Hash Harriers at Castleton Gardens
on George Hamilton (Jamaica), 23/Mar/2011 00:48, 34 days ago
There’s not much to report here as the harrier’s incredible web site has all the information already with a hundred photo slide-show.If you want to get fit and meet friendly people, the hash harriers are the club to join.http://jah3.virtualave.net/RUN345.htmI was at Castleton Gardens with CUSO-VSO's Abdi, Myrna and Rafael. Delphine and Dominic were also there.I am already a partial harrier, which means that I am learning the art of embellishing stories in a fun way.Some of what I have written is really scary, but the bottom line is that I made it back in one piece and enjoyed the fresh country air and very scenic hills, rivers, etc.When I first looked at the hash harrier’s web site my impression was that these guys really like running through all of Jamaica’s rivers and climbing up all the steep hills.Conveniently, they tended to wear the same running clothes for each hash so that made them easy to recognize.Then I saw Dominic Ali and thought to myself– wow he had actually been on a hash before although this was supposedly his first one!Then I realized that the ultra-efficient harriers had their event up on the Internet already.These guys and gals are fast in more ways than one.Needless to say, I didn’t see anyone charging over the finishing line although Abdi might have.Myrna and I were up in the hills trying to figure out the way back to the start.At one lonely one stage I was thinking that it was good that I hadn’t invested in a tee shirt that said “I am may be slow but I’m in front of you” on its back.I was coming last at that stage.That would have been an utter waste of money.Instead possibly a large umbrella with“SOS” would have helped the search and rescue helicopter find us.Myrna was saying how she thought of herself being Tarzan hanging on to all the bushes to help her stay upright on the steep trails.Her impression about the wildness of the location may have partially been in contrast with the location’s slightly confusing name that suggested strolling around a manicured formal garden, admiring rose bushes and looking at flower beds.My contribution to the misconception was that, no rush, one went around a hash at ones own pace, which was strictly speaking true.Needless to say, I too hung on for dear life to anything rooted into the hillside because I did not want to end up in the outpatients at the far away Kingston hospital by way of bouncing off varioustrees and rocks.But we survived, as did all the other 60 or so harriers.Myrna and I should have got credit for doing three hashes instead of just one.We took a couple of wrong turns.On the first one a helpful local advised us to do a U-turn and pointed out the correct route.On the second one, that would have made a great kamikaze snowboard slope, Myrna’s sensible self-preservation genes kicked in.She told me that the trail we were going down was too steep to be safe.Sure enough, we had descended about 100 feet in a 50 foot distance and there were no signs of the shredded paper that were meant to mark the trail.Now that I am safely in Kingston it has crossed my mind that the hash harriers need to invest in goat insurance in case herds of wild goats pass by and nonchalantly eat the shredded paper trail markers.Goats are nonchalant, you never see them harrieringYou may wonder where Rafael, Delphine and Dominic were.They were in the young fast group that ended way ahead of us and who were never in Myrna’s or my sight, and even went around the runners route, while Myrna and I were on the beginner’s one.But all in all it was a great experience and helped with thinking outside the box.At the start of the hash my thoughts were that it would be impossible to cross the river, but the end of the hash I realized that the river was the easy part.Stumbling through the undergrowth we longed for the river that flowed right by the after hash-feast.The river meant that we had survived.A bonus too was that because the river was in Jamaica our feet did not go numb as they would have wading through Canadian rivers in March, all we had to do was not stand on theriverbed rocks because they were exceptionally slippery nor touch the water in case the current carried us away.But apart from that, the river was pretty easy, and it wasn’t at Black River where the crocodiles are.