Nearly twenty Hashers gathered at Wayne’s Texas BBQ for the annual Saigon Hash Tet-a-thon, an event originally organized by Super Slag and now in the shaky hands of Pencil Dick. Being the Lunar New Year holiday, the faithful bus crew get the week off while the rest of the pack enjoys the only time of the year when we can have a decent city run. This year, hares Pencil Dick and Big Mac managed to totally befuddle the pack before the run even started by announcing that they were already at the finish and would now be ferried by taxi to the real start. Ten minutes later, we were assembled at Wayne’s Texas BBQ (the other one) for the run briefing.

“Checks blah blah blah flour blah blah and don’t pet the cocks,” pontificated PD before the runners set off in a cloud of dust and tourists in search of the trail. The flour led the pack through a park, down back streets and alleys, past fighting cocks, along the banks of the Black Sludge River, under overpasses and over underpasses, across six lanes of speeding traffic and along the banks of the Great Green Greasy Saigon River before reaching the first (and only) beer stop, a kiosk near the Vung Tau Ferry. Meanwhile, walking Hare Big Mac took the walkers along more alleys, highways and byways but crowned the achievement by leading his lambs pack through the crowds at the Nguyen Hue flower show, shedding walkers along the way.

After a refreshing beer, the pack headed off again. Showing a lack of imagination, the trail led straight along the river for a kilometer and half without a single check. This gave FRBs Parker and Pissmeister a chance to stretch their legs. The trail looped around past the zoo before meandering back to the finish.

After the obligatory cooling beers, Erectile Disfunction kicked the Hash Circle into gear: your stand-in Hash scribe was busy serving and quaffing beers, so no notes were taken. Nevertheless, a few facts stood out in the haze of alcohol: no virgins present, but several returning runners in the persons of Bushranger, Hawk and Slime. Hares PD and BM were roundly condemned (as usual); all the Vietnamese were called up: Ms Minh looked so lonely that ED called up everyone who had slept with a Vietnamese, which gave almost everybody else in the circle a down-down. Hawk got a down-down for auto-hashing, and some poor blow-in named Steve kept getting dragged in because he couldn’t bloody shut up in the circle (he promised to come next week – we’ll see). Wayne, our host, got one on general principal; Satan and Pissmeister, for not wearing Hash gear. And so it went.

On-On!

Pencil Dick