Run #9 – Pancho’s Xixi Rd– Hare Doggie Style – Turnout 7

A bloody afternoon it was, bloody hot, bloody hot and bloody hot. It was bloody other things as well, but the heat overcame all else. Pancho’s is found in a particularly bloody unprepossessing part of Xixi Rd and not found easily because the pretty logo on the top of the façade is bloody hard to read from the street. Only the made in China Mexican blanket in the window with a collection of nick nacks from a Tijuana tourist stall offered clues to the identity of this weeks venue. Scribe, rarely completely confident of his exact location in outer Hangzhou, was surprised to get a call from perplexed Hangzhovian LDA, looking for navigational assistance, from a laowai!. Depressed numbers included Pelagic, Sylke, Laura and Lizzie who joined scribe on the run set by Doggy Style, who was evidently suffering more than the heat, as he recovered from he and Daisy’s party for Little Drunken Apple the night before. The trail crossed Xixi and wended it’s way to cross Tianmushan via a memorable underpass after which there was a complete absence of evidence that hash was a reality, rather a figment of the imagination of the 5 lost souls going, coming, returning, checking, peering under cars and all this in bright weather with 40 degrees coming down from on high and 70 degrees radiating from the tarmac. Technology came to the frazzled pack’s aid, with a quick call to DS establishing that the trail was definitely there, but some significant distance up to the left. The locals were pleased to finally see this unusual group stop casing the street, but it wasn’t long before DS set more hurdles in the path of the pack. The trail dodged and weaved along verges, drains and back fences, and no, no bodies were found, they must have been picked up that morning. DS later admitted that he had slightly erred in his bearings, and having started setting the trail late, the combination of both events punished the pack’s endurance. Finally the trail went bush and a 10 degree drop in temperature, but suddenly Little Drunken Apple appeared running in the wrong direction, blithely imagining that the trail would be easy to follow backwards. It was 23rd birthday confidence, long may it last. Maybe he was on to something after all, because it was bloody hard going the right way. Back to Xixi Rd too soon, and Lizzy managed to extract information from a street sweeper that there was a water shop in an easterly direction; it is Hangzhou after all, how could she be wrong. So all were saved from re-hydration therapy and made it back to Panchos in a fairly bloody mental state. The pack split like the proverbial banana, leaving only Doggie Style, LDA and scribe to the dubious cuisine and hospitality of Panchos. LDA starred again, declining to admit the meal he ordered was his, resulting in a general reshuffle which actually disadvantaged nobody, as it appeared to scribe anyway, that whilst meals were assembled in different shapes and colours, they all tasted exactly the same. Serving astronauts would have felt at home here. A few late stragglers meanwhile joined the original stragglers, who then straggled up to the Jazz bar for late drink orders which, true to form, straggled from the bar, after which the stragglers straggled home.

Postscript – Acronymph thought this report a bit tough, but it was tough work getting straggle 6 times into one sentence.