PHHH #989.9 

Date: Sunday, May 23, 2004

Weather: Circadan

Place: School of Our Lady of Little Boys and Drakes Corner Road

Time: First wave, ?; Second wave, ripple really, :10 and 1:50 respectively

Hare: Jan Kaiser, sbka Brood X from Outer Space, or maybe Klingon

Hounds: Discomfort, Fight Club, Hey YO! Paully, Homoerotic Tick Checking, Yoni 
Shaked (A rookie?  Are you kidding, with a name like that?), Safe Sweats, Ouipee

Hand Solo Regrets (with all due respect to Cole Porter)

Hand Solo regrets, he's unable to hash today, madam,
So does Safe Sweats, he's unable to hash today.
Weapea's sorry to be delayed,
but this morning down in Humbert Street he strayed, madam, Weapea regrets, he's 
unable to hash today.

When he woke up and found the cicadas humming, madam,
He ran to the sound and that led him to the graveyard,
While from under his cotton tee,
Hand drew a tick hysterically, madam,
Hand Solo regrets, he's unable to hash today.

When missus came and took him and drove him to the docs,
No one had seen symptoms in Princeton like that before,
And before he thought he died,
He lifted up his noble head and cried, madam. . . .
Hand Solo regrets, he's unable to hash today.

Hand Solo regrets, he's unable to hash today.


[PHHH] Re: PHHH #989.9 2nd wave =====================================================
Safe Sweats, 
    I returned in your general direction having found no marks on the playing field or 
school entrance, crossed to the next driveway, down to Drakes Corner Road where I 
finally picked up on marks leading to the reservation.  Yelling for you proved futile 
amid the shriek of the cicadas.  There followed a lot of cursing at the reluctance of 
the hare to follow a perfectly good trail and I descended south higgledy piggledy until 
the marks reappeared.  Pursued most of the dead ends to the back of the Princeton Day 
School, left a ski team baseball cap on a big rock, found a gutted red-tailed hawk on 
the far side of the Stony Brook, eluded a landowner training his children in pursuit 
of the most dangerous game, and attained the regroup check at Province Line Bridge.  
From the check on the Province Line trail, I went left before reaching the high-security 
fence of some Pashtun clan and followed it out to Drakes Corner, where marks eventually 
reappeared and blended with those from the start. 

    Even the denatured beer we shared at the start, 2 hours warmer, would have been 
refreshing by then. 
    I came home to find Hand Solo's voice on my answering machine.  Desperately in need 
of a religious advisor, he called me from the Medical Center, where he seemed quite 
certain the insect world had wreaked its final revenge on his frolics through its 
breeding grounds.  To be sure, Hand has looked cheerier, as would any of us unable 
to keep anything down amid ague, ennui, and cyclic fevers and chills over three days, 
but his English pessimism and fears of the end being nigh if the blood cultures and 
antibiotics didn't halt the ravages of some nameless plague laid him low. 
    "Behold!  How thin I am!  Take me from this darkling world," exclaimed the ungaunt 
one.  Actually he looked quite fit and sharp, as if he'd just set a 3-hour hash, jogged 
back to the start, and then followed the pack on trail, a la #914.4.  Indeed, he 
appeared at least as full as 2 or 3 Weepees, but I hadn't the heart to disabuse him of 
his fears or suggest that it wouldn't hurt to lose a stone or two. 
    That's when Mrs. Solo appeared with a lengthy article about tickborne diseases and 
ominous words about fitting Mr. Solo for an NBC suit before his next hash. 
    Of course, all his hoped-for fears were for nought, for when I returned Monday 
evening, the staff in Room 715 were winding sheets around his clammy body but making it 
up for a borough resident convinced she had become a cicada larva who needed to moult. 
    Come back, Hand, even Discomfort and Jan will forgive you! 
Hiuipie 
    Safe Sweats wrote: "You must have found the trail. I ran around in a couple of 
concentric circles and then unto Baldwin Rd circle. And decided that it was enough. 
Although I did see a couple marks on trees when driving home. On on Thank you,"