GFH3 Run #1,768; 27 August 2014

The Return of Bill!  And, for a change of pace, a North Reston trail!  The Bill part is more entertaining, however, so let's explain:  Bill used to hash with GFH3, back in 2006, 2007-ish, but had gotten out of the running habit (work, kids, etc.).  He wanted to get back in shape.  So he decided the way to achieve his fitness goal was to host a hash -- and get someone else to set the trail, so he could run it, so he'd have to start running again so he'd be ready to run his own hash.  All clear?  Anyway, I said I'd be happy to assist, and he started training, with Rasta the lovely vizsla's help, and tonight they ran the hash together, for the first time in six or seven years, so yay.

Bill, Rasta and Bill set up for guests.

They had 17 friends to help them, and so cascaded down the back lawn and into the Reston trails, which took them to the Herndon trails, south and back east again and up the Fairfax County Parkway (turkeys) or the pipeline (eagles, who surely enjoyed the dry-stream crossing), and hence back to the house with four or five miles on the GPS from a 3.85 mile true trail.  The nine or ten walkers had a paved loop of just over one mile, and most exercised the option of extending that a bit with some out-and-back stuff.  It was a nice night for extending:  hot, perhaps, but dry and sunny until the sun set.

No Jamaican feast this time, just good old Chesapeake-Bay shrimp boil, plus a pescatarian variation with Bayou country spices.  We drank sparkling wine (get it?  We'll wait...  Get it?  Bubbles?), Rolling Rock and Red Hook and Black Box and lots of other stuff.  Rolling Rock goes best with a shrimp boil.  There were birthday cookies for Puss in Boot and a birthday cake for me (very surprised; Heater Beater is both devious and duplicitous).

Also, Mini Schlonga returned from his looooong
summer break to celebrate his 199.5th run with GFH3.

The Mufti called the roll, but maybe didn't record the #1s of Bill the Nephew or Megan.  Perhaps they'll join us next week, in Arlington, and we can all shout, "98 to the cup!"  Bill the Host responded to the Mufti Challenge (get ten extra runs if you know your count from years ago) by guessing 25, but he was actually at 27.  The Mufti drew a limp hand across his relieved brow before marking the attendance sheet.  The putative flash (second-grade version) was too busy boiling and baking to take many photos, but there are a very few right here.

Here is the story of how the GFH3 met Bill, who reports the group is a little slower and a little louder than when he was a regular lo those half-dozen or so years gone by:  In the fall of 2005, Blow in the Hole attended her first hash on the recommendation of Thanks for the Mammaries.  She joined us infrequently over the next several months, but on one of those occasions, Zipperhead told her that a hasher ought to host by the time of his or her tenth run.  So, on her tenth run, in summer 2006, she hosted.  She rented the party room at her swim club in Herndon, right near the Reston line and the Runnymede and Sugarland trails, and TftM and I'm Not Dead Yet helped her scout and set trail.

While scouting, they decided they needed a cut-through from the stream trails onto the streets near Fairfax County Parkway, and so rang a doorbell or two.  Bill answered one, and when TftM asked whether he'd mind a few nice people jogging across his lawn on Wednesday evening, Bill said, "Is that a hash?  Why not have them run right through the house instead?"  So the trail went across the stream, up the yard, onto the deck, with a big blob of flour right by the back door.  And the pack went across the stream, slowly into the yard, and then milled about by the deck, asking each other if anyone knew who lived here.  Bill invited them in, and they went, tentatively, in the back door and out the front, where Bill had set up the lawn sprinkler as it was an exceedingly hot night.  And a couple of weeks later he came to the hash as a runner.  Welcome back, and thanks for hosting!

GFH3 Run #1,767; 20 August 2014

First time host Katy did the hash proud tonight, getting the downpour out of the way early, and the runners on the road promptly at 7:00 in the hot-and-humid aftermath.  Co-hare Thanks for the Mammaries drove out to re-lay marks damaged by the rain; the hares had almost finished setting before the skies sundered.  A big ol' walkers' contingent of about a dozen (clean to start; a dirty dozen by the finish), plus newcomer Bruce, enjoyed a paved trail largely of their own making.

