Having come back to Britain for a week, two common questions have recurred regarding my New York (Geek) adventures. Firstly, what the hell is hashing all about and; secondly, what did I actually get up to on that night in the library.

Whilst no-one is ever sober enough to truly convey the intricacies of an evening spent hashing, it seems that Stan Friedman was perfectly able to capture both the spirit and the specifics of Find The Future in the cover story of this month’s Library Journal.

My invented sport of Zombie Tag even gets a brief mention ;)

Xx

To the tune of Jingle Bells. Sing along now.

Hashing through the snow,
on a trail made with Kool-Aid.
Freezing to the core,
as the route begins to fade.

Brooklyn locals stare,
as we search around in vain.
I think we’ve lost the trail,
and my feet have lost their pain.

Lying in a ditch,
covered in fresh snow,
from afar we hear “on-on”
and it’s to the bar we go!’

Yes, I’m aware there are too many verses, but frankly I think it’s a miracle I wrote anything whilst running through snowbanks and icy streets trying to find rapidly fading purple blobs in the snow, and then work out which direction they implied.

I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to run around in the snow that last night’s hash presented, but I hadn’t quite considered how cold it would be. And, this is after I ran the last hash a week or so ago wearing just a pair of shorts with no real complaints about the temperature. Part of the problem was that I kept slipping and ending up with snow up to my thighs, but I’m pretty sure New York is just a lot chillier in general right now.

The purple blobs used to mark the trail were, as the song implies, made of Kool-Aid, which is a terrible terrible powder used to make a very bad form of squash. On contact with snow, however, it dissolves to form a faint mark – purple, from grape flavour in our case – which, with 20/20 vision and a bit of luck, might guide a dedicated hasher to the on-in (aka the bar).

The trail was 3.5 miles long. With a lot of searching to be done, I ran just over 5 miles, and if you think running in sand is hard; try snowy Brooklyn streets. To give you an idea of the challenge, it took 11 of us twenty minutes to find the second mark (of around forty), which was hidden less than two blocks from the check; the mark which tells you to go search.

In related news, iPhones cope extremely well with being submerged in snow. Repeatedly.

Xx

Yesterday, whilst I was recovering from a rather special hangover, the city erupted into a festival of jollity and Christmas spirit(s). At least five thousand people dressed up like Santa (with varying degrees of commitment) in New York for SantaCon.

In a similar flurry of nonsensical holiday-themed revelry, today was the NYC H3‘s annual Santa’s Sluts run. I don’t really think I need to explain that in any greater degree of detail.

With limited suitcase space, one of the things I’m missing over here is any semblance of fancy dress. That’s my excuse for the fact that I went running and drinking in Manhattan wearing nothing but a pair of novelty boxer shorts I found for $5 yesterday. Well, those and a pair of trainers, obviously.

For this outfit, I was rewarded with the prestigious honour of the hashers’ Asshole of the week. It even comes with its own song, which harkens back to the English colonial origins of hashing. Try not to read it too phonetically. The title should belie the pronunciation of the first word pair.

A-sol, a-sol, a soldier I will be,
For c[o]unt, for count, for country and my Queen,
Two-pist, two-pist, two pistols on my knee,
A-sol a-sol a-sol a-sol a soldier I will be.

Drink it down down down down, down down down down, down down {ad infinitum}

I presume others will be posting up pictures of my lack of an outfit later, so I’ll share them when they do. For now I’ll just share one of the outfits that, whilst pretty far from the night’s theme, still managed to impress. This particular chap got a happy birthday song when he was called up to drink.

There was some murmuring as to whether the crown of thorns broke the ‘no hats in the circle’ rule though.

Xx

The best thing about Hashing is finding and exploring a new areas of New York, and then finding the best pub in the area. Meeting fun people; following hash-marks; getting lost; shouting; singing; and pizza & beer are all, however, a very close second.

Yesterday we headed out to Roosevelt Island, which I didn’t even know existed, for what was quite definitively the easiest trail I’ve seen. It’s quite hard to get lost when you start on a sliver of island just less than 2 miles long, you know you’ve got a run of at least 5 miles to get through, and there’s only one pedestrian bridge off the island.

