Trashes from Hashes

Black Sheep H3 - 10 June 2007

Hello all you anxious alcoholics. I am your Black Sheep Hasherpa™. I bid you a very warm welcome. And by “very warm” I mean really fucking hot. So please fill your Camelbacks with ice water, or maybe delicious beer, and let’s get the hell on-out.

First thing you’ll notice are the blotches of flour we’re following this afternoon. If you didn’t see the two hashers sprinting away about five minutes ago, they are Colonel Clit and Snail Trail. It looks like they’re HEADing due west.

This parking lot we’re currently running through is for North Springs United Methodist Church, which is a few miles north of the perimeter at Roswell Road and Morgan Falls Road. See how most of the pack is taking the bait and following a couple close marks down Morgan Falls Place. Bwana and I are calling bullshit and are going the other way. Notice how we split up at Morgan Falls Road so we can cover more area. Yeah I agree, the huge amount of buzzing power lines right over the road is creepy.

Hear that whistle? Bwana found trail. And the pack has returned from their YBF or Count-Back and are following him up some strange-looking concrete stairs. There’s the canopy. So far, a creative way to get us away from the assfault.

Thick forest like this keeps the pack together because everyone’s going single-file through the undergrowth. Trying to get past everyone in this Hamsterland can actually slow you down. Another check. On-on. Looks like we’re taking the narrow trail along Bull Sluice Lake.

Yeah, it does seem like we’ve been on this path for a while. This view of the lake rocks. Just be thankful you didn’t go all the way up that crazy hill and find the YBF. By the way, the lake is 637 acres, and it helps buffer the water releases from Buford Dam a few dozen miles up the Chattahoochee. Why is that important? Lake Lanier is pretty big. In fact, it’s about 50 times larger than Bull Sluice. And flooding is bad. Sorry that your Faithful Tour Guide keeps coughing. It’s been so dry here and everything’s dusty.

That cheering you guys heard back there was because a casualty was successfully averted. The climb up from the lake was short, but very steep and uneven, and one of the hashers almost fell straight down. Luckily he grabbed a tree and probably saved himself from bowling over a few other drunks behind him.

This might be Morgan Falls Road again. And back under the power cut. We’re heading south now, in what would be one of the many strips of shiggy our hares will likely find in between non-shiggy things. For those of you who didn’t notice the sign we passed, it said Keep Out because of that massively gated power station. And the wailing siren you hear is because we set off the motion alarm. Is that a recorded voice-warning that’s going off with the alarm? We’re too far away to hear much now. Oh, who cares. It’s all worth it. Check out this forest we’re climbing down into.

No, I don’t think this is a finger lake of Bull Sluice. We’re too far south. Take a look at it quick. We’re HEADing back north again. And up a really tough hill. Hey, look, we’re at the far edge of the power station. That’s pretty much a Circle Jerk. You know, a piece of trail that can add mileage and scenery but will leave you almost right back to where you started. That guy who passed us? Barf Bag. He’s a never-ending fountain of puns. Note what he said when he saw the power station again. “Revolting.” And did you hear Boner Rooter groan after she heard it? I don’t have the brain power to torture people like that. But I can kill you with trivia. This power station is here because of the Morgan Falls Dam, holding back the lake over there somewhere. The Dam is about 1000 feet long and was built in 1904 as a way to power Atlanta’s streetcars. Now it powers about 4400 houses.

= = = = = = = = = =

Oops. This is about the place were your humble Hasherpa lost everyone. Or everyone lost me. There was a sharp turn off of the power cut that I missed. So I was by myself when I popped out of the shiggy to find a huge dusty parking lot. I was hurting so bad from the hills, and the sun was so bright that I just stood at the treeline and stared for a moment, adjusting myself to such a drastically different landscape. I ASSumed that the flowing water on the other side of the lot was the Chattahoochee. I jumped down to the dust and saw a flour arrow. Because of all the cars, I also ASSumed this would be the place for the beer stop. Jesus, the heat was insane.

