InterAmerica's Hash 2005 - Day Three - Saturday, September 3
Time for the Real Runs
InterAm was in full swing by now, and pretty much everyone who was coming had
arrived. We had eggs, Canadian bacon and toast for breakfast, and wandered
around talking with people we hadn't seen for a while, and with fellow PB
hashers. Me and Yeast and CA all decided we were going to do one of the longz
runs (L2).
I got some Dave-time in the hotel room watching the hurricane Katrina
news and reading about struts tag libraries. I kept looking out the window for
yellow school buses, and about 11:00 am I saw them. I got my hash junk
together and wandered downstairs. Sex on the Beach and his wife (dang, what's
her name) were going also, so all of us got on the same bus.
Three buses full of hashers left right on time. And we even had a tub with
beer and water in it. It was a long ride north, about an hour. We passed a
bunch of ski resorts, and finally pulled into a non-descript gravel parking
lot. The crowd milled around for a while. I put on the pre-exposure poison
ivy blocker, and finally we got some instruction from Moon. The trail
markings were semi-complex, involving orange surveyor tape (but not the faded
orange tape that was already there). And watch out that we didn't get on the
medium trail by mistake. On on.
It was a good trail, although we were a little nervous after the first mile or
so. We couldn't find any trail off a check, and Moon kept saying "someone's
taken down the marks". It's bad when the hare is shouting "are you?".
Eventually he threw down some flour and got us back on trail. Good trails,
running up and down ski slopes (mostly up, somehow). At about mile three
we crossed a road, and saw the buses filled with hashers for the medium
trail (M2). We mooned them, and they continued on down the road. But we
would see them again... In a couple more miles there was a good beer stop,
complete with keg, and then another one near the end. This one had a
gas-powered daquiri machine. Mmmm, daquiri. The end was only a mile or so
from there. I was in the top 10 FRBs, so I got one of the last of the beers
out of the tub in the bus. Me and Yeast washed down with the post-exposure
poison ivy stuff, and eventually they got the kegs tapped and the beer flowing.
Most of the hashers were in, and then the medium hashers began wandering in!
Their bus drivers had gotten lost, and dumped them at the road crossing where
we saw them. They had done six miles instead of three. Eventually we killed
the kegs, loaded up the buses, and hit the road.
We didn't go back to the hotel; instead we went directly to Ft. York near
downtown Toronto. Everyone read the plaque one the way in, which talked
about the peace-loving Americans who had come to visit Toronto in 1813, to
express their dismay at the British who had burned Washington DC in 1812.
Inside the fort there were tents, food, and beer. We could see the CN Tower
(*not* the Space Needle) in the distance. I inhaled a plate of food
and couple beers, and had a little nap in the sun. Mmmm.
Eventually I woke up, and lay in the grass with Circumspector for a while.
There was a big flatbed trailer which was to be used as a stage, and people
began gathering around it. First there was a presentation to a long-time
hasher. I forget his name, but it involved two topless women and a bagpiper.
More people on stage. I think it was the DC hash.
Then a pretty funny skit by a married hash couple, with her spurning his
marriage proposal until he coughed up the cash. Then somebody got his bedpan
hashit back, and had to drink out of it.
And finally a really bizarre skit. A guy pretending to be dead (think Weekend
at Bernie's) was carried on stage and propped in a chair. Then a hot-looking
older hasher did a long striptease on stage, trying to get him to come back
to life. Lots of pantomime by her. It went on way too long, and she didn't
get naked, both of which drew crowd disapproval. I don't even remember how it
ended, but she kept her clothes on. Then it got too dark to take pictures,
and eventually we made our way to the buses and back to the hotel.
The Mr. InterAm competition had been postponed until later that evening, due
to darkness, so I went down to see it. Muddy was the only competitor, since
he had scared off everyone else. He did a variation of his 2003 act, complete
with opera singing, and the yellow thong. What could be better than than a
fat man prancing about in a bikini? The crowd agreed, and he was unanimously
voted InterAm's first-ever two-time Mr. InterAm. You can't really see very
well, since I was too far away, but if you look really closely in the second
picture you can see Muddy and his yellow bikini.
Then I drank beer until I went to bed.
Oh, I almost forgot. You can see the GPS download of
the trail here. I was really disappointed to find that Microsoft's TerraServer
does not have aerial coverage of Canada, so you can't see the terrain. What
you can see, at the bottom of the page, is the elevation of the trail. It
looks like we ran up and down over a 1300 foot range.
Day 4
