Keeping up with the Pack: Hash Harriers in Washington, DC (Part One)

CLIO DOES RUNNING IN THE STATES

The snow had stopped falling, thankfully, and it was a clear night, but very cold, about -7°C: too cold. Exiting the DC metro at Adams Morgan station, I stayed close to my trusty Hash sherpa “Fistopher Bolumbus” (more on his name later) passing kebab shops and restaurants, as we kept an eye out for chalk arrows scratched into the pavement. You wouldn’t notice them ordinarily, but eventually they led to a patch of green on the verge of a park where 25-30 people were gathered, huddled and shivering, with light darting here and there from their head torches.

This was the Hash Pack. Gatherings can consist of up to 200 on warm summer nights, so on this chilly, windy dark one it was a pretty skeletal team.

The first person I met in the Pack was the “Hash Cash”, to whom I paid $5 for the pleasure to take part. I confirmed that I was a Hash Virgin, a first-timer. My name for the night was “Just Clio”.

So far, so weird.

A Hash beer van was parked alongside – filled with beer, obviously – and we stripped down to the layers that we were going to run in and chucked our coats, jumpers and bags in the back of the van. It was going to meet us at the midpoint, and then at the end of the Hash trail.

The organisers of this Hash Run, called collectively The Mismanagement, are also known as the “Hares”. One of the Hares, a lady wearing knee high socks with the word “BEER” running up them, yelled: “ANY VIRGINS?!” I walked tentatively over. She explained to me how the Hash trail worked: chalk blobs on the road marked the trail, a chalk circle was a “Check” where the trail could go one of many directions, like at a junction. We would have to search for continuation trail blobs down different roads. Sometimes, there could be some misleading fake blobs, so she showed me a particular sort of chalk arrow which marked the “True Trail”. Also, there were the letter combos: BN (“Beer Near”) and EN (“End Near”).

Noticing my expression of confuzzlement, the Hare said: “Don’t worry too much about this, just stay with the Pack, they will do all the work!”

Before we set off, it was made clear that we would not learn anything about the route prior (they can vary from two to nine(!) miles); only that there would be two shot stops and beer, at some point.

We formed a circle. It is customary for Virgins to introduce themselves to the pack, and having rehearsed the ritual phrasing I needed to adopt for this particular occasion on the Metro, I stepped into the middle of the circle and bleated: “I am Just Clio, and Fistopher Bolumbus made me come”. No prizes for working out the naughty pun in the last sentence! The Pack sang me a welcoming song. To the tune of Frère Jacque:

We’ve got Virgins (We’ve got Virgins)           

At our Hash (At our hash)

Gonna get ‘em drunked up (Gonna get them fucked up)

Down the hatch (Up the ass!)

And then we were off. Americans!

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