Chapter 143

I felt surprisingly good when I got up at 7, with less than five hours of sleep and a torrent of alcohol consumed the previous day. I stuck to beer and I paced myself (and by that I mean I drank from 10 AM to 2 AM but at a constant rate) and like I learned at Nash Hash, when I go on a multi-day binge I have more energy on the third day than on the second, as my body is turning into a hashing machine.

I was supposed to go mark the trail for the hangover run but it was raining buckets. I exchanged messages with my co-hare, already on the way. I was seriously considering canceling the whole thing and would have if it was an ordinary hash, but we had visitors and also people were slowly pouring in the WeChat group to confirm their attendance, rain or shine. So fuck it, I grabbed my balls, put on a raincoat and rode my bicycle to the meeting point.

Guitärded Spitler was there, his disgusting German bare feet in walking sandals, sitting under a tarp by a small convenience store. I cracked open a morning beer and we discussed logistics. We changed our original game plan, as the chalk marks were becoming all smudgy quickly and then disappearing in the rain, so it will have to be a live trail, walkers only. He’d stay with the group, and I’d set off a few minutes earlier, marking as I go.

He went to park his car at the end point and I went to the park to hide the supplies for the first beer stop. At 10:30, people started coming in, a surprisingly high turn-up of twenty or so. Some hashers from other cities had already left but the hardcores remained. A little after 11, I got on my way, leaving chalk marks leading to the first beer stop. My homebrewed Shitty Trail Amber Ale was served, alongside Snow lager chasers, and there were games of baijiu roulette: six shooters are lined up, five containing water, and one with foul cheap Chinese rotgut. I could have played a more cruel version (5x baijiu, 1x water) but I felt like this was enough.

I kept marking the trail, riding my bicycle ahead of the pack. It’s more fun to mark it ahead of time and do the trail at the same time as the hashers but sometimes you gotta adapt and overcome. It was a city hash, but I got them to walk along canals and through parks, pleasant places. I got told it was a bit too long, it would have been fine for a standalone hash but as a hangover hash following a big Saturday trail, maybe too much. I had to down a few cups as punishment once we made it to the comfy dry confines of the hash bar.

I planned the second beer stop to be under a bridge in a cute city park, so I went to buy beer at the only store nearby. It’s one of those shit-fucking Baixin convenience stores that look modern but are managed by imbeciles, and though there was plenty of space in the bottom shelf of their fridge, only a few cans of beer were cold, and they were those fancy-looking cans of Qingdao that cost four times the normal price but don’t taste that much better. So it was either pop our budget, or drink only disgusting piss-warm beer, and even if I do take those few cold cans it’s not enough. I didn’t even know how overpriced they were until I got to the counter and the lady charged me an absurd price, so I just walked out. I sincerely hope the cunts go out of business and get replaced by a Lawsons. So I changed the plan and had the BS2 a bit further, in a rather third-worldy neighborhood with only mom-n-pop stores but manned by people smart enough to stock their fridges with beer.

After that it was a beeline to the hash bar, where we had the final circle, ate pizza and played a few more drunken pranks on one another. I went to pee without closing the door, heard running footsteps behind me, and WHAM got hit with a whip. Crotch Cricket swung it upwards between my legs, and one of the leather straps hit me right on the tip. Fair enough, should have closed the door.

I said goodbye to everyone, went home, and took a hot bath. I sat in front of the TV but now the sleep deprivation, exercise and colossal beer consumption caught up with me, and I went to bed at 5 o’clock. I woke up at 10, the girlfriend was reading a book and eating fried chicken, she asked me if I want some. “No”, I replied, before drifting back to sleep.