Bali Hash House Harriers 2

This was detected as far away as Pettitingat, Jimbaran and Seminyak last week: “Come quickly Gretchen, Fifi! Les ‘Ash ‘Ouse ‘Arrieurs TWO are ‘aveeng a rurn commemoratif! Surelee there will be les tee shirts misprintaired (e.g. “Horny Heering”) and les chickairn satay gristlee. Tres magnifique! Come, we go.” I’m not taking la piss here, please don’t misunderstand. Everyone is more than welcome on BHHH2, but it is truly astounding what the promise of a little cotton jersey and a few sticks of chewy chicken with gluggy rice will do for the attendance sheets. A hundred and forty punters showed up last week and I’m fairly certain that not all of those actually celebrated the El Dorado of the chicken satay or the jersey bonanza. But the promise… ah, the promise. Maybe what we should do to keep the figures running reasonably high is advertise tee shirts every week, make TWO pieces! And satay sticks, make TWO pieces! Four lucky winners (or maybe TWO!) It wouldn’t be a false claim and would keep the expenses down. But I jest, what a jester am I.

Speaking of false advertising, last week must have seen the greatest discrepancy between posted run durations and actual run durations since American military casualties in Vietnam, or in reverse, the fishes and loaves miracle. The short purported to be 5 K was at least 9 K or more, and the long initially said to be 9K stretched out to 13K. Some of us (who are currently in the Hash Witness Protection Program along with the Hares and are therefore cloaked in secrecy) Horny Herring in other words, didn’t regain the car park until well after 8 pm, eek! But he spent most of that time collapsing and getting up, finding his feet as it were. Spare a thought for the poor man. It’s difficult not to tangle your legs up when they are 7 feet and 7 feet 1 inch long respectively, and represent the vast majority of his body. Just kidding, I’m such a kidder. They’d call me The Kidding Kid, but I’m too ancient to be called the Anything Kid.

It was however, a very scenic, interesting and varied run and if the Hares are ever spotted again, perhaps masquerading as male go-go dancers in a retro Dusseldorf night club, or emerge from their deep cover as Eskimo seal hunters, we can thank them heartily for this run which was bagus sekali in every sense of the words. Allow me to digress a moment, as is my wont, while I point out the power of the mighty little comma as related to the above undercover professions. One can completely change the meaning of the phrase e.g. “stop clubbing baby seals” like this: “stop clubbing, baby seals”. Just thought I’d mention it. Anyhoo, Oczy and Bemo, fantastic run guys, take a watch or a tape measure next time, kidding again, it was unanimously excellent. The words “Oczy and Bemo” can be rearranged into “made a boa cozy” for example, by the way, if you’re interested.

I was comprehensively knackered at the end of the short, but loved every minute of it. I especially liked the (almost) last part of the run in the grounds of the Semayang Resort wobbling across the suspension bridge, down the spiral staircase and through the quaint walkways between the decorative sawa ponds coated in bright lime green algae on their surfaces. The view there of the river rushing foaming between large semi-submerged boulders was also quite dramatic from above. Followed by the river crossing, this (almost) capped off the run in fine style, except that there was still another k or so left to stagger and pant home (my breath was coming in short pants, so to speak) after the “on in” . All markings and paper were, however, admirably clear with nary a head scratching moment spent, despite a certain nonchalance related to sheer distance. Am I repeating myself yet? Stop me if I start leaning towards it. I really was a remarkably happy camper when the beer truck finally hove into view, which is the absolute last thing I’ll say on the subject. Holy shit, it was a long short (second last, then). I would suggest releasing the hares into the wild, but we already did and look what happened.

The circle was a rowdy, deafening affair that started out a shambles and degenerated from there into practically a riot. Nothing short of Billy clubs, pepper spray and stun grenades would have improved things. It mostly resembled a scene from a prison movie cafeteria as a distraction during a break out when it didn’t look like “The Ten Commandments” with Grand Master Night Jar as Moses flinging stone tablets at a golden bull (was it a bull?) and apoplectically straining to control the reveling and abandoned Israelites. Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating, there was no golden calf (cow?). There were however a shitload of virgins for Hash Master Labia to deflower, which he did with his usual flair, reminding them that BHHH2 was their mother Hash “until you doy” just in case the gravity of the situation was lost on them and just before drenching them in consecrated water.

What can I say? Every Hash is different, unless you count the ones that aren’t, and I guess it would be a bit boring if they were all the same. Yea, verily I say unto you, we must remind ourselves that nothing is sacred unless of course it’s a golden steer, or something.

Meanwhile, see you wherever we are led by the hairs and the hair raiser on Saturday, coming. Coming?

On on.

J.B.