Hounds: THFKAD, McCavity, Bodsa, Laurel, Chum, All Holes Hoping, Tubslut, Astro Homo, Poptop, Nice Snatch

There are two versions from this run.

Apparently, there is a plan to hash every Wednesday in October. Given the tradition begun by both of Ewe Infected Me's runs, these midweek hashes have become an extension of the Crack House Harriers. You haven't heard of the "CH2"? It all begun 1986, in an inner-city ghetto, where a group of ex-prisoners gathered every night in a place affectionately known as the Crack House.

One day, the founder, A. S. "Mac Daddy" Dilbert (not to be confused with the "Daddy Mac") decided it would be profitable to sell a large amount of Crack Cocaine, and loaded up his backpack to meet a customer. Unfortunately, when he arrived at the meeting place, the customer turned out to be an undercover cop. The suspect immediately shouted "Oh Shit!" and took off running, leaving a trail of cocaine as he tried to ditch the evidence. The police began chasing the suspect while yelling "Are you?" over their radios, resembling a childhood game called "Cops and Robbers".

Finally, the suspect realized he should ditch the entire backpack, which would leave a false trail for the police. After confusing the police, he ran back to the Crack House, and told the story to the other members of the Crack House. They immediately began celebrating by drinking large bottles of "Colt 45" and singing Gangster Rap songs.

Today, members of this group use a secret pager number to get information on where to meet, and since the mid-80's, "Cracking" has exploded in popularity. Today there are thousands of Crack Houses all across the United States.

The October 5th Crack House Hash in Rensselaer was brought to us by Ewe Infected Me, who has now been banned from haring until he has done 15 runs. In stark contrast to the new train station, trail was destined for a fine, crime infested, toothless neighborhood with shady bar after shady bar. The hare appeared with a half stick of chalk and 3/4 cup of "flour." I'm not kidding; we took pictures. We suggested to the hare that he should go buy some around the corner, but he declined. Real coke is expensive, I guess. His lack of basic haring tools worried us almost as much as his request for a refresher on the four standard hash marks (On, Check, False, True). I gave him a quick course. He only remembered two of the marks, and then promptly set out to lay trail with "his own marks."

There is no way of knowing for sure, but an orange chalk trail went by a church and up into the woods. The hare had e-mailed me that he left his balls at home, but many castaway tennis balls from a nearby tennis court could be found here. It was a good thing we hit the woods while it was still light because this was another episode of CSI Hashing (flashback to All Holes' Wedding Reception hash). I doubt EIM used more than 1/2 cup of flour in these woods. Having little to navigate by, the pack stayed close together with Astro and Tubslut sharing the role of FRB. Given the clusterf**k that would follow, the wooded portion was rather a success, featuring decent shiggy and a porn check. After reviewing the material, we carefully placed these wrinkled sticky mags back in a tackle box that some 13 year olds had stashed there. We emerged from the woods to find some pink chalk marks going directly over the marks we had followed at the beginning. WTF? We dicked around for a long time, ran down to check out the closest pub, and then I got some pizza while we all ambled around looking for marks and refusing to backtrack over the circle jerk.

Eventually, THFKAD and Astro Homo realized that the hare had crossed over his old trail and even followed the same path up past the church. Luckily, he had color coded the marks with the pink chalk that someone had scrounged up from the back seat of a car. We would pass that church a dozen more times before deciding to give up and go find some beer. Then we came across a mark, and perservered up the hill with no indication that we were going the right way. We found the ONLY true trail mark on the trail, which pointed directly into somebody's driveway. After making this property owner a little nervous while poking around their yard with flashlights. The police seemed to wander by every so often, but didn't stop us because it probably was not a safe enough neighborhood for them to get out of their car. Anyway, there were no other marks to connect that true trail arrow to anything. It was a dead end. Had he confused the true trail arrow with a false? Later we would see some other confused hieroglyphics that seemed like a true trail mark with no arrow. WTF? I didn't teach him that. So we gave up and went looking for McCavity who was off on his own. He and Tubslut found some marks that also led nowhere. Do you see the pattern? After several more rounds of this we gave up for good and headed back down the hill. Two blocks from the bottom of the hill we found a check with no connecting marks. At the bottom of the hill was a bar called "Den Den" where the hare had written BNXNo. The hare wasn't there. What the hell is BNXNo? Giving up once again, we headed to the train station, and found marks leading to the next bar down the street. No hare there, either. Just a BN mark to tempt us with thoughts of beer. I broke down and bought a beer. Meanwhile McCavity rounded up the hare who was out looking for us. We had a few beers, but the smoke (yes, everyone was smoking in this bar) and the blasting music were too much for us and we went back to Den Den's for circle.

How had Ewe gotten us to the end after laying such a shitty shitty trail? I have no idea. One would think that he was hare-razed by All Holes Hoping, based on the paucity of flour that was carefully camouflaged amongst lichen and sun spots. But no, it was me, Nice Snatch, who was blamed for all the various hare crimes committed. After this totally effed up trial, I would have bet good money that I wouldn't have to carry that damned Hashit around again. It would have been a losing bet. After refusing to drink from the beer that Lickalottapuss tainted with a piece of ice that had been both on the floor of this scummy bar, as well as in EIM's ass-crack, I was duly punished. There was an attempt at renaming the hare: Matthew Luke and John because there were no Marks; Too Stupid to Have Infected Me; etc., but nothing stuck. Later over beers THFKAD and I came up with Blond As All Hell. Anyway, it was a fun hash, as always.