I trotted to the far end of the lot, but no one looked familiar. And there were no hash bumper stickers on the cars. All of a sudden Burnt Rubber came out from behind an SUV and said something about a water crossing. Oh hell yeah. I think the people aHEAD of me at this point were 2 Crabs, Bwana, GE, Wine Ho and maybe three or four others. Butt Bob was the only person in sight in either d’erection and he was about halfway across the river. Well, One Ball was also in the water, but it was quickly obvious that he was the sole member of the Raft Retrieval Unit.

You gotta love jumping into water right downstream of a dam. It can be so amazingly cold. But I was definitely energized when I got to the other side.
The heat and the hills made this feel like a double trail, when in reality it was between 5 and 5 1/2 miles. Trail number two would have started right after the river with a lengthy jog along the wide easement created by one of the petroleum pipeline companies. There was a single path the whole way, so apparently cars never came through here. But people definitely did.

Trail suddenly cut north away from the easement and we were heading toward humanity. But before we saw any signs of life, we came upon a sign on some winding dirt road: “Welcome to the Middle of Nowhere.” Nice. There was a house or two every once in a while, but there was so much more forest to conquer. This included a few checks and some more painful hills, and then a small detour around a bunch of backyards. The last house in this row had a pool, and there were quite a few hashers that passed by and wished this was the ending.

Turns out the ending was in the same neighborhood on a street called Bayliss. And if I remember correctly, it’s owned by some non-hashers that the Clits know. Many stories were heard in circle about the adventures everyone had on trail. Because of the river crossing, Colonel Clit was temporarily renamed Commodore Clit. Too bad there was no wind-catching devices on the rafts, then Snail Trial could have been temporarily renamed Sail Trail.

Thanks to the hares for a fantastic trail and the backyard ending. Be sure to join us on June 24th, when an evil gent named Little Easy will serve up his classic version of torture in the tick-infested wilderness.

Swing Low. And May the Hash Get a Piece.

Carolina Trash H3

What was your first experience with the Trash?
I went to my first campout in May of 2002, around 40 miles from my house at Hedon XXVII. That was where I kept hearing this buzz about Trashers and them being a cliquish and insane group of people who all camped together “over there.” They brought IV bags with them to help with the horrendous hangovers. I had only been hashing a few months, and everything about hashing was still new, so talk of the Trash didn’t interest me or worry me any more than anything else did. I remember assuming that if they were cliquish, there was no need for me to go “over there.” I was dealing with enough as it was. But if I had the mindset I do now, I would have gone over there and inserted myself in their equation, just to see what was going on. I’d be too curious not too.
The next experience was July ’03 at Trifuckta. That’s when the Key Lime Pie shot made its debut and we were introduced to two of the most infamous Trash incidents I can remember: The Near-Death-in-the-Trash-Bus Incident, and the Bottle-Rocket-in-the-Ass-Gone-Awry Incident. Sweet.

When was your first Trash trail?
Four months later. November ‘03. I had a better idea of what the Trash was about by then. Buck and Scaf said they were driving down from Virginia Interhash to do Trash Trail on Sunday. So I told them I would follow them down, try to crash somewhere in Fayettenam Sunday night and drive the rest of the way home Monday morning. For some reason, they called me halfway there and said they were bailing to go to Greensboro instead. So I was on my own. I was running late, so I got the bimbo’s number (that’s the day I officially met Whorenado) and got d’erections to the first beer stop. It was freaking cold as hell, and very few people knew who the fuck I was. The reception was a little less wonderful than the reception at my first-ever hash, but I wasn’t expecting a miracle here. My thought was, Hey, these are Trashers, I’m a nobody who loves traveling, if I’m worthy I can prove myself. The problem was that I was too hung over to do anything to interesting. It got a little better by circle when I started goofing off a little, and the pack was electrified by PP becoming the stunt-Dick Snail (scootch scootch). I don’t remember much; it was all a blur. I was called out as a visitor, and I was able to make a hash announcement that I was in need of crash space. CIMM came through with a sofa, and it was that little bit of hashpotality, combined with everything else that day, that made me want to come back.