The roughly 19 runners got some winding roadways and a good bit of pipeline.  A plethora of shortcuttery and a mismarked check or two brought them On In in widely-spaced clots of one and two and three and five.  Nipples can tell a story of minor adventure better than it can be told here.  Ask her!  The trail was brief enough that most everyone was in before dark, which arrives so sadly early nowadays.

Twilit clot of three

And at the garage, the 37 hashers were met with a bevy of sandwich fixings and some gigantic turkey legs, which they enjoyed with enthusiastic gesticulating.  There's just something about a drumstick, isn't there?  Beverages and seating were both plentiful, and the evening made for lingering.

Mufti ran down the roll, with Zipperhead making 1177 (the double ones and double sevens, not that anyone seemed to care much) and Katy, who first joined this group for run #1151, back in 2003, making it back onto the A List from the ignominy of C.  First-timers Bruce, who does not replace Duke but makes a fine addition to the PPPP household, Mike and whoever that was dancing with the hostess, did not seem to sign on for the roll.  Curious.  They are all in the pictures, though, the most revealing of which are courtesy of Puss in Boot.  Thanks!

She says she's not dancing, but she is.  She is.

Next week:  The Return of Bill!

GFH3 Run #1,766; 13 August 2014

left to right:  Not Jeff Schwarz, Not Jeff Schwarz

The Fourth Annual Jeff Schwarz Memorial Run!  What a fine tradition it is.  It began on the third of August in 2011... wait.  It actually began in July 2011, when the Mufti checked the Hareline and discovered a stranger had signed up to host on 3 August, at the Reston Community Center near Lake Ann.  "Does anyone know Jeff Schwarz?" he inquired, via e-mail and shouting.  "Is he the guy..."  "I think he might be..."  "Didn't he come with..." were the various replies.  Receiving no response when he e-mailed the putative host, the Mufti, earning his salary yet again, whistled for help.

Where it all began -- Radar was there, of course, just on the other side of the camera.

Since Lake Ann is rich with restaurants, a select group thought it would be easy to find one to host the On In, and settled on Kalypso's Greek Sports Bar and Sidewalk Café.  Then all that was left was scouting and setting a trail!  Frequent hero I'm Not Dead Yet and high-energy Mini Schlonga put their hands in the air, and chose a live set so they wouldn't need to take quite so much time off from work to get the trail laid.  They did not get caught, and at least one hasher got to order flaming cheese, so the next year everyone decided we should do it again.  The Second Annual JSMR was on 22 Aug 2012, again with a live set; the Third on 7 Aug 2013 (INDY and MinS dead-set that one), and now the Fourth, with Tasty Cakes pretending to be Sri Lankan.

The Third Annual featured checks with a 'JS' logo.

All this is a very long way of saying that, while Rochester, Minnesota, is a great place in which to feel humbly grateful for one's rude good health, it's not the ideal location for reporting on a hash.  Someone better have ordered that flaming cheese, though.

The Mississippi River is entirely irrelevant to today's hash.

THESE JUST IN:  Photos from Radar of the actual event.

GFH3 Run #1,765; 6 August 2014

Fancy stuff tonight, as Blow in the Hole rented the party room at her Herndon swim club, and called in the caterers so she could devote more time to setting:  "It's a little longer than I meant it to be," she explained of her trail.  But with sunshine and mild temps, as well as reasonable humidity, and a hostess with a reputation for most-est-ing, 43 hashers turned out for the run tonight.  Alex and John popped up again, bringing mother and wife Ellen for her first GFH3, Radar tore himself away from the Cape or whatever more exotic travel has taken him from us, Heater Beater made it his third hash in a row -- because of that mild weather, you see -- Melisande limped along, Flowerkraut brought a swelling hand (yellow-jacket sting), etc. etc.

