It's Monday morning and I've got a client meeting. I walk into the conference room and the usual chatter over coffee and Danish suddenly turns to complete silence. Everyone stares at me. No, I haven't tucked the back of my skirt into my pantyhose again. Rather, I look like I've been beaten up and mangled by some deranged alley cat, with cuts and scratches all up my legs and arms.
How do I explain? What can I say? Simply put, I survived the hash. No, not the "surviving" you do when you wake up clutching your head with a hangover and drag your butt into the office for a meeting (everyone's used to me doing that by now). This time, I survived the trail…Devo's trail.
It all started out harmlessly enough. It was a gorgeous Indian Summer Sunday and Devo was the hare for a run starting up in Woodlawn. This could mean one of two things - an adventurous trail through Van Cortlandt Park or an adventurous trail through all the other little parks that dot southward to upper Manhattan where Devo resides. Either way, I felt I could expect a little off-road running, just a small bit of shiggy and a moderate workout to boot.
I arrived at the start just in time to get my bag in the hash mobile and join a small pack of about 15 others. To be fair, Devo did warn us, telling us about a Chicken/Eagle option, with some steep climbs and other challenges along the Eagle route. But as the scribe, I felt it was only right of me to take in the full experience Devo had intended so that I could report on it accordingly. I only now wish that I had also kept in mind the fact that Devo, as of late, has an obsession with eco-challenge racing. You know, where you and eight others join hands and run across the Sahara Desert, raft over Victoria Falls and then mountain bike over Mt. Kilimanjaro-all for a t-shirt, a waterbottle and the fame that goes with appearing on ESPN2. Sometime after 2 in the morning. On a Monday.
To start, Devo sent us into the woods where we ran between trails and shrubs and climbed over fallen trees then out to a clearing. That's where the Chickens and Eagles split. Following the Eagles (like a chicken), we were quickly back in the thick of things, only this time, we were faced with an entire forest of thorny bushes to maneuver through. Between thorns, humidity and several recent bad experiences with squirrels, I got a bit whiny out on the trail, as Stacy will attest. But my bitching and moaning paid off as Slo2Blo waited for Stacy and I to reach a check so that he could direct us before sprinting off out of our sight again.
Our small pack of about seven eagles joined together when we crawled through a fence and dashed across a golf course, where Fireman Bob decided to take up a new sport and found himself a nice five-iron (how he actually procured this piece of equipment, we're too afraid to ask). Then a bit further down the trail seasoned FRB John Burke was found perched about 25 feet high, atop a steep rock, on trail. He offered the suggestion that the rest of us try to find an easier go of it, and we quickly scrambled on, leaving John to take care of himself as only rugged individualist Eagles can.
Soon enough, John rejoined us at a creek, where some shimmed across a log and those of us with poor balance just gave up and jumped in, then raced down the parkway, past a woman experiencing car trouble and who thought surely we were a pack of carjackers, followed by more climbing, shimmy-ing, glass, shiggy, climbing, checks, climbing, shiggy and climbing.
This is where the trail got really interesting, from a female scribe's view, anyway. Trail talk turned to cycling and then the newest craze in men's bike saddles, where they cut a section away to avoid male penile numbness, nerve damage and (yes) sterility. The virile Fireman Bob discussed the size of his testicles, and the others joined in to discuss the possible lack thereof. Then to further prove his manhood, Fireguy Bob made some comment about "the view" up my shorts he was getting while we continued to scale our way through the depths of Van Cortlandt Park.
As we headed to the finish, I bailed on Geoff, Ed, Mike Andonov, Fireman Bob, John Lynch and Stacy at the second Chicken/Eagle split and ended up doing myself a disfavor as I followed the wrong Chicken trail left by the NYRRC for a cross-country race held earlier in the day.
After finally reaching the on-in, the Chickens (Pat, Michele, Crofty and Debbie to name a few) had already made a sizable dent in their first and second beers and looked at us in shock at our cumulative war wounds. We were a bloody mess and while I looked for the first aid kit, downing beer to stave off the pain, we assessed that the trail was a good seven miles of pure hell for those of us who don't get out of the urban sprawl to hash.
Down-downs were led by Dave Long, with Rick Chann assisting in our JMs absence, and Devo earned two for his trail. Then Marghretta arrived to the on-in three hours after the start, just in time for her down-down for her disappearing act and John Lynch got a down-down for ditching his gal Debbie for a trip to St. Thomas. Duffer F-man Bob and our resident golf pro Stacy (Tiger's Woody) were then asked to partake in the honors for letting their love of golf get in the way of their love for hashing while Chris Rust was given a down-down for his overenthusiastic love of running in doing the Staten Island Half and Eagle trail, while Cree and I drank for being the bloodiest damn hashers of the day. Finally, Mike Andanov was aced out of the Asshole of the Week Award by John Burke, who mistakenly missed the on-in for some other dive he knew down the road.
A mellow on-in ensued and we watched the colors on the leaves turn at sunset while eating pizza. At some point, Devo broke out his civil engineer's topographical map and showed some of the straggling Eagles the trail we had completed. Whether it's a contender for the best or worst trail of the year is a subjective matter, but for some reason I felt empty handed when I left the on-in. After all we had been through, the least Devo could've done was given us a damn t-shirt and waterbottle.
On-out.