". . . and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and
forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy
from off the face of the earth; especially chalk arrows and little blobs
of flour."
Genesis 7:4
This is the time of the year for TV's epics, and a few weeks ago NBC brought us "Noah's Ark". On May 19th, the hash became unknowing participants in another epic known as "Alice's Ark". It begins like this - two by two the hashers arrived at the Astor Place start, prepared to do battle with whatever Mother Nature could dish out. A brave group of 15-20 hashers (mostly female) showed up undaunted by the threatening skies. I guess our male counterparts of the hash don't like running in the rain - or is it because they can't hack it? (or maybe we are all indoors doing chores like transcribing people's writeups for them? - ed.) I will leave that discussion for another time.
After Alice gave the group the standard instructions, she sent us off to find what was left of the trail. I use this term loosely, because the marks on the trail were so small that I thought there was a flour shortage in New York. I also considered that Alice's job at the U.N. may have made her privy to some top level clearance on the Kosovo conflict, and she had advance warning on new wartime rationing that was going to be put into place.
The pack knew we were in trouble at the first check when we could not find the new trail after several attempts, and we were starting to run out of volunteers offering to go out and look. However, keeping with hashing tradition, our newly elected Joint Master Roy Gilbert and former Joint Master David "The Body" Croft ventured out into the eye of the hurricane and located the new trail. This act of courage was not without casualties; the pack at this point became totally separated into little groups, each one certain that they knew the right direction. My group of 5-6 hashers was full of all veterans, so I was confident that we had chosen the right path. As veterans, we continued to dutifully mark the trail so that our inexperienced fellow runners behind us could easily stay on the trail. I was certain that, at any moment, we were going to be joined by the rest of the group. Of course, this event never happened.
The trail itself was very scenic and took us through the Soho and Chelsea areas of the Big Apple. I think we spent some time in Little Italy, but I can't be sure because my brain got so waterlogged, it is still drying out. (you mean with rain or beer? - ed.) The trail went in a south westerly direction from the start until we reached our final destination, the "on-in", a.k.a. Antarctica. By the time my pack had arrived, a good part of the group was already in and partaking in our favourite beverage, beer. A quick survey of the group revealed that some had used other means of transportation to the on-in instead of their own two feet. This was not true for all hashers; one hasher, John, who recently relocated from Miami, stuck to the trail until the bitter end. I guess being from Miami he is used to running in hurricane-like conditions. John arrived just in time to receive his down-down for being last. Overall the night, in spite of the weather, was full of good beer, good pizza (3 cheers for spinach pizza!), and spirited true hardcore hashers.
On out.
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