PRINCETON HHH HASH #924.2 (Hard Core XI) Date: March 9, 2003 Weather: Balmy! People were swabbing on sunscreen on in the parking lot Venue: Lebanon State Forest Set: Rambo and OuiPee Time: 3-5 hours, but who's counting Hashers: Bjorn Dork, Justin Spencer, HYP, Bumps, Pyro, Lady Macbeth, Wacko, Dancin' Fool, Yellow Ball, Brain Injury Volunteer, Nonsensei, TJ, Solo, Dave Visitors The Virginians, Zippit The Mother of All Huevos, Hard Core XI For the archives, the events of that day are chronicled below as experienced by each of the individuals involved who cared to come forward: ---------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------- Wacko: Hey, Since Oui Pee set it; the Geezer wisely skipped it; Speed Bumps avoided it; I guess I'm going to have to write it up - but people got so scattered, I have no idea what happened to y'all. Please report. Question: How to ensure nobody finishes your hash? Answer: Don't set an end! Here is what happened to me. I must say, the first 2:30 was quite enjoyable. In fact, the soft verdant woodlands were quite gentle to both my knees and feet - perhaps it was the cushioning on my sandals. 17 of us set off together and we all made it to the regroup/beer check at 30 minutes. Soon after this I heard some groans of dismay from Solo following me through a bit of icy swamp and I never saw him again (nor did I see Speed Bumps, Nonsensei or Dancing Fool again either). Somewhat of a surprise as this was a pittance compared to last week's hash which featured a solid hour within a sea of inescapable ice slush with several balls-freezing water crossings followed by an inadvisable attempt to cross the canal via ice floe - but that was hard core as opposed to just LOOOOOONNNNGGG - so lets get back to this week's hash. I think it was the mile + straight that did me in, by the time I got to the sight of a delirious and demented Oui Pee moaning on the roadside of how he had f--ked up, it was 1:18 in and the pack had outdistanced me. At the quarry, the pack and true trail went left I heard later - HYP and I went right. As I traversed dead center across the quarry figuring I would have to hear or see something, all was quiet like an eerie post-Armaggedon landscape - no HYP, no distant ON ON's. So I guessed right which turned out to be wrong but then turned out to be right as I caught the trail coming back from a complete circling of the quarry. Thus I got to enjoy a stroll along the trail for about 45 minutes until the lead runners caught up to me near the final beer stop at 2:20. Woulda shoulda coulda - if only Rambo and OuiPee had been there to call it a day, it would have been a fond memory - BIV, Lady Macbeth, Dave, Pyro, Yellow Ball, Zip It and the 2 men from Virginia had all made it that far - half the pack - but alas, no hares. We figured we were close to the end, but after the trail looped back on itself we were at a loss at 3:30 as to what to do. BIV, LM and YB continued on marks, PM, W, and ZI took the road and tried to loop around to head them off - instead we found a paved road and decided to bag it now over 4 hours out and seek the cars - we hit the road - Pyro screaming into his cell phone still failing to be heard by Speed Bumps, now home. Our fatal mistake was hitching a ride which took us further from the cars by quite a bit. With visions of BIV, LM and YB stranded in the forest with a setting sun and cold approaching, we called the Geezer and told him to track down the phone numbers of the park rangers and await further instructions, PM attempted to race back to the cars, Wacko and Zippit continued walking down Rte. 70 with no end in sight knowing we had about 3.5 miles back to the cars once was get to the 70-72 circle. We never did reach the circle. At about the 4:30 mark OuiPee and Pyroman arrived in a car informing us all were safe. I barely made it home in time to relieve my wife of kid duty - then the real hard core part of the day began - taking care of a 1,4, and 6 year old near bed time! Please email of your adventures. ---------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------- Captain Lame-O: My vision is comparable to Wacko's. The first part up to the first beer check was positively lovely, some water, some snow, lots of dense forest. After the beer check, things got loooong, lots of roads. We still had a sizeable pack when we came out onto the quarry, with Pyro, the virginians, steve, bjorn, lady macbeth, BIV, zippit, YB, dave the undergrad, and captain "very" lamo. After circling the great inland sea, with the Lawrence of Arabia theme in the back of my brain, we went into a whole tree harvesting nastiness, and my knee was not going to do much more. We came back out and went across the top of a large artificial dune (more lawrence of arabia) and then down into some more