GFH3 Run #1,697; 15 May 2013

Man, if the Magnificent Mufti had full use of both legs, he'd be kicking himself for missing this one.  It is rare that our relatively serious & sedate hash sees so much riot and rumpus in a single evening.

So as usual, when gathering at the Reston Pony Barn, we reflect on the irony of Chip Off the Old Dick's preferred staging ground.  After all, when it's a COtOD trail, how many of you yearn for a pony on which to complete it?  And yet, there's never a pony around.

But, in a big surprise, COtOD and co-hares Easy Strider and Phoenix Rising (both also reputed to be capable of setting a death march when they want to) kept the trail reasonably compact, and most of the runners were back in about an hour.  It may have felt like longer, but that's because the heat was up a bit high, and the humidity wasn't too far behind, so everyone looked and felt a little more ragged than the run would warrant under more clement conditions.  (No, I do not know why I am being so aggressively alliterative in this piddling post.  It just keeps happening.)

Hash Hero, on his pedestal, being praised and glorified by the assembled multitude.

The walkers had all the benefits of planned-community and former-distillery Reston's lovely woods trails, but they know the kind of spread COtOD lays out (Maria:  "You owe me.") and so headed back for the pavilion ahead of the runners.  There was pizza, lasagna, salad, boatloads of chips and dips and many kinds of cookies and I don't know what else besides as ES brought two lanterns and no one else brought any so by 8:15 it was a bit hard to see anything.  Anyway, more than enough to feed even this crowd of 40 or so.

With the Mufti still lost to us (woe!), the Oral Advocate called the roll, with his junior spawn cheering him on in between doing chin-ups on any available overhead bar.  Someday I'm going to do a chin-up.  We had Melanie, back for run number two after only about an eight-week hiatus, and Cockpit E's junior spawn was there too.  Everyone "sang" Happy Birthday to Radar, even those who had a mouthful of pizza at the time, and he bore it bravely.  There were ballots to vote on what would be the best date for the Anniversary Hash, so the Mufti will confer with host and hostess and maybe we'll get an actual date in a week or two.  And there were vigorous cheers for our hash heroes, with no booing because it was an inarguably GREAT TRAIL, with shortcuts and everything.

This is not a usual part of the hash, although that it didn't make any sense was entirely in keeping with hash tradition.

And Oral A. missed a runner or two on the roll call -- the sort of thing that almost never happens -- and in retaliation, two red devils, with horns and eery grins and satin capes and pitchforks and even a tail (just one tail between the two of them as far as I could tell), appeared out of the dark night reeking of sulfur (or something - they certainly reeked) and called down curses and imprecations about the assembled multitude, and threatened and garbled and sang off-color ditties (off-key as well) and recounted the sins of the GFH3 at great length.  And then Oral A. double-checked his roll and realized he'd missed Ole Fud and Strac, both celebrating their runs number 666.  Yikes!  A little more care with the roll and we might have been spared this late-night terror.

Has anyone volunteered to host Ghanarrhea when he shows up in June?  Please do.  And feel fabulously free to take a peek at the pix if you please.