I guess Frozen was the hare, and Humperdick his cohort… But we were back down in the Dick Brother’s country, 6-8k from Sameong. I got there early, missing the traffic, and went for a bit of a warm up jog before the hash. No trouble from my knee, but a gift of a splash to the bemused hare.
Harebrief over with we set off and I knew we were close to areas I knew well, but I wasn’t quite sure exactly where we were. I got a couple of checks wrong while I figured out my sense of direction, and after a long wrong check, I got back to the front by one of Frozen’s favourite checks. A cross roads, with a circle check. We’ve had the same check several times now, coming from several directions. The obvious ways are the road trails, but there is a sneaky little footpath that you barely notice – unless you remember it of course. You’ll have to find another sneaky check, as it didn’t get me this time!
We got to the go kart track, and I opted to follow the route of a recent run, and found the trail running around it. Another circle check, close to where we’d had a check last Thursday, and again I’m on fire! Voices fading behind, I was off and running up a gentle hill. Another circle check on the road, and BAM! I am back behind Brownie, Graven and Poo again. We headed into the orchard, and I had a sneaky suspicion we were heading to the Dick brother’s favourite trail along the back of the hill.
Circle check on the edge of the orchard had me running up to the main trail that cuts through the woods. No On-Call yet… I carried on, and got to a circle check the same time I heard calls from my right. Carry on up the hill – OnOn! Then a circle check on the ridge… That caught us out. We often exaggerate how long we spend on checks, but that was a good 5 minutes according to my GPS, and I think that only records time in motion. Either way Junglicious was just to my left when she found trail, and Graven was just to my right. Unfortunately with canyons all around, and the On-On calls echoing around the rest of the pack struggled to figure out where we were.
Some more tricky checks, but the 3 of us broke away from the rest. We came down out of the hills and found the remnants of a circle check. Graven emerged to my right and that seemed the obvious way to go… After about 100m there was another circle check. On the top of the hill we’d gone circle to circle – we thought – although with old trail around it was a bit confusing. We had a good idea where we were, and with Junglicious just behind us, we continued and found trail. Where was Junglicious? She had been just behind us… Oh well, GI and I ran in together, kindly allowing the pack the opportunity to have fun with checking while we enjoyed a cold beer!
A great trail – many suggested it was just slightly too long, but seemed ok to me. Some excellent checks…. excellent, excellent checks. Good work Dick Brothers.
For me, the joy of the Happy Hash was the lack of committee, and the democratic nature of the community. Was.