bushes. I finally caught up with the pack again in this section (the same pack as before, I think), and steve and bjorn elected to walk with me for the remainder, as my knee was proving my name would sing today, and the rest of the pack vanished on a long road section. We proceeded to walk all the way to the second beer check, lots of roads and confusing sandpits, a little bit of good shiggy, with a brief encounter with the late 70's vintage ford bearing two pineys who informed us "you ain't supposed to be in here," after spotting us in the woods and taking us for a trio of homosexual hippie weed farmers. At the second beer check, we met the hares, and they informed of us that the amplitude of debaculariy was far beyond our meager minds, with the lead pack headed into an endless trail through the swamp of death, where the Jersey Devil would surely pick them off. We agreed to man the beer check and tell all latecomers to take the left fork rather than the right, and run 3.5 miles back to Pakim Pond, while the hares set off to find the lost sheep. Bjorn, Steve, and I sat beneath the tree and park sign and consumed most of the remaining beer in the cooler, while swapping anecdotes about people freezing to death. Of special note, rule number 1 on the sign, possession or consumption of alcohol is forbidden. Oh well. After 45 minutes or so, Solo, Nonsensei, and DF showed up, and we told them the story. The three of them plus Bjorn and Steve took off back to Pakim Pond, and I guarded the cooler for another 15 minutes until the hares showed up, bearing most of the lost hounds. After a joyful reunion, we drove to Pakim Pond, and then to the on after. Notes: 1. I hate the Pine Barrens. What a godforsaken wasteland. Truly the most depressing natural landscape I've ever seen. 2. Weepee needs to get his odometer fixed. 3. The dynamics of the pack might be well modeled as an electron cloud, or a set of spring connected particles, with a few heavier particles that exert greater force on the pack. Or a bunch of sheep [not my idea]. To paraphrase Pyro, "Look, I'm the pack. Baaaah. Baaahh," somewhere before the inland sea. 4. I'm done running for a few weeks, hoping to resume as captain "not at all" lamo sometime in April. On on Capt. "Very" Lame - Oh ---------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------- Hey Yo Paully: As you wrote, I made it to an asphalt road at 1:18 right behind you Wacko. I didn't hear any instructions from Weeppee about not going in a certain direction. So I trudged ahead. After multiple self loops looking for on-on calls and listening for marks, I eventually went straight, partially on flour to a double cross arrow pointing across the quarry. I didn't see marks on the other side but several on my jaunt across the quarry. Then nothing. I saw no prints around the quarry (clockwise), so I ventured to the wood and came a across a dirt road. I guessed left and took it a long way, a long way. I was a little concerned judging the height of the sun in the sky - the actual position of the sun scared me even more - it was to my left, then back left, then behind me - I was looping indefinitely in backwoods Pine Barren Jersey Devil Road. Eventually I came to a nice lake and back on asphalt. One way would take me to the gun club. I chose the other and came across the junction of Mt. Misery Road and another portion of the forest - some Environmental Center/Wildlife Management Area. I guessed dirt road again - wrong again and eventually started seeing RESTRICTED AREA KEEP OFF signs. I found 3 off-roading vehicles stopped with a few guys chewing the shit. I yelled at them again the wind: Can you direct me to the nearest PAVED road? After 3 tries, they understood. Their dog wanted to get me but it was ordered to halt. They said get back from whence I came - there is nothing if you go straight. I was dismayed - and went all the way back. I was forced to eat snow to stay hydrated. It tasted like mercury. And EVENTUALLY was found on the asphalt road that leads to 72 (by Mt. Misery Road) and jogged toward the gun club this time. Weepee pulled over and asked where is everybody. I hadn't seen any hasher in 2 hours. He told me to go to 72 and make a right for 3.5 miles to the Wood Shed. I was pooped but up for it. I was then picked up by Rambo, who told me it was still 2.5 miles before I hit 72 - THANKS WEEpEE! Rambo told me Weepee was so out of his wits for ending in the middle of a march with no flour to continue and trying to find lost souls that he ran into Rambo's car and banged up the bumper in the parking lot. ---------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------- Nonsensei: After the first beer check and soon after crossing a frozen stream, it ended up being the four of us: Hand Solo, Dancing Fool, Speedbumps and