After leaving the Den Den, Astro enlisted THFKAD, EIM and Snatch to help him break into his truck because he had locked himself out. With the hash mom's tools, a coathanger and the patience of a samuri, we as a team were successful at rolling down the window far enough to unlock the door. After celebrating, Astro looked for the keys he had left in the car so he could drive home. They weren't in his car. They were in his effing pocket! Can anyone say "Hashit?" (Snatch can in a desperate attempt to evade four in a row – Editor)

The hounds gathered at the Rensselaer train station upper deck at 6:00 PM. The hare was anxious to get away but not completely familiar with the marks that we use. To all our dismay the hare asked "How do you do it again?" SNATCH showed Ewe Infected Me the simple hash marks to use.

At 6:05 the hare took his one broken piece of chalk and 2 oz. Of flour and headed off in a completely different direction than he said he was going to. After 15+ minutes of hash milling the hounds took chase. All were nervous. It took only one intersection to figure out that the hares marks are different than we normally use.

For instance what the HMHHH would normally call a true trail arrow the hare used intermittently as a false trail indicator and as a true trail indicator.

And as the HMHHH likes to use a circle as a trail check point indicator the hare liked to use bare pavement with no marks as the check point indicator.

And as the HMHHH has a tendency to leave a trail mark every 25 feet our new hare had a tendency to leave trail markings every 100 yards. Luckily for us, it was dark at 6:30 so this sparsely marked trail was fun to hunt for.

At the early stages of the trail the hounds were easily fooled into think that arrows meant you were on trail as such they ran up and down the many hills in the neighborhood until they found a dirt trail into some woods. At this point the hare sparingly marking the trail with flour. The CSI crew found a couple grams of flour carelessly left on a tree by our hare so the hounds kept going.

We made it through the forest to meet up with a couple of locals, who wondered what we were doing. When we told them we were chasing a person, the local stool pigeons quickly told us which direction he went. The only time we were sure we were on trail.

The trail took us back up to the train station. Astro Homo kept pleading with the pack to call the hash over, but the rest of the hounds persevered. The FRBs hadn't yet learned that trail can turn at any corner with or without a mark, so they ran everywhere they thought trail might go.

Tub Slut finally had enough of running without trail and took off to find trail on his own. Astro Homo got the rest of the hounds back on track by showing them that the hare crossed trail. The hare who took off with one piece of chalk miraculously pulled a new color chalk out of his ass.

The new trail was marked in faint pink as opposed to the old trail that was marked in faint brown. If you shined your flashlights close enough and leaned down to lick the sidewalk you could tell the difference. Off the hounds went back through the streets of Rensselaer around a beautiful cathedral, for the fourth time, now looking for new pink chalk.

McCavity went one way and found a true trail arrow TFKAD went the other way and found a true trail arrow. The pack followed the wrong true trail arrow. It ended up a hill at an amazing view of somebodies front lawn. Some of the pack started to murmur lets find a bar and be done with it but we took off after McCavity and Tub Slut anyway.

Bodsa went down the street finding mark after mark and finally the rest of the Pack followed. As soon as they caught up the FRBs decided to once again run where they wanted trail to go even though there were no trail marks. And after a half mile they complained that they couldn't find trail.

The pack was ready to find a bar and call it a night but McCavity called on his cell phone and said Tub Slut and him were on a trail someplace in Rensselaer and if we met them we could persevere. On the way to meet them Chum found a random trail marking that pointed down the street. She was going to follow it but from ½ a mile away McCavity yelled not to go that way it was a dead end trail. The two groups rejoined and shined flashlights on the marks that were near by. There were no check points but the couple obvious directions all lead to true trail arrows, that we now knew to be probably false trail markings. There were no markings beyond the true/false trail marks so as a combined group we decided to call it quits and head for a bar hoping the hare would somehow find us.

On the way to the bar McCavity saw the trail marks that Chum was following and said "OOPs I haven't checked that trail yet." Sure enough for another ½ mile we were back on trail.

The hare decided to give us a new obfuscated trail mark. It was an arrow in a circle. We didn't know what this symbol meant but it led to an excellent future trail location but current trail dead end. We hit the wall, not hard enough to hurt ourselves though. Finally we said that's it we are going directly to a bar. By this time the sun had set and we were on top of the Hudson River escarpment in Rensselaer overlooking a beautiful view of well lit downtown Albany. On our way to the closest bar AHH looked down and found more trail which lead us directly to a BN trail marking.

The bar at the base of the BN mark contained no hare, and no pictures of beer waiting for us, but there were marks that led us away from the bar to a new bar with a BN sign. At this second bar half the group went in for a drink the other half went back to the train station to pick up their cars. On the way McCavity, Chum and THFKAD found the hare. THFKAD grabbed him by the shirt collar and wouldn't let him go.

The hare, having no way to know that we couldn't follow his uniquely marked trail at night, kept wondering why we took so long to get to the end and why we were all whining about following trail when obviously we all made it to one of the bars that might have been on trail.

The best we can figure was we all ran hash 116. McCavity and Tub Slut ran hash 116A. The rest of us ran hash 116B. When we gather we found a new trail that was hash 116C. And when we randomly walked east then north we came upon hash 116D which finished at one of 2 bars.

On-On!

If you have anything to add, send a note to thfkad@hmhhh.com.