"She did one thing, and she did another thing, and I didn't do much of anything..."

And Zipperhead and Bionic Babe were there, having helped set, and thereby creating a not-that-confusing array of different false-trail styles, plus one hare's arrow that pointed in two different directions.  The 24 runners got it all figured out pretty quickly, and were through the little bit of shiggy and almost at the water stop before the water stop was.  (The official water stop, that is; not the impromptu water stops of Zipperhead wanting to see who would fall for the pipeline decoy and other fun tricks.)  They had a back-porch audience near Dranesville, and the neighbors were kind enough to cheer on the pack as they pounded up the hill toward the cooler and a five-spoked check.  The Beer Near sign, a few miles farther along, did not get washed away by lawn sprinklers before most of the hash had made it back to the On In.  Rrocks Starr mentioned that he had noticed that "little longer than I meant" part BitH had described.  Runners finished between about 8:20 and 8:40; walkers were done somewhat earlier, heh heh.

Whippersnapper!  Putting on a show for...

a back-porch cheering section.

The party room was seriously festive, with centerpieces and highly effective a/c, and the pasta and salad and rolls laid out on long tables.  The volume from 3.5 dozen chatterers was considerable, and when Mufti got ready for the roll, it required shrill whistles from three or four tables to calm the crowd.  There were four first-timers with us:  Paul, Ellen, Devon (fast) and Rudy, who vanished before the roll so we must hope he takes enough time out from the San Diego, San Antonio, Hong Kong and Mount Vernon hashes to join us again someday.  Nobody had unusually exciting numbers, but we did get an update on Dr. Pecker, PhD.  As Mufti notes, he is a low-pressure guy, but the 30/60 he recorded after his recent cardiac procedure was a bit worrying at first.  The good folks at Norfolk Hospital soon had him up to better numbers, and he is now doing well - and probably back home tonight.

Beer very near indeed, now.

Dr. P, PhD didn't make the photos tonight, but everyone else did.  You may notice that orange is indeed the new black.

GFH3 Run #1,764; 30 July 2014

The last A-to-B I can remember was run number 1,500, in November 2009, when the hounds had to traverse all of the five or six miles between I'm Not Dead Yet's and Queen Cobra's.  For tonight's run, Heater Beater and Rough Cut, after dragging 31 of us out to Leesburg on a weeknight, threatened a reeeeally long A-to-B trail, claimed they were hoping to win the Death March Award, and promised vehicular transport to get everyone back from the On In at B to their cars at A.  Funny thing was, it actually was a decent-length trail:  several GPSes hit five-and-a-half.

Leesburg on a gorgeous night.

But ha ha!  The B was actually only three blocks from the A!  So the 17 runners got a BIG circle around to the east and north of Leesburg proper, and through a cemetery somewhere along the way, and then plunged back into the quaintest little downtown in northern Virginia to jog east along Loudon Street and so to HB and Puss in Boot's new little cottage.  It's a fixer-upper; they plan to rehabilitate it and then rent it out to some lucky single, or couple, or very small family.

A drinking club with problems walking past a bar.

The walkers chose a variety of routes and distances, and found such distractions as a closed model-train store against whose windows a few hashers rubbed their noses, and a bar that temporarily distracted two of the entourage from their vigorous exercise.  Everyone made it to the On In eventually - the runners' pack actually keeping pretty well together - to enjoy a gloriously warm evening on the lawn, watching the sunset dim a pale cerulean sky to mauve, and gradually to black, lit by an improbably slender sliver of moon.  And scarfing down Peruvian chicken while they did so, washed back with Red Hook and Tecate and cabernet sauvignon according to preference.