Nonsensei. We didn't find marks, we didn't hear a thing. We were lost. We all reacted in various ways to our predicament. Solo took the stoic approach and methodically searched for marks. Fool was excited at the prospect of picking up unimaginable amounts of trash. Nonsensei could only think of how Dorothy felt in The Wizard of Oz. And Speedbumps unequivocally announced (to nobody in particular) that she was going to bag this frickin' hash. After endless searching (and time is a relative concept at this point), we found the trail and were met by the hares cruisin' in a car. Speedbumps jumped right in and that was the last we saw of her. We were told by the hares that the second beer check was right after the quarry. The quarry was just across the road. The quarry is an open pit. We will meet you at the second beer check. Ta ta. After about 1.5-2 hrs later, yes, we found the second beer check, which was after the quarry, which was a huge quarry, which loomed even larger as we ran AROUND the quarry. The only thing going for that quarry was the aquamarine water pit. Finally, at the second beer check (quite possibly at the 4 hour mark), we met up with Bjorn Dork, Steve, and an injured-knee Justin. They had obviously been drinking for some time. We all then ran back another 3-4 miles to the cars. Was there an end? Dunno, but I really liked those pink streamers that were partially used for marks along the way. Not the Barbie-type pink, mind you. They were a hot pink. Nonsensei ---------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------- Speed Bumps: I don't think I said "frikin". After wandering endlessly through the woods and finally finding a trail (thanks for the arrows!), we ran into the hapless hares at what was to be beer check #2. Hearing "quarry", I took Rambo firmly by the huevos and announced that he would take me to a road and point me to my car. I ran back. 'nuff said. what a debacle. bumps ---------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------- Solo: << Soon after this I heard some groans of dismay from Solo following me through a bit of icy swamp and I never saw him again >> Following Wacko through the icy waste I did a right-ear-plant into a foot of frozen water and floated there for a while, my right half under water and my left half dry. A while later our pack came down to Speed Bumps, Dancing Fool, Nonsensei and me. Bringing up the rear has some advantages - some kind souls had added arrows to speed us on our way, and the footprints were a clear sign of the way forward. So we staggered along that way, losing Bumps at the first opportunity and made it to the rock quarry. A loooooong loop around the Bermuda-blue lake brought us to the 2nd beer check with it's detritus of humanity slumped by the side of the trail. We had many miles yet to travel, reminding me of the tale of Scorpion: Along his way, Gilgamesh [the hounds] journeyed many miles to get to the place where Utnapishtim [the Woodshed] resided. He traveled through the desert alone though he had never been alone before. Then he approached the mountains where scorpion folk guarded the entrance. A Scorpion man realized that Gilgamesh was two-thirds god, and one-third man. He asked Gilgamesh, "Why have you taken this route to us? The way is arduous and long, and no one goes beyond here." For the whole story, read on: http://www.khandro.net/animal_scorpion.htm Hand Solo ---------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------- Steve Andrews: Three Comments- 1. What the hell was all the live fire? The berm we were running behind didn't provide all that much comfort. 2. Were there any turns in the hash, my memory is a hungover blur but it seemed like it went pretty much directly straight for 5 hours. 3. It is the hard corps, but serving anti-freeze disguised as 20 year old budweiser is just juvenille, just stick the anti- freeze in the cooler. The year old fortune cookies were definitely a nice touch. And most important who remembered to get the phone number of that foxy waitress in the classy Woodshed? -steve ---------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------- Lady Macbeth To add the perspective of those of us who 'finished' as much as it was possible to finish... For the whole first part, I was one of the many sheepy members of the pack. But as we left the quarry, somehow there were only 8 of us left -- BIV, Yellowball, Pyro, the Virginia guys, Zippit, and undergrad Dave, and me. Yes, one of the Virginia guys did try to trade us women off, though I thought it was as compensation for letting the others run on the land and not get shot at. Me, I just kept following the marks out of the quarry as fast as I could. Soon I realized that I hadn't seen Bjorn Dorque, Steve, and Captain Lamo in awhile. It was generally disturbing to