Hash # 137

A few of us have ended up on the email distribution list for Monrovia's Hash House Harriers, and with Hash # 137 scheduled for today, we decided we couldn't let our new friends down. We laced up our sneakers for a Hash through Paynesville, a section of the city that's a 35 - 40 minute drive from where we live. Although we were still in Monrovia, what we saw of Paynesville was far less developed than the parts of the city we know best. The crazy thing about these runs (the monthly Sunday trips notwithstanding) is that they are often routed through people's backyards -- so we found ourselves nodding at people as we zipped around their outdoor fire places, and in one particular case, as we jogged past a few children giving their youngest sibling a bath (she waved happily at us).

These runs are a great way to see sections of the city we might not otherwise visit, and a chance to get outside and exercise. They are also an opportunity to drink Grolsch outside with a group of people, while singing a racy version of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" (slightly disturbing). My first instinct after running for a while in the heat is not to pop open an ice cold beer, but there's really no saying no in this type of setting (my British friend Adam wouldn't have let me get away with it -- he says group drinking is part and parcel of the Hash experience).

One of the leaders of the run today is a guy I've seen at my gym a few times this week, making the city feel a bit smaller already. I'm told that after a couple more Hashes we'll be considered regulars and might even get nicknames (how many names am I going to have after the six months are up?).

Oh, and Adam taught my housemates and I a great game today -- it's called Take Two, and you play it using Scrabble letters, but not the board. Everyone takes five letters to start and tries to make one or more words with them, though the words must build off of each other like they typically have to do in Scrabble. Once all your letters have been used, you say "take two" and everyone grabs two more letters and keeps adding on to their own crosswords. You can rearrange letters and change words if you need to. It gets stressful if you fall behind and everyone else keeps using their letters, while yours pile up (common if you get an x or z and need to find the right place for it). Anyway, sounds silly, but I can see this becoming an obsession for a while. Adam's mom is a librarian at a prison in the UK, and she taught the game to some of the inmates. They started putting money on the games and fights started breaking out, and the game has since been banned. We might have to start our own high stakes version of the game soon.