Perfect party house

The excitement of getting rid of a pair of lost-and-found shoes and two shirts before the run began was not enough for the Mufti, so he welcomed Rrocks Starr back from South America (some geographically-challenged cynic demanded to know whether he'd been exposed to ebola), and made Chip Off the Old Dick unseat himself from his comfortable wall to stand in the middle of the crowd and accept great cheers for achieving 700 runs, and led a round of hip-hip-on-ons when hash heroine Blow in the Hole volunteered to host next week.  Cheers, of course, to the gracious hosts, their attempts at trickery easily forgiven.  When the weather's this great, everything's forgiven.  Photos here if you want them; thanks to Beef Strokemoff for taking a turn with the camera.

GFH3 Run #1,763; 23 July 2014

Well!  This streak of folks who haven't hosted for a while stepping up to host is all to the good, as the Oral Advocate proved with a short run and a great dinner.  And even the threat of thunderstorms couldn't keep 25 of us from gathering under the pavilion, in the heat and humidity and a low, dense mass of gunmetal gray clouds, to enjoy all the heroic host had to offer.

First, he promised no poison ivy.  Next, he promised that short run, claiming to have heard complaints.  Finally, he sent the pack of 18 runners away, so he could nip back home and retrieve the turkey and beef he'd been smoking since 2:00pm.  Yowsa!

The pack zoomed away up the street, crossed the parkway to circle behind the pool, and took to the trails by the time (about 7:28pm) those clouds starting hurling rain and lightning upon the earth.  The much smaller walking contingent had almost made it back under cover by then, as they chose to keep the walking really brief - up the street to Mufti's to return Mango and her houseguest, Oscar, to the safety and comfort of roof and walls.  O.A. assured the only-slightly splattered walkers that the runners should be mostly under trees by now.  Relieved of that almost overwhelming worry, the walkers then felt free to talk about beer.

They didn't walk far enough to work up a sweat, so you know all the dark patches are rain.

The runners were all back by about 8:00pm, entirely cheerful and with about three miles, or a bit more, on the GPSes.  Happy as they were with the run, they were ecstatic at the sight of the carvery station O.A. had improvised, with its array of sandwich fixins and himself at the board, knives in hand.  The poor man thought he'd smoked enough meat for at least 30, and would be enjoying leftover beef for dinner for several days.  Not so much:  the hungry and appreciative hashers demolished pretty much every scrap of meat available.  People who had the turkey thought it so good they should try just a slice or two of beef, and vice versa, and eventually everyone stopped pretending and just said, "I'll have another sandwich, thanks!"  So O.A. moved on to slicing watermelon, and passed that around until the crowd was sated.  Looks like it's leftover chips and lettuce this week, dude.

Thanks for the photo, Ronda!

As the watermelon made the rounds, the Mufti began his roll call, alerting all to the presence of Just One More, who's been AWOL since sometime in the 90s.  (Well, it feels like that long.)  So tonight he showed up with a great contusion around the right eye, having wrestled a bicycle and lost earlier in the day.  Offered ten bonus runs if he knew his current run count, JOM guessed 262, and got a Bronx cheer and 235.  Katy, back after a respite of seven years, came thisclose to winning her bonus, but missed it by one, and hence moves forward to a respectable 14.  Justin and Ronda both had easy guesses, at #1; Matty earned #2, and the Mufti hit one thousand, five hundred fifteen -- the double 15s!

Rough Cut is closing in on 900, and celebrated by heroing up for next week.  That's right, we're off to Leesburg!  The boss will understand if you need to duck out early.  If you're interested in what we looked like this week, check here for photos.

GFH3 Run #1,762; 16 July 2014

Happy hashing!

Details garnered at long distance:

Lots of people (like, about 40) showed up to enjoy the fantastic trails of Scott's Run, perfect weather and a refreshing dip in the pool.  Hash hero Cocked and Loaded set an enjoyable run with plenty of woodsy bits.  Hash heroine Queen Cobra called in Papa John and made sure there was salad.  Beverages were varied and plentiful.  Life is good.

And no one wore this many clothes.

THIS JUST IN:  Photos from Radar!