An hour before the Late Mother’s Day Hash last Saturday, I pulled into my apartment complex and started taking groceries out of my car. I noticed it was raining, but “raining” wasn’t the right word. It was a heavy, soaking mist, like you might get in Maine on a warm fall morning. “Ha,” I chortled snarkily to myself as I ran inside with the Cheerios and Cheez-Its. “The hares must be loving this.” Lesson to myself: Never chortle before a hash. Chortling is baaaaad karma.

By the time 4 p.m. rolled around, the sun was out, the sky cleared, you couldn’t have asked for a better afternoon for a hash. Hashers filled up the tiny parking lot of Southeastway Park for the rare opportunity to experience an Open Wide/FOOSH-hared hash. In fact, anticipation rode so high for this hash that there were a considerable number of hashers actually IN the parking lot BEFORE 4 p.m. Nasdiq had been there since, like, 3:30. Let me repeat that: Nasdiq had arrived at the start of the hash by 3:30. That was so astounding we should’ve known something was off-kilter in the universe.

Nevertheless, after some imbibing of the Champagne of Beers in the parking lot, and after introductions of virgins (Jason, Jen, Kira, and superdog Duncan) and experienced-hasher-but-BFH3-first-timer Dangles in the Wind to the pack, we headed east out of the park into the Traditional Neighborhood Development of Renwick.

The first fifty yards or so of the trail were awesome. We had to climb over a tree, we crossed a stream over a little bridge, there were squirrels in the trees, birds chirped, it was absolute hashing heaven. Unfortunately, the 30 seconds of bliss ended at the second check.

Now, usually, with as many people as we had, finding our way from a check would be a cakewalk. Take, for example, the second check. Located just near one of Renwick’s fabulously pretentious bridges, it seemed like a pretty benign check at first. Granted, the first direction everyone followed—straight ahead—ran out of flour. Nasdiq ran all the way to Sare Road and looked in both directions for quite a ways, and didn’t find any marks. Fine, we’ll all go back to the check. Wait, there’s flour on top of the bridge! Woo! Let’s all go up there to check it out. Hey! There’s flour on the fabulously pretentious Renwick gazebo/Greek hall of columns down the street. On on! But…there’s nothing after that mark on the sidewalk beyond the gazebo. Hmm. The pack spreads out in all directions, and I mean all directions. Does trail go over the tree-lined ridge to the west? Or through the construction site to the north?

After 10 minutes or so, Nasdiq yells something. He’s off to the southeast, running around another home being built. Yay, we all flock like a pack of dogs following a Snausage truck to where Nas is. Nas finally notices that we’re all running toward him, and says, “Oh, did you think I yelled? I was just found some drywall.” “Drywall”? He’s yelling about drywall? Nas wins the “WTF?” moment of the day, pack-member edition.

Finally, 30 minutes later, Snips looks down next to the bench on the path near the gazebo, and sees the BT mark that nobody saw. Doh! So it’s back to the check. Tite sees marks off to the right of the check, across the stream—so we clamber across the stream, confident that we must be on trail. Instead, we pop up on a bare lot of pure wet shoe-sucking Southern Indiana clay, and find no flour. We spread out around a bare cul de sac, looking. And looking. At this point, hashers are dropping. Ewe Tube’s lying on the curb, waiting for a sign that someone’s found trail. The virgins are gamely wandering through the mud, looking for anything that might look like a mark, even though they’re not even sure what the marks are supposed to look like. I went back to the check and went up on the bridge again, but stopped when I saw Nas a couple of hundred yards to the north. He makes signals to show that he’s checking a huge perimeter around the check—a huge perimeter. Like, a quarter-mile radius perimeter. So I waved goodbye to him, and that’s the last anyone saw of Nas for a good long time.

The one good thing that came of this check: Gucci found a new rock for his garden. A good-sized geode, actually. Huzzah.

I don’t know who found it, but someone finally just went straight past the last dollop of flour in the first direction we’d originally started in. Way past. Maybe it was Eat Meat. Or Garden of Beatin’ and his enormous ball. I’m not sure. Anyway, someone went a hundred yards and one 90-degree turn and several dozen more yards and found one wet, almost-washed-away fillip of flour under a tree on Sare Road, south of where we came out of Renwick. Happy day! The sun’ll come out—tomorrow—bet’cher bottom dollar that tomorrow, there’ll be flour! The pack ran hand-in-hand down Sare Road, skipping and laughing, celebrating like friggin’ Christmas. But wait. After that one dot of flour, there’s nothing else. Doh! The pack wanders Sare Road, which is itself packed with cars (what’s with all the speeding traffic at 5 p.m. on Saturday afternoon?), looking again for flour.

There was so much traffic that it was a bit like a game of Frogger crossing Sare Road, but fortunately no hasher was smushed. Dangles checks up the road into Hyde Park, Pubio’s in the condos to the west, nothing. But wait! There’s another fingerling of flour under another south on Sare! Woo! The pack runs maniacally to the next mark. But wait again—there’s no more flour after that mark. The pack wanders. Run, stop. Run, stop. It’s like coitus interruptus or something—we’re just not getting a good rhythm here!

