The 500th Ithaca Hash

OK so maybe this isn’t the 500th rehash of the Ithaca hash, but it is the rehash of the 500th run of the Ithaca hash. And a shitty hash it was!

Over 70 harriers (for a while we thought there would be 69 of us, but then a few more showed up) from various kennels across the northeastern US and Canada, came out to enjoy truly crappy weather, thick sloppy mud, disappearing hash marks, and BEER. The hash started with Butt Floss (in varying amounts of clothes) explaining how the Ithaca hash works for all of the out of towners and virgins. Checks are cirles in Ithaca where check means you wait till there are 5 of you, Y’s the trail splits, X is false, yada yada yada… I wasn’t paying attention; I knew all this, I was eager to hunt beer.

Off we went across the rain soaked forest, despite Floss’s chalk talk, out of town hashers responded with confusion upon seeing a Y in the road. But that Y, like many other Y’s and T’s that day, was part of a large false trail network. One of these false networks in the area around all the ponds tricked the majority of the pack at one point, including Co-Hare Little Oral Annie. Eventually we found our way back to true trail, a large back check, and BEER!

At this point I feel I need to interrupt this rehash to point out how much our hare’s rock. For those of you who haven’t been following the Bürpenstain beer saga, I will sum up the messy affair by saying that for the last 2 months I have been quite limited in the types of beer I can drink because of food allergies. Our Hares made sure that there was beer like fluid fit for my consumption at the beer stop. Thanks Floss and LOA!

The sloshilizing was excellent, partly because the fluid I was sloshing was beer (sort of), rather than the water I had been having at hashes recently, but mostly because of who we were sloshilizing with. Once satisfied we went off in search of more beer.

The trail leaving the beer near was full of deep puddles, probably avoidable, but what fun is that… After a while we realized we had been fucked, and we went back looking for a Y or check from which the trail could continue. Between the many half-minds on trail we managed to assemble a sufficient number of full-minds to realize that we hadn’t seen a Y or check since the beer near… The hash was confused, but soon our hares showed us a mark, that had at one point been a Y, but had been obscured, so off we went checking trail, and finding it.

The misdirection continued… After more puddles (these deeper, and with chucks of ice in them), and back checks, and running, we came upon another beer near, with more gluten free near beer for your’s truly, and hash ‘beer’ for the rest of the pack, as well as mimosa ingredients (another gluten free way to get drunk). Some dirty songs were shared, as was conversation, and body heat (we were all cold and wet by this point).

Then, the hash got really confusing. We were told to expect a turkey-eagle split, and to take care to avoid string used to aid in the search for some guy who didn’t have enough respect for the forest (or the forestry workers and volunteers who had to look for him) to kill himself at home. We ran for a while with no sign of a T-E split, and then wound up running on some trail where all of the marks were on the back sides of trees. Normally I would expect this kind of misdi-erection from Floss, but when we came to a back check where would could find no true trails other than the one we came in on, some of us took a gamble and figured we had been running no-no… We had… I was still looking for the T-E split when I saw On-In on the ground and a pavilion in front of me. As the pack came in we started carrying fire wood (thanks Hot Lips!), the keg (thank god!), and some livestock (In the hopes we could entice Roadkill to join us for the circle) from the parking area back to the pavilion. There we warmed ourselves and drank for a while before starting up a circle.

The circle was a drunken affair marked by skull receiving his Ithaca hash mug after it went missing several years ago, many Ithaca hashers getting their Ithaca hash mugs (for the first time), numerous ‘head gear in circle’ down-downs, the many virgins drinking, visitor’s (by home hash) drinking, songs getting fucked up, hashers getting fucked up. In short, it was great!

After the circle, the party moved of the Chez LOA, but in my inebriated stated I couldn’t move myself to Chez LOA, so Extra Testicle, being the good man that he is, transported one hasher (too fucked up to drive) and one car (managing to not fuck it up). Thanks man! At Chez LOA we would find pizza, more drinking, nudity, a variant of Jenga I hadn’t seen before that led to much fondling, and exposing of body parts, and the old stand by Beer Pong; you know hashers acting like hashers. A shitty on-after to follow a shitty hash…

Thank you to everyone who made this happen, especially our hares!

On-on to run 1000, Lord Bürpenstain