How about when it is marked so poorly no one can follow it? I honestly don’t get why a Hare can’t be bothered to leave some powder and/or chalk marks at regular intervals along the chosen path. Certainly as a minimum, there ought to be clear indications of the intended directions at every junction and turning point. Yesterday’s trail, and I’m using that term loosely, was barely marked at all, which resulted in lots of missed opportunities. Hell, even us short-cutters couldn’t find the trail as intended, so we had no idea what we were unintentionally missing. Very disappointing and unnecessary.

Still managed about 7.5K on the afternoon, which was enough to wear me out. Next week is the Easter mountain climb and I’m honestly wondering if I have the strength and stamina necessary for that hike. As of now, my intention is to give it a go, I just hope I’m feeling more energetic by then. It was announced during the Hash circle last night that one of our members, Cum On My Boat, is potentially suffering from a COVID-related illness and has self-quarantined. She was one of the people I shared a vehicle to and from Angeles City a couple of weeks ago. And now she’s the second passenger in that car to fall ill, not including me. She actually didn’t start feeling any symptoms until Friday, the day after the birthday I also attended along with 50 or so other guests. That’s gonna be one hell of a contact tracing effort! Anyway, I’m still not reading much into this and I still don’t see any reason to believe I’ve got something more serious than a flu-like bug. It’s just all a little closer to home than I prefer.

To the Hash pictures then:

Anyway, I bitch and moan like the cantankerous old fuck that I am. The trail sucked yesterday, but I was outdoors in the fresh air and I still managed to enjoy myself. Of course, lots of beers afterward in a very nice establishment made forgetting the negatives all the easier.

I had an encounter with Joy this afternoon, and I’ll tell you about that tomorrow.

Stay tuned!

I thought I was, so I looked in the freezer to find something quick and easy to prepare. Then I remembered I’d bought a TV dinner, sort of on whim (was surprised to see it in Royal), and figured now was as good a time as any to pop it into the microwave.

It didn’t taste as good as I remembered, either. Oh well, sometimes those strolls down memory lane don’t go as planned. Best to leave the past in the past, I suppose.

Speaking of strolls, had a good one at yesterday’s Hash. And when I say good, I mean, good and hard. The “sane” group I hike with sliced about 1.5K off a 6K, Leech My Nuggets, trail. But that still left us with three climbs and two steep and slippery downs. (If you are wondering about the disparity between the number of ups and downs, the hike ended in Alta Vista after the third climb). And when I bitch and moan about the DOWNHILL more than the ascent, you know it had to be wicked bad. It wasn’t just the steepness going down, although that was tough, damn it was slippery as hell too. The grass and leaves are always something to be reckoned with, but yesterday there were loose rocks and pebbles underfoot as well. Gave a whole new meaning to “rock and roll” and I was moving along, kinda like a rolling stone.

Obviously, I lived to tell about it. I had also been worried about how my recent illness would impact my durability and stamina, but once I finished the first climb, it felt like I’d gotten my second wind. Leech My Nuggets always lays a tough trail, so it feels like a special accomplishment to make it to the end. The end was at Leech’s newly constructed house, and he threw a nice On-Home party, including a tasty spread of food, for his fellow Hashers.

Here’s the story in pictures (most of which aren’t mine):

Man, I thought maybe I’d sweated out the last of this bug that’s been bugging me, but I still have almost no energy. I took a nap before sitting down to write this post, and I’ll be damned, but I feel like I need another one now. Ah well, one of the benefits of being I retired I suppose–time is my bitch. At least until I run out of time. No time soon I hope.

It was good to be back on familiar ground at yesterday’s Hash. The trail technically started at the VFW, but since we knew it was going through Alta Vista a group of us just met up at my house. It was actually a nice and pretty easy hike up and over Black Rock mountain, then on out to our On-Home at Hunter Jo’s Inn in Calapadayan.

