There’s a lot to be said for husband and wife run setting teams. It allows the natural order of things in the union to be supplanted by something far more important, the trail. Submerged by the responsibility to the hash, normal subjects such as career, home, mothers-in-law, territorial lapses and childbirth take their proper place in the scheme of things. By observation, scribe has noted a seeming majority of failed unions in the midst of hash and subscribes to the theory that it’s joint trail setting at the bottom of it all. After all how could one seriously debate the choice of schools for offspring when there are vastly greater issues at hand, like the venue for next weeks run. But all that mumbo was not on the mind of Bangers and Yeti as they indicated to the pack the direction of the trail as it led out of Hangzhou’s salute to a distant (but failed) civilization, the Forum. Even if the quality of the trail was not going to hold the pack up, there was no doubt that the cunningly obscured blue arrows would do the job. With Cartoon Porn once again pushing from the front, away the pack went, a proper run with some serious looking runners, including even the normally relaxed style of Skidmarks. Along the lakes edge, up and across gardens, by-ways and many cornered bridges for good luck or bad luck, drink more hot water, and false trails to burn. A nice little variation saw Battery Operated calling a meeting in the bush conference room while Pains and S & M shortcutted around the back. Around LeiFeng Pagoda, trail a bit mystifying here, leaving S & M and Skid at the back of the pack on their lonesome and the pack proper vanished. The trails turned the pack around often, yes, it was intentional, and soon crossed the Su Di for another of those endless circuits through Hangzhou’s many answers to Hyde Park. At the end of that pictureskew labyrinth of paths, it was back on Nanshan Rd for a fast run back to the start, all stretching out including Creature Comforts for the run in. The circle saw Bubble Butt named, with Battery Operated taking the lead in the merging of random sights with random thoughts to come up with that name. At least Bubble Butt could see the amount of thought and attention applied to her name, about 5 seconds worth. As proved to date, a hasher either is named appropriately or lives up to the name, so where this leads for Bubble Butt one could but surmise. After a few beers and cast aspersions, the pack minus 7 Up adjourned to the Indian Kitchen. It’s hard to get used to the Indian restaurant concept after Chinese restaurants; scribe needs lessons, especially in the Indian beer mark up policy, cost plus 1000%. Strange, it didn’t make them taste any better. Then Yeti dropped dropped a few over to meet Doggie at the Maya (surprise) after which a late night was enjoyed followed by a morning that was not.

Report on Run #51 – May 25th – Hare S & M – The Non-Consecutive Run
There’s no doubt that the selection of a central and easily found venue run contributes to a decent turnout at a decent time. Now Beishan Lu is a reasonably well known road, being at the centre of the Hangzhou tourism universe, and the Su Di is reasonably well known, being constructed here in Dynasty XYZ and being named after a local politician, which somewhat sullied its credentials. In fact even Marco Polo enjoyed a run on the Su Di, long before the hares chose this intersection as the venue for a run. As it turned out not everybody had a clear idea of the location, including Cartoon Porn, too much mis-spent time on the internet, and Creature Comforts who remained till this Sunday unaware of the Su Di and its fame. So the pack collected until about 5.20, when the hare S & M briefed the assembly on the delights to be encountered, blaming the low lights of the run on her unfortunate co-hare who was really just there to carry the flour; the injustice of it. With the reminder that the trail did not start at the finish, the pack set off for the 4 km plod across the Su Di in Marco Polo’s footsteps wondering at their fate. In fact the trail turned right into the Yangong Di parklands via a variety of FTs and CBs and checks to cross in the Flower Nursery,  a labyrinth of paths and creeks and bridges and stepping stones; a hareing luxury. From there the virgin hare S & M must have become disoriented as the trail inexplicably traversed an abandoned village, still with villagers though, and struck across appropriately virgin forest without either of the hares succumbing to a boar trap false trail. The pack very gingerly crossed the various game trails and equally came out unscathed. Cartoon Porn was keeping the pressure on though, and there was no time for students of botany or vista to absorb the variety of either, it was just on on, along some wooded paths and then a puzzling journey through parks and lakes etc until Yugu Lu was attained, and a brisk canter to the car park near the Maya. The circle was memorable for the lack of everything, including Doggie Style still nursing his dodgy calf around the corner at the Maya, and Acronymph still returning from another suspect 48er. However a mass naming occurred, without board approvals you should know, so complaints will be received, and possibly considered, or maybe not. Nevertheless, Bestiality, Deep Throat, Creature Comforts, Pains, Sheep Shagger, Bangers and Mash, S & M and Kama Sutra and Numb Nuts visiting from Qingdao finally crossed the HZH3 Rubicon. The group were well served by the hot night, the outdoor dining and the Phone Box menu touch. On on.