Finally, the pack realizes that the best strategy for finding trail is simply to go straight from the last mark, no matter how far you have to go. By this point, though, we’ve come to a blatantly visible check at the corner of Sare and Spicewood. What fun is there in that? Trail goes all the way through Spicewood to Rogers Road in front of mammothian Sherwood Oaks Church. I didn’t find any flour to the east, we were loathe to run around the people leaving the church looking for flour, so eventually flour went west on Rogers to the roundabout at Rogers, Winslow, and High Streets. We found the “mom” check here, where the hares had instructed us to say something nice about our moms before we moved on. I personally said something derogatory about the hares’ moms—close enough, I think.

At this point, it’s, like, 6 p.m., and the pack is tiring. And demanding beer. And losing it. Snips finds trail heading north up High Street. But wait—trail went straight west from the roundabout and turned north on High without a hare’s arrow or any sort of helpful “this trail is turning” mark or notice? Fortunately, we’re not expecting anything helpful from this trail anymore, so we dutifully follow Snips up High Street and into some subdivision that used to be a nice patch of woods. (Sorry, it’s just that I remember when the BFH3 ran many a trail through the woods that is now that subdivision—sniff, sniff.) Flour apparently goes west through this All-American semi-manufactured-home subdivision, where parents washing their Ford Flexes and small children riding pink Barbie Big-Wheels watch us stagger across their pristine sidewalks in a zombie-like beer-deprived stupor. Except for Jailbait, who was still cruising and pulling Eat Meat to the beer check.

In fact, flour went west into the YMCA/Winslow Sports Complex, where it…disappeared. No flour after a mark on a bench. But the lack of flour isn’t even fazing the pack anymore. Flour? Who needs flour? We head (head? Who said head? I’m sure I’ve said “head” several dozen times already, actually) north toward the YMCA proper, just ‘cause it probably might maybe head that way. We’re looking on the soccer field, the parking lot, no, there’s no flour, why would there be flour, flour is so overrated. The pack thinks, “Hey, maybe the beer check is at Winslow Woods Park!” And—merciful deity of your specific religious persuasion—it is! The hares are waiting with beer, and pretzels, and Doritos in a creative new flavor! Rah!

In defense of the hares, they did get a good flavor of Doritos for the beer check. Everything else they did is fair game for relentless criticism.

I should have said, “Some of the pack thinks, 'Hey, maybe the beer check is at Winslow Woods Park…'” because a number of pack members (not to name names, but Tite and Suzy) had gone down during the final few hundred yards of trail and took forever to make it to the beer check. Hey, as an aside—what do people think of the word “down”? Why don’t we come up with some new chant when someone says “down” instead of “head”? The “head” chant is so 1990s. We’re always doing “head.” “Head” this, “head” that. “Down” is a good word, too, with some almost-kinda-naughty connotations, and we use it all the time. It deserves a chant as much as “head.” We should work on that.

Anyway, while most of the pack, including all the virgins and first-timers, were enjoying cold beverages at the beer check, a few pack members we won't name again took forever to make it in. A couple of the same before-mentioned hashers even paused to smoke on trail. (Geez, why is that not a violation? Blatantly ignoring the Surgeon General’s warning on trail? Vi-o-lation!) Tite also got a pine needle or a stick or something in her contact lens and crashed and burned, while Suzy stayed loyally by her side to provide no help. Nas showed up again -- he wasn't slow, he was just late because he found trail by way of College Mall -- but he finally caught up to the pack somehow. Eventually, though, after a mere, oh, 110 minutes or so, we all made it to the beer check. Oo-rah.

By the time we were done gorging on Doritos, downing Heinekens and harassing the hares for offering lame excuses for the trail, it was time to be off again for the second half of the trail. And the pack was so excited about starting up again, you could just about smell the anticipation. Trail headed down (“Head”? “Down”? Who said “head”? Who said “down”?) into the wilds of Winslow Woods Park, and then headed (crikey) south to Azalea, running between two houses on private property, private property being hare trail violation #1,384,226 for the day. It then turned and went south again (I have no sense of direction) before it veered onto a path belonging to an apartment complex. Passing the large sign reading, “PRIVATE PROPERTY,” the hash got to see a lovely green pond surrounded by an enormous impenetrable black chain-link fence. The message delivered by that fence to children of the apartment complex: NATURE IS DANGEROUS! STAY AWAY! STAY INSIDE AND PLAY MORE VIDEO GAMES!

But I digress. Trail went across a hillside, past the two-square-yard patios of more apartments, and eventually onto Henderson. Then down (See how often we use “down”?) Henderson to the hares’ abode. There’s not much to say about this part of the trail because it was, like, marked. With flour. Weird. Of course, the hares would have some flour left, because they had so much left from the first half of the trail. Anyway, we ended on the hares’ patio after passing a dead cat, which many people found remarkably interesting.

At circle we drank, and enjoyed the hares' hospitality, and sang songs, and thanked the hares for a shiggy trail, and Suzy swore she’s going to work on the hymnal, and the first-timers were introduced, and we did whistle check, blah blah, blah blah, blah blippety blah. After "Swing Low," the pack managed to screw up the on-after, ending up at various spots around downtown Bloomington, which, after a trail like the one we had just finished, isn’t really very surprising.

May the hash go in peace. May the hash get a piece.
WL

Next trail: May 30. Hare: Garden of Beatin’.