OK wanker, then when was your first RUNNING of a Trash trail?
Shit. It still wasn’t when I physically drove from my house to ‘Nam to hash. The first running was January of 2004 in the middle of the G-Spot 100. To this day, the most epic day of hashing I’ve ever had. This was a trip on a plush touring bus, keg in back, where we did three trails in three cities, all in one day. Leaving from Greensboro, our first trail was in Raleigh with Sir Walters. Oh, and it was freezing and snow was on the ground. Our second trail was the Trash trail in Fayetteville, and our final trail was a Fatboy around the bar we ended at in Greensboro. This was also my first Trash trail with Red Breast, where I realized how entertaining she is drunk. It was soon afterward that a couple of the Trashers started calling us Mini Bumper and Bagless, after the last male/female travelers to religiously shuttle from Atlanta to ‘Nam. It was quite a compliment.
Oh, the trail. I don’t remember it. It was long and I was painfully tired and hungover. Before the On-Out, we were all chillin’ by the bus, the G-Spot hashers mixing it up with the Trash hashers, and it was seriously good. I can still remember the sight of the parking lot. We were on the west side of some grocery store, and there was a grassy slope on our end. (Was this the trail that they hung beer cans from trees with strings? The visual was just short of stunning.) I look back on that day now and realize traveling was still leaving me in a blur. There was still so much that I was soaking in. What a fucking great day.

Jesus, you’re impossible. When was your first actual trail that doesn’t have an asterisk by it?
March of ‘04. The start was at a World’s Gym. Yeah, I even remember the start, so bite me. We had traveled up for Moremen’s goodbye party. That was a classic weekend too. God, Saturday was a blast. As usual, Red Breast and I got there Friday night and that gave us plenty of time to warm up for a really early start Saturday. Highlight: a shitload of beer pong. This was the only day in my life I ever got multiple sporks. The volume of them was measured in Shitloads. I was on fire.
What house were we at, anyway? Maybe Spooge and Tonsil Tang’s. Because I remember Spooge freaking out late that night and firing his gun in the side yard, and Tonsil’s parents getting word of it and coming to drag her away. But these weren’t any ordinary parents. These were HARLEY parents, and they had just been to the house with all their biker friends a few hours earlier. They came back and her dad was on FIRE. And he was on fire with LEATHER on. Bad. Ass.
I don’t remember this trail either. Maybe I remember taking a dump in the really thick forest next to the parking lot before the On-Out. That would be about it. There was shiggy and lots and lots of virgins. I’m sure of that.

What was your most memorable trail?
The one where we started at Mendoza Park in Spring Lake in September of ‘04. Who hared that one? Spooge and SCAF I think. What an adventure. Two DEEP river crossings, and that was when When Harry Met Anus carried his baby across each one. Like any good Trasher-in-Training, the baby was on Cloud 9 while daddy did what he was supposed to do and not let his infant drown. I also remember a bum being rather entertained as we dove down this huge shiggified hill. We came to a screeching halt at the second beer stop. Apparently, the last part of trail was a swamp that was so intense with mosquitoes, it would be torture to send us through. No problem. Me and Yucca and someone else (can’t remember who) slathered ourselves with bug spray and dove in. But holy shit, this was the worst fucking horror I’ve ever experienced on trail. There were mosquitos EVERYWHERE. And they didn’t care about bug spray. I remember flailing around trying to swat them away, and feeling them smack across my arms. There was a spot in this hideous mess that my shoe came untied and I had to bend over to tie my laces. Mistake. I had to shut my eyes and hold my breath and pray I could finish tying it before I hyperventilated. The whole thing was such a damn rush. The funniest part is that the end of the swamp was about 10 yards shy of butting right up to Bragg Blvd. So one second I’m under the canopy thinking my brain’s going to explode, and the next, I’m in the sun crossing Bragg Blvd to the On-In at a park across the street. We named someone at circle, and sent him away naked, wrapped only in this really dirty sisal floor mat. Absolutely filthy and insanely scratchy-looking. Everyone was so fucking loud and obnoxious that day. I think I shot beer out of my nose twice; I just couldn’t. Stop. Laughing. I don’t remember what we named him, but we were really pushing for something to do with him having disgusting scratched-up junk.