I walk to work each morning and on my way to work I look up at Laohe Shan and think, ‘I wish I was up there’. I did the same thing this morning but this time the thought ‘I wish I was up there’ was immediately followed by ‘gosh, up there doesn’t look as tall as it used too’.

It was a tall weekend, 7 hashers setting off on Saturday to attempt to hit all 14 of Hangzhou’s 1000ft hills in one day. We only hit 10 but it was as good a day’s walking as you’re going to get in constant, teeming rain. Despite the packs knowledge of the hills of Hangzhou it was sadly navigational errors that did for us.

Sunday we were off on Hentai’s Magical Mystery Tour, disappointingly 6 of the 7 from Saturday FAILED to show up on Sunday and DOWN DOWNs await them. So it was that a depleted pack (A, H, Pushup, PhoneBox, 7Up) made the long arduous journey out to Hentai’s secret location.

The secret location turns out to be a small village (some how villages in Zhejiang never quite manage to achieve quaint do they?) in the Daqing valley, a new location for all of us.

A well used tourist trail ran west out of the village and in to the bamboo forest, we were on chalk and away. But not for long. A few hundred metres in and we’re off chalk. Back to good chalk, no, we’ve not missed a touring. Spend ages looking round, exploring every possible turning off the trail before deciding the work-shy-fop of a hare hasn’t set a trail at all. Unanimously the pack decides that the best course of action is to follow the stone stairs all the way to summit which we did. The route up and the summit affording amazing views of the valley, mountains and the river, batteries being rapidly drained on cameras as the sun gets lower in the sky.

Nagging sensation in the back of mind that I’m missing something important here.

The trail emerged at a small, very communist looking concrete pavilion on a ridge that runs north-south (south-north if you’re Chinese). The pack quickly decide to head north up to what looks like the summit proper in search of views of the hills to the North and West.

From the summit I get my first true appreciation of how much more there is to the hills around Hangzhou, that we’ve just dipped our toe in with the stuff we’ve done that immediately borders the city.

That’s what it is, the sun’s going down! We’ve got about 20 minutes of day light left we’re at the top of a hill, off chalk and we need to get down quickly.

Push-up’s improbable-but-somehow-just-about-passable-trail detector goes off and we clamber over some rocks into the gloom of tree cover at twilight. It’s steep, very steep and as we make our way down I increasingly can’t work out the detail of what I’m stepping into. This is boar trap country and I now can’t look at what I’m stepping on even if I want to. The hills ring out to On On as the small pack attempt to track each other’s progress down the ridge. Somehow we manage to emerge at the bottom and back on to the tourist trail just as the light fails us completely. The timing couldn’t have been tighter. A short 1k run in takes us back to an awaiting hare.

The hare, in his defence claims to have set a trail that took a circuitous route up to the pavilion and then came down by the southern ridge. Down-downs were nonetheless awarded as we saw absolutely no evidence of this. 7Up appeared to be on a mission to get everyone wasted filling everyone’s glass except her own as full as possible.

The pack were rewarded with a dinner including wild boar (shot, not trapped, we wouldn’t to encourage that now would we) and we finally adjourned to Maya for 1 or 3.

On On
DoggieStyle.