna Park, which was packed with B&T singles.
From there, I thought we'd just run back to Flannery's after perhaps one more
check, but I forgot whom we were dealing with. Instead, Dave put down a check
in the middle of the south Union Square bomb site (another Mercurial hangover),
which we solved heading down to Washington Square park. (Three out of three
totally cliched downtown check locations covered.) The trail then squeezed down
MacDougal through throngs of tourists and NYU summer students before twisting
through the winding streets of the west village, and over to the West Side Highway
before disappearing at another check. At this point, I ditched Martin and started
heading straight up to Flannery's. I had a pang of guilt as I accidentally passed
trail and a few hashers along the way, but the trail was getting damn long,
so I got over it.
Upon arrival, I spotted John Burke outside, not looking sweaty at all, and without
a single groupie. Maybe they didn't know about the end of Mercury's cycle? Fearing
a plague of frogs, or some else equally biblical that usually accompanies events
this rare, I ducked inside to get a beer, and to try to beat Sarah to the bathroom.
As it turned out, no rushing was necessary, as Sarah had more than enough room
for her collapsible wardrobe and makeup cabinet. Once we all had an opportunity
to get hypothermia from the AC, and after pizza arrived and was consumed, "Too"
Long finally dragged himself up to give out down-downs. I suppose it was too
much of an effort for him to write down the offenses, but it was definitely
too much of an effort for me to write them down. The only ones I remember are
Martin and Melissa getting a joint down-down, and Melissa getting AOTW, and
then only because it was my idea. Beyond that, it was an unusually subdued Wednesday,
which led Martin to complain quite a bit, and to Studgate going home early.
Only DB2 seemed to really have a great time, with two typo-ridden writeups to
shred. On out.