Mother Hash 70th Anniversary Bash

Ok fine followers of hash-land. I sincerely apologize for a big lack of updates. To date I am 5 behind.
Do I have an unwarranted, half-assed excuse? Sure I do! My cell phone (most of my updates are done via my cell phone and internet accessed on it) is bricked. Something happened somewhere alone the way (first day in Philippines) where half the keys don't work, and the phone would do strange things on its own as if it was possessed. When I tried to reset it to factory settings, the whole thing bricked. The touch screen doesn't even work now. Ghastly, I know.
Anyways, I am currently sitting in one Special Ed's upstairs lounge in Barrio Barretto, Subic Bay, Philippines and he has a laptop, so my discourse on the biology of rodent mammals can continue unabated (at least until I move on).
Two weekends ago (Sunday, Dec. 7th to be exact) I was fortunate enough to attend the Hash House Harriers (also known as the Mother Hash) 70th Anniversary trail and party.
Getting picked up for trail by one of the organizers was a bit of a snafu though as I was waiting at a bus stop by Petaling St. on the wrong side of Kuala Lumpur's main post office. I made poor Opera wait an extra 20 minutes as I figured out where I was vs. where he was then made a mad dash sprint to the other side of the building complex (which is fairly large).
Getting there early did help in one thing though, I could rego on the spot without wading through masses of people and got my goodie bag early on. The contents of which were basic, a Mother Hash 70th polo shirt and a Hash House Harriers 70th Anniversary Celebration Run magazine, chock full of hash history and tales from the trail.
Now, I know we're all accustomed to hash names (well, if you've been following the blog, I'm sure you are), but Mother Hash does it a little differently. They don't have "hash names" they really just use their own names. Occasionally a nickname will pop up along the way (G, Ah Pek and Dynamite for example), but that is fairly seldom. I guess that will make this post slightly less interesting (or not, your call).
As the first couple hours past prior to trail start the area started to flood with hashers. We were in the bottom of a rock quarry a couple clicks from a main road and off the beaten path enough that our idiocy would be endured by whatever local population might be in earshot.
Then it started to rain and the place started to just flood.
Hashers were jumping puddles, huddling under tents and jib-jabbering away about exactly how wet this trail was going to be when things finally kicked off. If not drenched by the rain, the folly would be mud. This was compounded when stories started to leak forth of a hasher "Jungle" Tom Besar who was lost overnight the last time they laid trail in this location. In fact, there was a full recount of his disappearance in the 70th Anniversary magazine that everyone was reading at some point while waiting for the rain to disperse and/or trail to start.
Apparantly he started trail extremely late, made a mad dash to catch up and fell off the side of the hill... twice.
Now decently injured and a touch off trail in the pitch dark of the jungle night, Jungle Tom felt it would be best to hole up until day break and then work his way out of his predicament. With no mobile on his person, Tom started looking for paper again the next day and eventually got out of the bush and into a clearing, then with the help of some good samaritans, was able to reach a main road and make a call to get picked up by the missus. He was out on trail for roughly 21 hours.
So yeah, we're holding trail in the same place Tom got lost in, it's no longer raining, but the ground is muddy and wet.
I'm not sure everyone reading this knows what freshly rained on jungle is like, but slippery is an understatement. The ground is thick slimy mud that cakes on your shoes and removes any semblance of grip you thought you might have had. A properly prepared hasher would be wearing soccer cleats and even then, it might not do any good.
So trail kicked off. I made the most of a decent uphill slope climb to work my way up with the FRB's with the plan of if I got tired, I could slow down, let others overtake me and end up smack-dab near the middle.
This strategy worked out exceedingly well for a while, until a massive circle jerk near the top of the first big hill sent me fairly far back in the group.
This was also the last bit of sane land we hashed on as it went from following wet and muddy hillside footpaths to just wet and muddy hillside. But who needs grip anyways, you can just slide around and use trees to control the movement. Oops, that one has thorns... I'll just grab that other one... ouch, that one too. Ah fuck, now I'll just have to manuver this without grabbing onto anything. Or sliding into any of those thorn trees. Yay!
After cresting the second large hill in a switch-back fashion, the down part was pretty simple. Go down.
Without anything sensible to grab on to and my shoes now caked with mud, I was running out of options though. I decided to just balls out go for it and picked the cleanest path down I could find.
Then I took that mis-step that I tend to do in these situations which left me sliding, then spinning, then sliding headfirst on my back down this fairly steep muddy hill.
I think I went down a good 20 feet when I reached out and grabbed a nearby tree root, spinning myself back around so I could just slide down the last 5 or so feet and step off the hill onto the service road winding its way around the mountain.
With my backside completely covered in mud, I kept on trail for a little while until a passing stream gave me the opportunity to lie down and do a half-assed job of rinsing myself off. Well, at least I got most of the mud out of my shorts.
With the most difficult portion of trail over, we followed the service road to a lakeside path where trail followed the leading edge of the water for another couple of kilometers (trail was supposedly 15k, though it felt closer to 12 or 13) getting pictures taken by the hash flash and arriving at a previously unknown (and much needed) water stop. There the hashers monitoring the stop said it was only 3k more back to the start and the On-In.
I jogged this little bit, catching up to a lot of the hashers who passed me long ago in the jungle. It was a great warm-down from the exertion of navigating the hill.
Once On-In they opened up the water trucks, two giant tankers with water in them spraying from random pipes. Everyone took the opportunity to get a much needed shower after trail, drying off and putting on a fresh change of clothes.
The food was brought out in all its deliciousness. Curry, noodles, rice, curry, noodles and curry.
They also brought out the beer made specially for the occasion.
You see, Tiger Beer is kind of the official beer of the Mother Hash. It's been in the Mother Hash since its inception in 1938. Only then it was known by the label Malaysian Breweries Ltd.
Working with the Hash Heritage Foundation (working to rebuild the Hash House where the original Harriers lived and started the Hash), Tiger brewed one batch of Tiger Beer using the original labeling and ingredients that were used back in 1938.
The back label states, "A special reproduction of the vintage Tiger Beer as consumed by the founders and early members of the Hash House Harriers, at its inception in the Hash House in Kuala Lumpur, in 1938 and in the ensuing runs before WW2"
Wankers and diddlers, this is a new level of cool!
As the food wrapped up, we all gathered our seats near the stage where Edwin Ho, the On-Sec (taking the combined role of GM and RA positions that most hashes have) and another hasher (whose name I cannot recall) gave out various down-downs either in honor of individuals that helped put the event together or random charges for such offenses as new shoes and Freudian slips of whatever fashion.
When the charges were all said and done, the man in charge of the stage brought out a group that he simply called, "the unmentionables" a singer and four background dancers.
The ladies did an admirable job with the slightly un-energetic group (what were they expecting, strippers? Probably...), until the singer of the group started little games requiring audience participation to liven things up.
Me being me, of course I got up on stage. Other top notch joiners-in were Wild Wolf/Propo from the Wolfpack hash in the Philippines and TRTL Cock (This Ride Tastes Like Cock) from San Louis Obispo, California. Yes, when it came to actual partying, the visitors outshone the locals. It was a little brass, but those were hard working gals trying to entertain us, it's only fair to help out!
So, the five little competitions were a dancing competition, an air-band style competition, the "swing the carrot hanging between your legs to move the potato on the ground from start to finish race" and "background dancer" thing.
After the girls left, Wild Wolf started a little circle of his own which I joined in and we continued the silliness fairly late into the night before I caught a ride back to the guest house to prepare for my next stop.