I know a lot about hashing . . . enough to know I don\u2019t really know anything about hashing.<\/p>\n
I grew up thinking once you\u2019ve seen three or more marks after the last check, you\u2019re on.\u00a0 That a false trail could be only three marks long before the BT.\u00a0 That if you can\u2019t see the next mark up ahead and you\u2019re not at a check, trail goes straight.\u00a0 That hashers had hash names.\u00a0 That all hashes had circles.\u00a0 That hares had to write Beer Near or On In somewhere close to the end.<\/p>\n
But all these \u201ctruths\u201d are local.\u00a0 What\u2019s true in my mother hashes, Tampa and Okinawa, isn\u2019t necessarily true anywhere else.\u00a0 There are hashes where hares lay false trails one or two miles long.\u00a0 Where hares turn on powder with no checks.\u00a0 Where hashers use real names, have no circles, wouldn\u2019t know what Beer Near meant if they tripped over it.\u00a0 There are hashes . . . not many, true . . . where they don\u2019t even drink.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a big world and there are as many ways to hash as there are hashes in it.\u00a0 But there are also a lot of purists who know the One True Way and never hesitate to tell the rest of us about it.\u00a0 Hashers who insist dead hare hashes aren\u2019t the real thing.\u00a0 That walkers aren\u2019t hashers. That trails don\u2019t count if they\u2019re not at least eight miles long.<\/p>\n
Hashers like that need to get out more, which is why I\u2019ve always been a proponent of road trips.\u00a0 When I started traveling around Asia in the early 1990s, I learned that Okinawa HHH didn\u2019t have a lock on the truth, that there were many ways to hash, all of them fun.\u00a0 Good thing, too, because otherwise I probably wouldn\u2019t have survived the shock of hashing with the Honolulu Hash, where they do\u00a0everything<\/em>\u00a0differently.\u00a0 When I got back to the western US, I was a promiscuous hasher, traveling around California, Nevada, Arizona, Washington, and New Mexico, running with as many hashes as I could.<\/p>\n Every now and then I\u2019d find myself in a town fellow Okinawa hashers had transferred to, and I\u2019d call them up to see if they\u2019d be at the hash.\u00a0 After the first dozen \u201cthey don\u2019t hash here like they did in Okinawa\u201d whinges, I quit calling.\u00a0 Frankly, I don\u2019t want to hang around with people who have a lock on the truth.\u00a0 Their outlook on life is as limited as their outlook on hashing.<\/p>\n Are<\/em>\u00a0there any central truths about hashing?\u00a0 Of course there are.\u00a0 How can you have a hash if you don\u2019t have a trail to follow?\u00a0 There has to be a trail, and therefore there has to be a hare.\u00a0 There has to be a pack, even if it\u2019s only one guy and his dog, to follow the trail.\u00a0 I\u2019ll stick my neck out and say there should be beer at the end, or at least some kind of liquid refreshment.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll stick another part of my anatomy out and say that hares should always go looking for lost hashers.\u00a0 I know a lot of hares are reluctant to do that, but people should clean up their own messes.\u00a0 I think trail should go straight if you can\u2019t see the next mark from the mark you\u2019re at, especially if you\u2019re in tall grass or shiggy.\u00a0 But these are my own personal truths, based on my own experience as a hasher, and if I visit a hash where these truths do not apply, I don\u2019t bitch about it.\u00a0 If the hares won\u2019t go looking for lost hashers I\u2019ll do it myself; if trail is impossible to follow, I\u2019ll go back to the start.\u00a0 It\u2019s all good; it\u2019s all hashing; it\u2019s all useful experience; if it doesn\u2019t kill me it makes me stronger.<\/p>\n Personally, I like finding out how much I don\u2019t know.\u00a0 It helps me appreciate life, and people, and hashing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I know a lot about hashing . . . enough to know I don\u2019t really know anything about hashing. I grew up thinking once you\u2019ve seen three or more marks after the last check, you\u2019re on.\u00a0 That a false trail could be only three marks long before the BT.\u00a0 That if you can\u2019t see the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hash-house-harriers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25518"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25521,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25518\/revisions\/25521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}