That said, it was beautiful to run around; with stunning views of Manhattan and Queens uninterrupted by well, anything. Someone’s written a much nicer review of running the island than I can, so I’ll simply let you read his thoughts, whilst I move on to Queens.

I was a bit surprised to discover that Queens (at least, Long Island City anyway) is not only nicely lit and well-kept, but even goes as far as being a bit trendy. I don’t know where the tourist myth that ‘you should stay in Manhattan’ came from, but I’ve not seen any evidence for it in the other boroughs so far.

The outdoor area of LIC Bar where we ended up looks almost like an Home Counties country pub, and indoors they have regular live music, including the Long Island City Jazz Alliance regular jam night, which I’ll be checking out soon (and maybe even playing at.)

So, that’s Manhattan, Brooklyn, The Bronx and Queens down, anyone for a trip to Staten Island? No?

Ah well.

Xx

You know what the funniest thing about New York is? It’s the little differences. I mean, they’ve got the same shit over here that they got back home, but it’s just, just here it’s a little different.

Example?

Alright, well you can’t walk into a movie theatre and buy a beer. And, I don’t mean just like a paper cup, I’m talking about a glass of beer. And, in New York, you can’t buy a beer in McDonald’s. You know what they call a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in New York? They call it a Quarter Pounder with Cheese; they’ve got the metric system.

But I digress. Let’s get back to booze.

You can buy beer or hard cider in a supermarket here, but for anything stronger you have to go to a designated liquor outlet. Hard cider, by the way, is well…cider. Cider, is unfiltered apple juice, and apple juice is a clear sugary drink. Clear?

Drinking in public is illegal, but that’s never been an issue for me to date. Provided you keep the alcohol in a brown paper bag, and it’s not in a playground at 10am, you’re pretty much fine as far as I can tell. On Marathon day some police came by as we were pouring beer from our coolers (Hashers are well-organised when it comes to drinking) into red plastic cups – just like those in countless American University movies – and just nodded to us.

I went out for a pub lunch one Friday with guys from work – as was the cast-iron tradition back in London – but fortunately I was the last one the waitress asked when it came time to order drinks. I was a little disbelieving that everyone else had gone for Cokes, but later learned that I would have got some very odd looks if I’d ordered a beer in the middle of the workday.

–

I’ve just come back from an open jam session, where I would have struggled even if it hadn’t been well over a year since I played bass with any conviction. I’ll hopefully head back and play with those guys again, but until that time I intend to practise daily so I don’t embarrass myself quite as badly; I’ve finally just bought a copy of the Real Book to speed things along.

First though, I need a drink to forget quite how badly a couple of those standards went. A whiskey at home is the same anywhere in the world.

Xx

Back in London, the marathon came right past my kitchen window – we could lean out and cheer everyone going by; we could wander over the road to Hubbub/The Space and grab something from their barbecue; and when it was all over some council folks would come and make our street cleaner than it ever was normally. What could be better than that?

New York.

For starters, there’s 45,000 people rather than 32,000 – and that means a proportionally higher amount of people with mad outfits; unpronounceable names (which everyone still tried screaming anyway); high-fives and bouncing breasts. Fantastic.

That, plus the backdrop of Central Park, would already have been enough for a good day, but having just joined a running & drinking club, I naturally met up with those guys about halfway through. There must have been nearly a hundred hashers there who’d come from all over to race, or watch the race with a beer: or in one exceptional case, to run the whole race and then come back to watch the rest of it with a beer. Good man.

They were tracking every hasher in the race on an iPad, and whenever one came past they not only received wild cheers and shouts of ‘on-on’ (though directions weren’t really lacking in this trail), but also a cup of beer to down. After 23 miles, it was impressive how readily they were able to down it.

We had much less success in offering beer to other random runners – but I’m told our chances would have improved if it were the Prague Marathon, where beer stops are common, or perhaps the Bordeaux Marathon where, well:

The course for the Médoc Marathon in Bordeaux reads like a wine list. Château Beychevelle, Château Gruaud-Larose and Château Lafite Rothschild all ornament the route and provide libations.

Sign me up.

Xx