I checked the webby, and it was Chilly Pussy – setting a run out towards Ob Khan. Fantastic – I remember about a year ago we had a 20(ish) minute run that HRA did twice by mistake from the same place. I complained bitterly at the time, but secretly was looking forward to something similar today! But then… it turned out Anything was the Co-Hare…. AAAARGH! Lets hope Belly Dancer didn’t have anything to do with this, would we all make it back alive?
Skiddy thought better of it and did his best to destroy the bridge off the canal, and in turn attempted to thwart the hash by blocking access to the rest of the hashers! With due respects to all injured in the incident, and with the bridge cleared, we made it to the run site where Chilly Pussy said nothing in the hare brief. Anything did say something – not sure what – it confused our visitors, while the rest of us looked to Humperdick to lead us off.
The sniff did a good job as the trail started off confusingly, but before long we were running along and hit a V check. By tradition, after a V check you may get a check back. The benefit of Check Backs are that you know for sure you are going the wrong way. Without a checkback it isn’t certain – you could still be on trail! Perhaps you missed a branch in the trail, perhaps someone had picked some of the paper up and the trail was still there a bit further on. I, for one, vote in favour of check backs – they make life easy. IF there is a hugely compelling reason to avoid checkbacks (and I can’t think of one), then I am in favour of the hare brief informing us before we set off. Sadly I spend a good deal of time dancing around in circles trying to figure out what was going on – after all nobody could call “OnOn” from the other branch anyway.
When I was completely convinced I was on the false trail I did what I could to rejoin the pack and relay the message that V checks weren’t quite as we expected. As it happened I found Superman and Frozen Dick first and realised I was well off the pace. When I saw a line of hashers clambering up a steep incline off the main path, I remembered going that way before – was it Alice? or Throbbing Ninja? – Anyway, last time Kwazi went straight on and that seemed the more sensible option to me. Sure enough I rejoined HRA, Horny Monkey and Morning Woodn’t as we set off on familiar trails.
So far I had spent more time “near” the trail than on the trail, and that wasn’t about to change! We slipped off trail into ‘looking’ mode a couple of times, and each time I seemed to take the longer route to catch up with the calls. When the trail headed 90 degrees to the left steep up into the wild jungle off the road, I decided to take the potentially longer, but flatter route around the mountain. Amazingly I hit trail again and after a quick detour through a bees nest, I was back on my own on the road to the On-In.
Fortunately when I got back the short cutting DFLs were already there and we only had to send a few bikes and trucks out to find the lost hashers. Wow – I didn’t expect that from Chilly Pussy!!!