have people dropping like flies, but I figured the only thing to do was keep going and stay with what was left of the pack. I had a feeling it was going to turn out that they had found a short cut and were going to laugh at us for missing it. Anyway, I wasn't too concerned till the 2nd beer check kept not appearing and I began to think we'd certainly missed something. But then Wacko appeared out of nowhere and so did a beer check. Puzzlingly, no one, not even the hares, was there. We all drank quickly (me a half gallon of gatorade) and kept going (on what turned out to be the wrong trail), but those Virginians were even more driven to continue, they walked off and disappeared. We let them go. After lots of road running and lots more shiggy we came to a place where the trail just stopped and Rambo's trail from earlier was going by in the other direction. (This was right near the gun club and the cranberry bogs.) Most of us were so cold and tired that were very lamely milled around, hoping the fact that we were at a road would mean it was the end, while Pyro and Wacko bravely searched for the next mark, bickering back and forth about where they had and hadn't checked and where it might go. Finally, Dave found the trail picked up like 50 yds. from where we'd been milling around for like 10 minutes, and I followed him, as did BIV and Yellowball. Soon we realized it was just us four left, that the others were either really dumb or had bailed, cause we kept yelling on on and they weren't coming. It was very disturbing either way, cause we kept losing people and now that there were no Grown Up hashers left with us I felt a little nervous that we were doing something wrong. But we continued forward, vowed that the 4 of us would stay together till the end, and went the last 1/2 mile or so through very very thick shiggy with our feet in icy water most of the time. Here is where I almost cracked, but singing with BIV was a welcome distraction. Just as we reached a road Weepy pulled up and rescued us with hot chocolate and snacks and warm clothes and I thought he was the best person ever even though I'd been cursing him a few minutes back. And he gave us gold stars for our hard core efforts, so ha. I know you all have various excuses for not finishing, but I don't buy them. I was very glad that everyone ended up accounted for, because I bet we were spread over a huge area! The on-after was fun, especially hearing the very drunk Bjorn Dork and Steve tell me for the 79th time that I'm a bad person cause I left my poor injured boyfriend to die in the woods. (Captain Lamo, that is.) Yeah, well. It was semi-unintentional. I continued to take crap all the way back to Princeton, as I designated-drove those 3 bums who walked and drank beer for an hour while and called themselves hard core.... I'd say finishing more/better than anyone else deserves some credit. Even if I am the cold-hearted Lady Madbeth. ---------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------- ZippiT: Dearest BIV et alii, Both those spots were indeed fine to see, though I think only the soft sand of the berm spared us the "wahhap" of incoming rounds, and I heard a few shots pass close enough to whistle. I would agree that you four students held strong and ran well on trail, and I also noted that our pack of seven split neatly by age group (at the lost trail end), with the three older hounds choosing to loop around on the road, while the four students ran into that last cranberry bog. I would not argue these facts, but I differ with your interpretation, as we three seemed to have maintained enough vigor to continue for many more miles without rest or water. Hours after you had been rescued and grown cozy in the woodshed, we were passing long shadows in the cold and seeing headlights on the road. My own interpretation is that the group split on a psychological basis rather than a physiological one, divided by relative roles more than strength or conditioning. You four young students were collectively a group who trusted your elders of authority (in this case the hares) not to put you in a compromised or dangerous situation: therefore you ran straight into the bog. We three older hounds were burdened with some measure of individual responsibility and realized such trust was ill-founded. Understanding that the situation was already compromised, we chose to loop around on the road, thinking this might improve our options for getting help in the worst case. Though we did find pavement to mitigate our worst-case scenarios, the hounds did not find us, and the reality of our situation went beyond what should have been considered recreational. -ZippiT ---------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------- If you read this far, keep on reading: http://www.huevocartoon.com/