There was a second hill we bypassed. The Hare’s had provided a rope to assist with the climb, but we said nope to that and took the long way around instead. Afterward, the Hare asked if we had done the rope climb and we admitted we hadn’t. He said he had considered marking the way went as an “easy” version of the trail, but realized anyone inclined to take the easy route would already know which way to go. He was right about that!

I don’t recall ever doing three Hashes in a row before, but I have now for sure. Today is my off day so I’m getting recharged for tomorrow’s hike with the Wednesday Walkers. Here are the photos from yesterday:

I’ll be back tomorrow with some tales about the latest weirdness in my life. In the meantime, there is this:

Toe. Although I guess technically I walked a little over two miles to see a camel toe show.

Different Hash kennels have different personalities it seems. At the Subic Hash, we are irreverent and not PC at all. La Union, on the other hand, bills itself as a family Hash. They would never countenance some of the songs we sing in Subic. In fact, they asked some of us with crude names to not use them when we participated in one of their Hashes. This Corona group is WAY out there on the spectrum when it comes to sexual innuendo, and dare I say it, exploitation. The camel toe contest was an example of that. They also did a “big dickus” thing that I thankfully didn’t stick around for. Anyway, I’m no prude and I wasn’t offended, but some of the shenanigans were tiresome and made the circle last much longer than I like.

With that said, I’ll share some pictures I took of the camel toe event. It was hard to get good shots from where I was standing and the girls seemed more inclined to show their butts than their pussies, but here’s what I got:

Everyone has their own idea about what’s hot or not, but damn, #6 tripped my triggers. I’d actually noticed her long before the contest started and wished that…well, never mind. The other thing that stood out to me was her boyfriend, a guy who looks older than me and not in good physical shape, forced her to participate. She resisted and refused until he physically pulled her out of the chair and into the circle. Not a pleasant thing to see. Having said that, once she was in the competition she put forth some effort to win. Not in the slutty way some of the gals tried, i.e. twerking and the like, she just strutted her stuff with dignity. Let that hot body do all the talking as it were. Well, she did pull those shorts up some I guess to emphasize the feature that was being judged. It looked good from my perspective!

And the majority of folks in attendance apparently agreed, as #6 won the contest.

And there you have the promised camel toe post. You know, it seems to me cameltoe should be one word, But my spellchecker says that ain’t right. Sorta like this I guess:

Back home safe and sound. Well, as sound as I’m ever gonna be anyway. Now that I’m done with the Corona Hash weekend, it is time to gear up for today’s Subic Hash. So, let me do a quick down and dirty about yesterday’s happenings in Angeles.

We all gathered at the appointed time and place, the Premiere Hotel in AC. There were three Jeepneys parked in a lot and one nearby parked on the street. There was no one around from the Corona Hash to provide any guidance. At the appointed departure time of 1:30, a Hasher from La Union went over to the Jeepney on the street and the driver was heard to have said “this Jeep is for the easy trail”. So, the Hasher came back and relayed the information that anyone doing the short trail should board the street parked Jeepney and everyone else in the other three. About eight folks boarded the easy Jeep and five other people got in with me and my driver. I told my driver to follow the street-parked Jeepney to the trail. And so we waited. And waited.

As 2:00 p.m. neared I went over to the Jeepney and spoke with the driver. His English was very hard to understand, but I thought he said “waiting for 2 more”. That pissed me off, why should we wait on folks who couldn’t arrive on time? Still, nothing I could do about it, and not knowing where the “easy” was starting, we had to follow the Jeepney driver. When 2:00 passed I went over to a couple of Hashers sitting outside the sign-up venue. I asked if they could shed any light on the situation. They said we are Angeles City hashers and the Jeep is for Angeles Hashers, not the Corona Hash. Apparently what the driver had told the La Union Hasher was “this is for AC trail”, not easy trail. Well, fuck! I went and told the unhappy folks waiting in the Jeep that we were screwed. Now what? Went back to my car and discussed the situation with my riders. We had the GPS coordinates for the Corona Hash On-Home location, for all the good that did me with my non-existent tech skills. Well, not a problem for the Dutchman, Max (Nosy Bastard). I gave him my phone and in just a couple of minutes, we had a map to where we needed to go. I gave the paper with the coordinates on it to the other stranded Hashers and suggested they see if a cab could take them there. We pulled out and thirty minutes later arrived where we should have been 40 minutes earlier.

