Hares: Booty Camp, Krusty
Where: Fish Creek Park, at the end of Elbow Drive
On-In: White Hart Manor Pub
Big Rock: Real pub, real beer!
Attendance: 38
It's a little-known fact that Bastille Day has nothing to do with a bunch of pissed-off Parisians — imagine that — storming a prison containing seven inmates or being a flashpoint in the French Revolution or any of that historical claptrap.
No, the rough translation of Bastille Day is: "Thank God that (bleeping) Stampede is finally over."
It's a tradition that dates not from 1789, but from 1913, which is the first year Calgarians and Albertans started getting sick of Stampede after a one-year honeymoon period.
The corporate interests had just started getting their claws into Stampede — sorta like today, but not quite — and rodeo-goers began saying "Enough."
So Bastille Day was born, a tradition that continues to this day.
In that spirit, hashers gathered in mosquito-infested, more or less, Fish Creek Park to follow a trail set by veteran hare Krusty and virgin hare Booty Camp.
It was sorta like deja vu all over again and then some, times 10, since Krusty had just set a trail at Fish Creek three weeks previously and had also gone to White Hart Manor pub afterward.
But, hey, whatever works, and if it ain't broke ...
Oh, sure, there were some breakdowns: Occasionally crossing old marks, which led to some confusion. Then there was a lack of communication between the co-hares.
Let Booty Camp explain: "I have no idea where this trail goes, sorry dude. He just told me to run and throw down some marks. So I did."
Ah, communication, it's a beautiful thing.
But no one was eaten by mosquitos, no one drowned during the three or four — or was it five? — crossings of Fish Creek and nobody encountered any cougars on trail — unless you count Happy Ending, Erudite and Xena.
Hashers and their wet socks and shoes made it back to the parking lot, then onto White Hart, where beer and wings were plentiful and a raspy-voiced Dr. Fill conducted business and handed out down-downs in rapid-fire succession.
It also featured a special appearance by Joan Jett, dressed in her standard all-black outfit and singing her brains out. OK, it was actually Snevil, who's a major Joan Jett aficionado, backed by Jaws, who played his Blackhearts role to the hilt.
Funny, more than 40 hashers ate the same food Ms. Made did, and she was the only one afflicted with the dreaded malady. Just for the record, food poisoning is not to be confused with beer poisoning or morning sickness.
It's unclear what effect, if any, the food poisoning with have on the
impending arrival of Baby's babies, a double-fetus extravaganza that
will put all that Brangelina crap to shame.
Then there was Dirty Girl and her bad foot, but she showed up wearing
two shoes, which is a rarity.
So beware.
It's off to Washington, D.C., for a year, then to an Eastern European semi-hellhole called Moldova, which may have been the place where Boris and Natasha used as a base of operations to torment Bullwinkle and Rocky all those years ago.
Or perhaps it was the Moldovans who stirred up the French.
On-On!
Duke of Hurl