There was a young hasher who displayed
Great promise in the trails that she laid
But her checks were too hard
Her reputation was marred
4 down-downs was the price that she paid.
....E.K.

It's that time of the year again. The shades and silly hats come out, subway stations are like furnaces, and panic buying of air conditioners reaches epidemic levels. Bah, humbug! Me? I prefer to lie awake nights on my soaking sheets and think of all the electricity I'm saving by not having AC.

This was a particularly sultry night; the kind that makes you breathe in and then want to spit the air out again. Now this kind of heat has been known to play funny tricks on hares' minds in the past (is that apostrophe in the right place Heather?); arrows look larger, blocks shorter, checks easier. So it was to be again. The hallucinating hares for this run were none other than Elaine and the debutant "It's" Pat, former star of Saturday Night Live turned nutritionist, which she will tell you quite happily while devouring pizza and quaffing beer at an on-in. Nice to see someone who doesn't take their work home with them!

After arriving late at the start, Elaine quickly dispatched us up the Juilliard steps and across Lincoln Centre plaza, as usual to the amusement of the cultured masses. Studgate, master athlete that he is, decided to take an unorthodox way down some steps and almost killed himself. And so to the first check; little did we know that Elaine had planned a theme to this hash - essentially a rip off of the "Kramer reality tour" where you pay $40 or so and get a guided tour of where events in "Seinfeld" took place (actually, I had advance warning of this because I'm a cheat, but still managed to get screwed up. Guess I'm just not enough of a "Seinfeldian" or whatever his groupies are called). So, while this may explain the direction the trail took, it doesn't really explain why the first marks were quite so far from the checks. The pack was about thirty five, so you have to figure at least ten people were checking as opposed to standing around scratching their asses, and still it took twenty minutes to find the first mark! Apparently it went past St. Luke's hospital, setting for the famous "Pigman" episode, about a deformed hasher who ate too much pizza at on-ins. Check #2 was found slightly quicker but was still a bastard. This one led to ABC studios, where Kramer appeared on "All My Children". I'm reading this from Elaine's personal hash log so you'll have to take her word for it. The flour was short in supply; either Pat's nutritionist instincts were showing (is too much flour bad for you?) or she and Elaine have been to the Alice Harrison Bakery School where they are taught to be very sparing with the stuff.

By fair means or foul, some of the pack made it to Riverside Park and another bitch of a check. On was called going north; then it was called false; then on again; then false again. Hashers were going in all directions and it was looking ugly; $40 for the real tour was starting to look a bargain. At this point I gave up and decided to revert to the tried and tested "reverse snail shell" checking technique, going around in ever-widening circles hoping to find a mark somewhere. This is truly a desperate tactic and usually adds a mile or two onto the length of the run, which may explain why I usually feel shagged at the on-in. Not only that, but on this occasion, it didn't bloody work! Luckily, I ran into Devo, who with eagle-eye vision spotted a mark on West End Ave. From here the trail headed back to Broadway and north to yet another check. But where the hell where the rest of the pack? By this time it seems that several of them had already given up.

There then followed more headless chicken checking with no sign of any marks. Apparently I missed running past Seinfeld's imaginary home on West 81st Street, but made up for this by running past lots of other people's houses instead. After going some way up Central Park West, thinking perhaps the hares had pulled Littlejohn's trick of a while ago and were going to run us around the park in the gathering gloom, I eventually found the trail on Amsterdam heading towards Dive Bar. Should of known! But just a minute - where's the magic "On-In" writing outside? Nope, I'd been suckered again, but at least I was back on trail. Arriving back at Broadway, a small miracle happened, I actually saw other hashers, and they were on trail! Surely not far now.

Most people now assumed that Tap A Keg was our destination, and so blew straight by an arrow going west. This led to another check, but with a difference. Obviously realizing they had screwed up, we found the hares attempting to soften us up by handing out "Junior Mint" jello shots. My body was crying out for about a quart of Gatorade, but I have to admit the jello shots were pretty damn good! Kerr-amer then informed us that we were in fact at the chicken/eagle split part of the trail. Duh, now let's see, just run six miles to get here, which'll it be, eagle or chicken? I quickly followed a clucking Kerry towards the chicken. The eagle went past another famous-ish upper west side landmark, Tom's Restaurant, the diner where Jerry and his gang hang out, and also where Suzanne Vega used to get her omelettes.

Mercifully, we were quickly at the on-in, Cannon's. Which reminds me - why is it that Seinfeld and Co. are never seen in a bar?

Cannons is a suitably divey hash bar with suitably grotty toilets and suitably disinterested barman - the "whaddya mean you want a beer - can't you see I'm on the phone?" kind. Sgt. Major Gilbert attempted to establish some quiet for the down-downs but it was a losing battle, what with the two Mikes, Bahamonde and Hoffman, at the same hash. Mike H. got his come-uppance later for too much heckling. Meanwhile, we finally found out what a trailmaster actually does, namely taking a down-down whenever the hares screw up. Step forward Mike B. The real stars of the show were, of course, the hares. The bribery trick of the jello shots failed miserably, especially considering most people never even made it that far, and so they were rightfully severely punished for their early entry for "worst trail of the year", to the tune of four down-downs. Afterwards, they were to be found attempting to lay the blame elsewhere; Kerr-amer blamed Hoffman for criticizing her "too easy" checks on previous hashes (I think that has been rectified). "It's" Pat, on the other hand, blamed Elaine and claimed she had basically just "been there to learn how to set a trail". Be very afraid.

Unbelievably, we were treated to Chinese food for the second time in three days, while Elaine handed out the remaining jello shots - a delightful combination, Chinese and Schnapps. Beer and bullshit flowed in equal measure as people's spirits revived and the earlier horrors were forgotten. Alcohol is a great healer! Slowly the crowd dispersed, probably to get home and watch the Seinfeld re-run to see what they had been missing all night. A promising idea gone awry, but never mind; there's always the "Friends" theme run to look forward to.

On out.

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