So we took off to do the short trail, which was incorporated into the long trail as was done on Saturday. There was steep, but not real long, climb to the top of the ridge. What made it more difficult for me was that the trail was covered in a powdery volcanic dust (Mount Pinatubo was only 11km away). Breathing that shit in got my lungs into full-on coughing mode. For the first time in a long time I needed to use the emergency inhaler that I carry for situations like this. A couple of squirts did seem to help, as did reaching the top relatively quickly.

After that, it was a nice hike along the ridgeline, then back down a not too steep path leading to the road that took us to the On-Home camp. Around 4.5K for the short trail Whatever temptation I may have felt to do the long trail was canceled by our late start. Probably a good thing because even the fastest of the Subic Hashers on the long trail arrived a good bit after we finished the short one, notwithstanding our late start.

And it the all’s well that end’s well category, those unfortunate Hashers we left behind in Angeles were able to contact the Corona Hash leader by phone. He sent a Jeepney to pick them up and they arrived in time to tackle the short trail as well.

The Hash circle on the other hand was another tiresome affair; longwinded, egotistical MC’s dragging things out much longer than necessary. My fear that this would happen is why I had my driver come a day early. By 6:30 I had had enough and bailed out early, forgoing the already paid for dinner portion of the Hash. There was one highlight, a camel toe contest, that I’ll cover in a subsequent post.

Here are some photos from yesterday’s adventure:

And that was the day. I’m told the circle continued after the meal and the proceedings finally finished around 10 p.m. So glad I planned ahead. And now it is time to do it again here with the Subic Hash.

The title of this post pretty much sums up my first experience with the Corona Hash House Harriers here in Angeles City.

First to the good–I rather enjoyed the trail. I took the shorter version and found it to be just about right for me; one climb, a somewhat challenging creek side portion, and an interesting walk through a village of the Aeta native people. I *almost* regretted not taking the turn for the long trail until I learned later that it included a knee-high river crossing. Who wants wet shoes for today’s hike?

The bad part came after the actual Hash hike. The circle started late, and was overwrought and over long. Apparently, there is some bad blood between the breakaway Corona hashers and the original Angeles City Hash. So we had to listen to songs and commentary bashing the latter for a good portion of the circle. There were four other Hash groups in attendance (La Union, Subic, and two from Manila) and they all took turns doing their shtick, which rapidly became quite boring. And it just went on and on and on. I grew increasingly agitated because I was tired and hungry. When the circle FINALLY concluded, we had to walk up a steep hill to reach the Jeepneys for transport back to town. No fun after a few hours of drinking–I was pissed under two definitions of the word. Almost three, as I really had to pee during the ride back.

Anyway, we’ll see how it goes today. I had my driver arrive early so he can provide transportation back to town if I can’t endure another Hash circle reaching it’s conclusion. This is the big one-year anniversary event for the Corona Hash and will include an on-site after-circle dinner. Could make for a long day, let’s hope they keep it fun and interesting. Yes, I know I sound like a grumpy old man. I’m afraid that shoe might just fit.

Here are the photos from yesterday’s adventure:

So, there was a group dinner back in town that I skipped. Had a mediocre chicken sandwich at a sports pub near my hotel instead. As usual, I was in bed by 9:00 p.m.

Time to grab some lunch now and get ready for today’s trail. I’ll try and keep a positive attitude and have some fun. If not, I’ll bitch and moan about it here tomorrow. Fair enough?