NYCH3 # 1072

NYCH # 1072, October 3^rd, 2004

Hares: Dave Hardy & Laird Stiefvater

Start:  Broadway & 103^rd St.

On-In:  Dive, Broadway & 101^st St.

Guest Scribe: Sarah Downunder

 

 

“Season of mists and yellow fruitfulness

Close bosom friend of the maturing sun…”

 

Ahh, hazy recollections, fruitiness and bosoms within reach.  The poet Keats could well have been describing a good hash. But he was not.  Autumn, rather than Alcohol, was his muse.  You know, that time when the days shorten, chlorophyll leaches from the trees, fills the byways with amber crunchiness, and the chill approaches.   Woodland critters large and small prepare for a period of quiescence and gorge themselves silly.  Silence, sleep and regeneration.

 

NOT ME, baby!  Like a bear in the wrong season, it was time to lumber out of the sleepy excesses of summer and wobble, joyously into Winter NYCH3 Sunday hashing.  After a summer of relative hashing abstinence, Manslave and I stretched blearily and began the migration across and uptown to the start.  The air was bright and cool.  You could almost smell the accidental crackling bonfires in the trash cans of the Upper West Side.

 

On a small island in the middle of Broadway, the pack jostled for dominance.  Alice “4 Wheel Drive” greeted me “just in case” she didn’t “see me again”.  The chill in the air increased.  All the familiar faces of seemed diluted by the Newbies of Summer, as is right with the ever-changing flux of seasons.  Hardy shuttled us off the median strip and on to the east side of 103^rd  ( but not before I stapled the hotline instructions to his grateful forehead)  There he drew large and small orange hash hieroglyphs for the Newbies visitors.  The visitors included a couple from the Mother-Country of hashing, Malaysia, and they both did a great job of representing with their hash attire.  (Our worn NYCH3 t-shirts looked rather wintry next to their spring-like matching hat-pants-top ensembles)

 

“The first mark is on the north side of 103^rd, heading west!” Hardy proclaimed. 

 

And we were off.  Or some of us were.  Hardy’s accent could nowt fool no-one, so it must have been the frustratingly complex, multiply-geographic directions that had more than a few hashers splintering like shotgun pellets in all directions over Broadway.  Oddly, all of the Newbie women, visitors and near DFL’s managed to comprehend the instructions and followed the trail over to Riverside Drive.  We almost lost a few of the “smarter” hashers who forgot that Riverside Drive traffic flows both north AND south (despite the tender warnings of “CARS!” Laird and Hardy had laid down).  Newbie Cheryl took a cell phone call as we descended into Riverside Park.  There, we promptly lost the trail.  We could see the petite figure of Michelle in the distance, heading down, down, to near West Side Highway level.  Also in the distance was one of the few FRBs, Nail Driver, who wasn’t befuddled by Hardy’s directions.  A hard-core group consisting of Legs, Sweet Marie, Cockstar, Manslave, American Dave G, myself and 2 newbie women refused to descend.  “The trail MUST come up again!” went the cry. 

 

Unfortunately, we weren’t on trail to begin with.  Like the fluttering leaves of fall (and with slightly more intelligence) we wandered aimlessly.  Then someone yelled “ON-ON” and forgetting our lazy mission statement, down we went.  Then up again.  This was the beginning of a trail ascent that, defying the laws of logic, continued up for the remainder of the trail.  An already splintered pack shattered further.  Wet Connection, not visible at the start, appeared like a willow-the-wisp on growth hormones before us as we made our way to Grant’s Tomb and looped back into the verdant arches of  Riverside Park.  Mean Jean reminisced not so fondly over a summer trail that Shana and Dan had set along this very epitome of “Grunge Greenery” and warned of a rusty gate over which was “urban shiggy” (AKA:  slightly used mud, definitely used condoms and not-going-there syringes.) This was apparently to lead back to the West Side Highway.  “F*ck that!” we all wheezed and short-cutted back to the trail at 125^th or so and around, south into Columbia University.  There, Danny and I lame-assed it over to Morningside Park and refused to descend the steps.  Danny’s hash memory asserted the trail would come out near 110^th Street near Central Park.  He was correct, eventually.  We missed a trail portion through Harlem, picking up a sweet virgin, Glenda, on the way.  She’d had the sense to shortcut, but also the unfortunate sense to shortcut following us.  Here it gets fuzzy.  (Yes, that IS redundant coming from this scribe.  Bite me.) 

 

However, a small pack consisting of Legs, Got Wood (like Wet Connection, she magically manifested herself in the glens of Riverside Park, AFTER r*nning from Chelsea to the start), Marie, Glenda, Danny and myself had reassembled near a small cinder track near 105^th.  Danny and Glenda gradually faded off, apparently following the real trail with Mean Jean, while the Brains of the Hash Establishment ran around the cinder track in a circle.  It was time to use the cell phone.  In our defense I submit Exhibit #1: A male wearing very tight grey cycling pants (and apparently nothing more aside from a prominent stomach jostling to and fro) who was doing laps of said cinder track.  We HAD to remove ourselves.  He was coming at us from the opposite direction….AGAIN.

 

And so it was we made our way to Dive, a very narrow bar on 101^st and Broadway, populated by football-mad locals.  Outside, a fair portion of the pack had already made it in.  Peter was busy scribbling on Cockstar’s write-up inside.  Bottom was attempting to hawk his haberdashery and Lisa, Seth and several others were milling about outside.

 

Then Laird staggered in almost immediately, under the weight of many pizza pies.  Unusual.  Pies.  So early?  No-one complained.  Hardy remarked that he’d collected from no less than 48 hashers, and the numbers were due to he and Laird’s trail setting ability, rather than the weather.  Who was to argue?  Early pizza forgives an eternal uphill trail on a perfect autumn day.  Good beer forgives arrogant locals (damn them! How dare they?) and a crowded bar.

 

But the attention is growing short as dim as this write-up blather is Summer Solstice long.   To the down-downs!

 

 

“They will be short

They will be few

For ‘midst the noise

Don’t know who was who”

 

— Sarah Downunder

 

Apparently Laird and Hardy received 2 down-downs.  Obviously, for the trail, and again, obviously for the over-crowded On-In. Then there were 6 Visitors/Virgins (unfortunately the Malaysian couple had left).  The women were apparently Glenda, Darlene, and Cheryl. Apologies to the men whom I left out.  A random blame for this I give to Smashmouth, in absentia.  Legs was then up for a chug.  Something about being hit by flying food thrown Other Than By A Hasher.  (This is about as surrealistic as it gets after only TWO beers).  Magoo and Bahamonde were next, being among the FRBs who were predictably “challenged” by Hardy’s initial hash mark instructions, blowing right past the first mark, northwards.  Bahamonde was retained at the front for AOTW.  Bahamonde’s with to hash with his dog was mentioned by JM “Too Long”.  (Silly Bahamonde.  Does he think we’re in the Brooklyn suburbs, for chrissakes?) That’s all I have to say about THAT.  Finally, Mastercard and The (Svelte) Body drank for ditching the first hash trail of the Cooler Season in favour of a Race. 

 

Then this Scribe continued to wane, having had little practice in the ways of her Summer-hardened hashers.  The winter sleep had temporarily overcome.

 

Oh, f*ck it.   Enough.  A little nap, a little more practice, and BRING ON SUNDAY HASHING:

 

“…to make delicious moan

Upon the midnight hours”

 

 –Keats

 

On-out.