A demented Devo and co-hare Danielle (disguised in false beard and shades)in confident mood before Sunday's hash (picture courtesy FBI)

An adventurous lad is our Devo. Never content with just pounding the streets of midtown, he makes his hash living by seeking out new and interesting hash territory and then setting very long runs through it. One of the more memorable hash images from the summer was Devo arriving at the start of his NASS hash covered in flour and blood and resembling a powdered jelly doughnut - not a sight which will inspire you to do the eagle trail. It was with a slight sense of foreboding, therefore, that I set off to 181^st St., remembering some comments Devo had made about an upper Manhattan hash earlier this year.

I arrived at 86^th St. 'C' stop to find the predictable hand written sign on the token booth - "No Uptown Service". Silly me - who the hell would want to catch an uptown C-train from 86^th St. on a Sunday afternoon? Why doesn't the MTA stop with these stupid scheduling games and just close down the whole damn subway system every weekend? That way they can get all their track work or whatever done in half the time, and don't worry about us, we'll just get buses everywhere on weekends. Already late, I contemplated yet another run carrying my bag. This feeling worsened as I took one of the twenty or so possible exits to 181^st station to find not a sign of Devo, the start, or anyone resembling a hasher. But wait - there was a flour mark, and another. I had my first piece of luck so far as, following the trail further, I came upon Devo and his accomplice Danielle munching away on Big Macs and fries. The rest of the pack soon followed, with Laird and Danny both eyeing the fries enviously - or maybe they were just leering at Danielle, I couldn't tell.

The first check was quickly upon us and had everyone stumped for some while. I followed a confident-sounding Ariane but was suitably castigated by Heather who, never one to mince words, remarked something like "I already marked that way false you dumb fuck". The real trail went north and then east into Highbridge Park, which has not been used in recent memory, if at all. I guess this part of town appeals to Devo and Danielle, since they are both civil engineers and there are plenty of bridges and overpasses around here to gaze at. We worked our way down to the base of one of them, which I think was the Alexander Hamilton Bridge, and then back up a fairly steep dirt bank, where Slow To Blow surpassed himself by managing to almost lose both contact lenses at once. There followed a long stretch of trail running, fortunately the bushes were all of the non-barbed variety. Curiosities along the way included a couple of burnt out cars which made you wonder how the hell they got there, and whatever became of the drivers. Eventually we had to come back down to earth, which was at the southern end of the park at 155^th St by the Polo Ground Houses. I'm told that there used to be a baseball stadium here where some old team called the Giants played. The project looked pretty forbidding and I hoped that Devo hadn't put the trail straight through it. Fears increased as the next check led us down some steps right towards it, but the trail then thankfully veered south again. There was still plenty of running left on this trail though. The next stop on our uptown mystery tour was City College campus, and very attractive it is too, a stark contrast to the concrete monstrosity that is Hunter College. Continuing our scholarly journey south, we visited Morningside Park and then Columbia before finally heading south again down Broadway to the on-in. A very interesting trail, albeit way too long, and covering some potentially dodgy neighbourhoods.

Arriving at the newly revamped Cannon's, we were greeted by Devo, who asked if any of us knew how to set the hotline. Uh-oh. Fortunately old sage Laird has such things memorized, his powers of memory having been sharpened by all those years trying to remember how his last name is spelt. Danielle meanwhile was playing it innocent, but soon broke down after further interrogation and admitted to having been a co-hare. Here's a tip Danielle, remarks like "Did you see the chicken/eagle split?" and "Some guy threw a bottle at me in the park!" are a dead giveaway - hashers are not always as stupid as they look. Anyway, I'm glad he missed. Some woman then came up to me and thrust a plate of sickly-looking cake into my hand, it turned out we had gatecrashed (but hopefully not ruined) somebody's 100^th birthday party. To add insult to injury, we had also buried her wheelchair under a pile of hash bags - oops. Unfortunately, she left before we could give her a down-down. Chugs were administered however to visitors, including Spermlock Holmes from San Diego and Tiger's Woody from Silicon Valley. Spermlock was wearing one of those hash dogtags which seem to be favoured out west, which got me thinking that maybe we should get a bunch made with "Dave" on. There were a few virgins plus a few who looked new but claimed to have been before, which I suppose could be true bearing in mind the summer turnover of hashers, so they got the benefit of the doubt. Robbie, in his final hash before disappearing once again back to his home planet, was down-downed for eating pizza while on the trail - well, it was pretty long. Maybe there's not much decent pizza wherever it is he's going. Speaking of which, this was the second hash in a row where there was pizza left over at the end - what is going on here? Personally I think our hashing palates have been spoilt by all this alternative grub on offer lately, for example the Chinese cuisine on offer in this same venue at the now infamous Seinfeld hash (sorry, didn't mean to bring back any bad memories). Or maybe after all the persecution of the pizza hogs, people are now afraid to go near the stuff ?

Crofty and Heather got involved in some theological argument which is probably still going on, while being ignorant of such matters, I chose instead to just poke fun at Melissa and her Boyz 'N' The Hood Nike top - although, bearing in mind the trail, maybe it was pretty appropriate. Devo and Danielle meanwhile kept the pitchers flowing as hashers gradually flowed out, to be replaced by the Sunday football crowd (roll on February). Good trail, good on-in, good hash. All that remained was the inevitable "No Downtown Service" sign on the 1/9. Sigh -

On out.