Bali Hash House Harriers 2

“Holy Spring, Batman!”

The sign on the gate to the Holy Spring in the Tirta Empul Obyek Wisata area adjacent the Presidential Palace on the run at Tampaksiring (appropriately enough) last Saturday read politely “If you are having your period, please do not bathe in the Holy Spring”, after which was, in brackets: “Ladies”, okay, here are the brackets, then, in the spirit of exactitude (Ladies). Well, I’m glad they straightened that one out for us, otherwise I for one would have been hard pressed to figure out at what section of the population this cautionary exhortation was aimed. I suppose they could have clarified further by adding “as opposed to green alligators and long necked geese, humpty back camels and some chimpanzees”, but no, not really necessary when you think on it, and a bit wordy (I should talk).

Speaking of ladies, many of our female “members’’ were AWOL last Saturday due to the advent of a certain Pink Ribbon Run taking place in Nusa Dua. I know very little about this, I’m told highly respected, event that has something to do with breasts and charity but anything to do with breasts, I’m willing to support (har), I’m a great believer in raising breast awareness (my own). Just kidding, I’m sure it’s a highly worthy and serious cause, neither of which I have ever been accused , but we did miss many of our lovely Harriets last Saturday. And they missed a bloody good run, truncated though it was at less than forty minutes for the short.

Relatively new Hares Deadwood, Dolly Wanker and Stain gave us a an extremely novel run jam packed with just about everything you could get into a run of such short duration advertised at 5k for the short which I swear, as did some Hashers GPS units, was not much over 2.8 km. Never mind, I say! It was still one of the best we’ve had recently. There were quite a few ups and downs on the run despite the Hares practically taking oaths on their mother’s graves that it was as flat as a pancake. One particular section in the middle of the short that was made up of concrete steps the size of Elvis in his Las Vegas years had Hashers (me) bent over double, hands on knees gasping like chain smoking 450 mt hurdlers. The valley views however, were spectacular as were the padi portions and the river and water features were cool, clear and soothing. Tampaksiring is such an attractive area and Saturday’s run makes it two on the trot in this general location. I don’t want to tempt fate as I did a few weeks ago with Pejeng and say there should be more of it, but there should, there really should.

Despite the enormous and colorful exhaust belching buses, the banana ibu2 and handicraft salesmen that not only don’t take no for an answer but don’t seem to know what it means in any language (even with accompanying gestures of negation and suggestions of directions for them in which to turn and depart), the Tirta Empul car park and its surrounding attractions is really quite a pleasant environment for a run site. With its quaint food stands (can anybody though, enlighten me on what a “fried batman” might be? I shudder to think), spaciousness and plentiful trees, it’s quite a good one in which to conduct a circle as well.

Labia badgered us into a vague facsimile of one and “best whatchicallit” black tee shirts that had not been claimed at the Victors were awarded. All of these were highly well deserved which goes to show our esteemed mismanagement committee has not been sitting on their hands, or anybody else’s: best tee shirt-Agent Orange (Anzac Run), best virgin hare run-Deadwood (Goa Gajah), best hare-Barnacle Balls (Banjar Gaga etc.) etc. Despite rumours of declining health, our Grand old Master was returned to us more or less in one piece, his legendary reputation for survival capability intact if not enhanced. On the occasion of United Nations Day he convened a motley summit of Hashers from the four corners of the earth and perhaps further afield for down downs. (Speaking of affairs international, last week China awarded its version of the Nobel Peace Prize to brutal Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe, thus giving even more credence to the saying “I’d kill for a Peace Prize”.) It was a smaller gathering than usual Saturday night but we made up for it in sheer lager consumption, ridiculousness and silly buggar mirth: Jangle Balls’ Italian contribution to U.N. Day “O solo mio, someone please blow mio” set the tone for all subsequent songs and addresses to end in “io”, i.e. “Swing low sweet chariotio, coming for to carry mio homio”. You had to be there.

Well Hashers, bad news: it looks like red meat, bacon and sausages are off the menu, causing cancer as they do now. I wonder then why back in the 60’s when dinosaurs roamed the earth and everybody smoked including household pets (and dinosaurs), nobody seemed to be overweight or dropped dead prematurely every 2.1 seconds from eating whatever they wanted. So, raspberries to CNN and their vegetables.

On on. See you at Auman for Labia’s run on Saturday.
J.B.