What was your most memorable Trash moment?
Getting my wooden Trash mug with my name on it. I think I had traveled alone that weekend, and we were hanging out around the six-toed Trash-foot table on the patio at Fat Daddy’s. PP had gone home so he could get the mug and give it to me that night. There were enough people there where quite a few of them didn’t know me that well (usual because of turnover and because I’m a travel-Trasher) so I bewildered a few wankers when I did my down-down for it. I turned it into a whole production, including a quick and very loud announcement, a brief song and some sort of guttural bellow of a yell. PP just stood there shaking his head. I don’t know at what time everyone else thought I had finally became Trash, but getting the mug did it for me. I bought a gigantic carabiner that I was able to put the wooden handle in, and ever since, I either have that mug in my hand, or have it hooked to one of my belt loops. At campouts, I sleep with it. Yeah, I really don’t want to lose my mug. At NC/SC 2006, people came into my tent while I was passed out and dragged me outside, cot and all. Someone found my mug too, but luckily I found it in the dirt beside the tent the next morning. Odd. After years of drinking out of it, it’s pretty scratched up. But beer still tastes exceptional.

What was your most memorable event at a Trash beer stop?
Hole had laid trail right past a sex shop and put a beer stop right across the street. So some of us got to the beer stop with sex toys. The best was a rubber penis that was at least 18 inches long. We ran through an entire neighborhood waving that thing around, horrifying the women and children. Hey Honey, guess who lives in your town?
Oh wait. The first trail Red Breast and I laid for the Trash was an A-to-A loop from Pyrates in Spring Lake. At our third beer stop, Trashy ate his first used condom. I guess that trumps anything else.

What was your most memorable event in a Trash circle?
Hole’s trail again. We were passing around cheesy poofs in circle. Spooge was wearing an apron. Tang took the container, quietly went behind Spooge and started sticking cheese balls all the way down his butt crack. Then she pulled them all back out with her teeth and ate them. She never made a big deal over it, but enough people noticed to have it become a thing of lore. Bonus: Hole chilled down a watermelon and stuck a bottle of something in it. The cops came. Rock.

What was your most memorable circle?
Trash circle at the Interhash in Toronto. September ’05. I’m a die-hard Black Sheeper, and Bwana had what I knew was going to be a fantastic trail, but it was going to be really far away and it wasn’t going to be the Trash Trail. And oh my God, what a fucking trail we got. The hares were Buck, Shitty, Scabby, Night Train and New Shoes. It started off not-too-hopeful, with a mile-plus YBF on assfault. But there had been torrential rains right before we got there, and we kept getting lower in elevation. All of a sudden there was a shoe-sucking lake crossing, an excellent beer stop and then the mother lode: A slog through yards upon yards of mud. Mudfight? Yup. Desperately trying to stay upright while paralleling the muddy banks of a river? Yup. We cut left to this dirt trail and I looked up to notice the mudline, where you could see how high the floodwaters had been. They had reached over 10 feet high. People got into the circle absolutely coated in mud. Most of us cleaned up. But Hedgy let the muck dry and he wore it like a badge of honor. After that shiggilicious trail we were really pumped. And then we had a keg for circle, and two fantastic Trashers in the middle: Scabby and Buck. Even two bibbings. Watching them run circle for over and hour and not have it get boring was a total inspiration.

What was your most memorable haring in Fayetteville?
It was a trail Red Breast and I did with Keyless Entry. We saw an area we liked relatively close to the river, and got there a day early to scout. But we kept running into private property, and we were watching the day slip away. We finally gave up on that area and drove around to where we thought we might find a way into this gigantic patch of shiggy. Too many houses. But we found a lady in her front yard and I got out of the car to talk to her. She said there was an old guy who lived down the street who owned everything “all the way up to the water tower.” Well, that water tower was quite a ways away. So we drove over to his house to find him and his wife in their car, ready to leave. What luck. We asked him if we could borrow his property for a “cross-country run” and he said he didn’t care. He even gave us some pointers on the lay of the land. All we needed was one run-through and we were good. Not only were we good, we were stunned. That area from the water tower to his backyard had the best swamp I’ve ever been in. The perfect amount of water, very little odor and a very stable bottom. Us finding that bit of shiggy at the last minute was probably the luckiest I’ve ever gotten as a hare.

