Hash Trash: The Second Annual Roller Derby Hash
OK, I was out and about last Saturday afternoon, stopping by the library to get a Nancy Drew book to read for my book cl—oops, I mean, for my son to read for his book club—and it was, like, 3:15, so I thought I’d head (head?) over to Twin Lakes Sports Park and wait for the hash to start. I figured I’d have a good 40 minutes before anyone showed, so I could hang out and read for a while. (When you have a page-turner like “The Flying Saucer Mystery,” sometimes you just can’t wait to get reading!)
I pulled into the parking lot at 3:20 or so, and there—fresh-faced and raring to go—is Nasdiq! Two hashes in a row he’s been early! And I mean early! Surely this can’t be good, I thought. The universe is once again off-kilter. It’s like signs of global warming or something. And indeed, the hash trail to come, hared by Garden o’Beatin’, was oddly weird. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
A small but lively pack gathered for the Second Annual Roller Derby Hash: The aforementioned Garden o’Beatin’ and Nasdiq, me, Ewe Tube, Maliblow Classic, Son of Gucci, and two semi-virgins/Blooming Fools first-time hashers Just Robin and Just Jamie. (There’s a term you don't hear every day: “semi-virgin.”) The weather was gorgeous—probably around 75 degrees and breezy. So after a few beers (including some GOB homebrew—thanks GOB!), the pack finally decided to get moving and do the trail.
After all, we were planning to go to the Bleeding Heartland Roller Girls double-header bout at 6, but anyone who did GOB and Ewe Tube’s last trail might have been forgiven for thinking that if the trail was anything like that one, we wouldn’t stand a chance in Paducah of making the start of the bout.
Trail went north from Twin Lakes through some fairly substantial shiggy (substantial enough to give me some poison ivy this morning—thanks again, GOB) and around the back of the Sportsplex. The pack ran into veteran Blooming Fool hasher and Bleeding Heartland Roller Girl Gosentite on the north side of the Sportsplex, taking a smoke break from her derby duties and looking smashing, simply smashing, in her roller girl attire. (To paraphrase the Gang of Four: “We love a girl in a uniform.”)
Anyway, trail cruised on through the Sportsplex parking lot and headed (headed?) out east across Bloomfield Road. It was at this point that perceptive hashers began to notice that we’d been on trail for almost 10 minutes, and we hadn’t lost flour yet for more than 10 or 15 seconds. What the hey? This is a GOB trail—and there’s flour everywhere! All the BTs are marked! Surely this wouldn’t last. But last it did, with the trail going in, out, and around the apartment complexes on the east side of Second Street/north of Weimer Road. For a while, semi-virgin Just Robin appeared to be the FRB, but then Gucci and I got behind (surprise) and by the time we got out on Weimer Road, following trail toward Wapehani, somehow Ewe Tube and Maliblow were, like, hundreds of yards ahead (ahead? who said ahead?) of the rest of the pack. Wanking shortcutters!
The pack got spread (spread? who said spread?) out along Weimer and the road to Wapehani, but fortunately the beer check was on the concrete deck just a few yards from the Wapehani parking lot. We gathered to drink mint juleps and beers while a sprightly but disgusting conversation about the differences between chiggers and deer ticks broke out. (That’s one thing about the Blooming Fools—I never feel like I could ever say anything awkward enough to be beyond the pale for a hash conversation.) Actually, before the hash, Gucci was talking about how he’d been bitten at a previous hash by turkey mites. It was kind of “parasite day” at the hash, really. Pretty much just like the witty type of conversation engaged in by Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley at the Algonquin Round Table in the 1930s and ’40s. I bet they talked about chiggers and turkey mites all the time.
But time was a-wastin’, so we set off from the beer check and headed (good grief) west toward 37, and then west (wait, no—south, then west? west, then north? I don’t know—do I look like a friggin’ compass?) into the apartments along 37. There were flour marks along the trail the whole way. Oh, there were false trails, I don’t mean to say the trail was entirely benign, but the false trails were marked, we never had to search for flour…it was just odd. It was like GOB had taken all the flour he had saved from his last trail (which must have been a considerable amount) and used it on this one. And the pack rejoiced.
Trail eventually wound its way back to Second Street and back to the start in the Twin Lakes Sports Complex parking lot, where people were already gathering for the Bleeding Heartland Roller Girls doubleheader (header? who said header?) bout. Though the straight shot back from the apartments spread us out a bit, we gathered in due time and got down-downs completed relatively efficiently. (Oo, that’s a terrible word for a hash: “efficiently.” Kinda makes chills run down my spine just writing it.) Semi-virgins Just Robin (who’d attended an Indy-Scent hash in her youth) and Just Jaime (who’d been an accomplice to GOB and Ewe Tube’s previous trail, but who had never actually hashed with the BFH3 before) were duly welcomed to the Fools. Nas drank for an anniversary, I think, or was it GOB and Ewe Tube? Maliblow drank for returning, Gucci drank for something, Ewe Tube drank for beating up some 1980s hair-metal wanna-bes, I drank for something, I can’t remember. I think everybody drank, but apparently I was too busy drinking to tell. If you didn’t drink, that’s a violation anyway so do a down-down on your own. Ziggy-zaggy, ziggy-zaggy, oy oy oy!
And then we adjourned to the Sportsplex where we watched the Code Blue Assassins beat (beat? who said beat?) the Circle City Socialites, and the Bleeding Heartland Roller Girls take out the Rockford Rage. And GOB still has the hashit. On friggin’ on.
The next hash will start at 4 p.m. on June 13 from somewhere in Monroe County, probably. I’m haring it, and will get the directions to the start to you as quickly as I possibly can.
May the hash go in peace.
WL
(If that last phrase doesn’t trigger a Pavlovian response in your mind, you need to make it to more Blooming Fools hashes! ON ON!)