When did you get bibbed?
Trash Prom, December ‘05. It was actually the Prom a year earlier that people were prodding us with the fact that we could be bibbed. I was trying to reassure people that it was way too early, but they didn’t want to hear it. The day I got bibbed I had a jet-black banana hammock on, and I had sewn a Trash patch to it. Then I waterproofed it, so beer was sliding right off. But the waterproofing was no match for the rancid oil and rotting food. I still have the patch. It’s this nasty shade of brown and still stinks.

Trash is all about drama. Did you ever do anything to shake up the hash?
Pre-story: The Trash is notorious for its bib mixes. Red Breast and I made one that we fermented for a year. I got a little out-of-control with it and created a web site documenting the entire thing, including photos, counting down the days until Trash Prom ’06 when we would bring it as a bib mix donation. Some people claimed they weren’t even going to show up to Prom for fear they would get bibbed with it. After that, Trashy decided that the bibbings were going to be toned down.
The actual story: Right after some Trasher hit someone at NC/SC ’06, I added an addition to the Bib Mix website: pictures of me burning my bib. It was all staged, but it really pissed off some people. Understandably; if you know the importance of the bibs, you know burning your bib would be one of the few things a hasher could do and not be forgiven for. I was called a few choice names and had to post a quick retraction. I also explained why I did it: 1) Because I wanted to prove some lame point and 2) I hadn’t caused any drama yet as a bibbed Trasher and I was starting to feel guilty.

What is the craziest thing you’ve done? A.K.A. Have you represented the Trash well?
I don’t know if this counts: A couple years ago I started lighting my head on fire. Purell is almost pure rubbing alcohol and burns easily at room temperature. The problem is that it needs to be dark outside so everyone can see the blue flame. So I’d do it at night during campouts. I told myself I’d keep doing it until I had some sort of accident. It’s harder than it looks because you have to put enough on, but you also have to make sure you don’t use too much or it will roll down your face, like into your eyes. Then after you light it, you don’t have that long before your cranium starts stinging. So it’s one quick movement : slather on the Purell, light it quickly and wildly stamp out the flames with your hands. I’ve actually had people yell at me for doing it and call me a “fucking retard,” so it must be Acceptable Trash Behavior.
The accident? I was too drunk one night and put too much Purell on. So my hands were on fire and my head was on fire and some of the Purell ended up dripping down near one of my temples, and that was getting sort of warm too. I figured it was a sign I should stop. By the way, I never got burned doing it.

What would you like to say about the Trash in general, to people who’ve never hashed with them before?
I have a theory on why at least a few people say the Trash is cliquish. These are the hashers who show up to Fayetteville their first time and are way too excited to be there. It’s because they’ve met the Trash elsewhere and know a little bit about the reputation. But it’s like they’re star struck. They stand there with glazed eyes saying they’re going to start going to Trash trails, but not a whole lot of people can sustain that many miles in a car if they live out of town. (Like a 700-mile round trip from Atlanta.) I think this sort of excited delivery makes some Trashers think: “Well then, come here 3-5 times and then we’ll see how excited you are.”
Sure, that’s not always the case. And I can be way off-base here. But without a doubt, hashing in Fayetteville is different from seeing the travel-Trashers when they’re out of town. Hashing in Fayetteville grows on you, and you have to go quite a few times to have that happen. You have to “get it.” In other words, you have to understand that the Trash changes faster than any other hash in the region, and you have to be a good enough Trasher to roll with the changes. And by “good,” I don’t mean simply liking the bottle-rocket-in-the-ass Trash. I’m talking about the trails, the circles, the bars, the constant flood of new people, the mistakes and even the d.r.a.m.a. You can’t force yourself to like it. It just happens. If you have it in you, you’ll keep coming back. And even when you’re not in Fayetteville, you’ll represent well. I guess you could call it being A Trasher at Heart. In the grand scheme of things, I know hashing in general is a goof. But that doesn’t change the fact I consider it such an honor to wear a Trash bib. If I go back to ‘Nam today and don’t recognize anyone, I’ll still feel like a Trasher. And without even thinking about it, I’ll always act like one. To me, that just fucking rocks.