Survived My Second Hash – Friday 1 December 2006

Chris and I went on our second Hash today. It was at the same place in the desert as last time, but the trails were much harder. Last time I had to climb up and down sand dunes, this time I had to climb a damn mountain! Actually it was a ‘wadi’ – I think that’s what they are called… its basically and sand/rock formation that’s caused by the wind eroding the loose sand.

The walk trail was only 4km, but we had to climb this massive wadi. Actually going up wasn’t as bad as coming back down again. Up was harder physically, coz it was really steep, but I was more scared coming down because it was loose shale in places.

In fact, for half the time coming down I was in a crouch, kinda sliding on my feet. I must have slipped more than I thought coz when I was climbing back up the next hill a guy behind me said I was bleeding! It’s funny, I hadn’t even noticed until he mentioned it (and of course then it started to sting!). It wasn’t too bad, just a few scratches, only 2 deep enough to leak – and didn’t leak much really.

Then we had to climb up another massive sand dune – I was concerned about getting back down, it wasn’t quite as steep, but it was longer. I’m not sure I’m cut out for this scaling mountains and sliding down sand dune business – turns out I’m a bit of a wuss! However, given there was about 30 other people walking I couldn’t really sit down and have a little cry before I slithered down the wadi! I finally made it back to the main area with everyone else… minor war wounds, but largely unscathed :)

There was a naming in the circle today. It was funny. First they tell the circle a bit about the person up for naming, then they go around the circle getting suggestions. Generally speaking, the suggestions are for names that the person really wouldn’t want to be lumped with.

The guy getting named was Karin (not sure if that’s spelt right or not). Basically they said his name, that he was the Egyptian squash representative and that was about all we had to work with. Not many people had suggestions to start with, but once they started it seemed to go down hill from there. Some of the suggestions were ‘Spotted balls’ (as in the spot that’s on a squash ball), ‘Karin, de la crème’, ‘Nivea’ (as in the face cream), ‘Skinny Good Looking Bastard’ and ‘Squashed Balls’. Voting was done by yelling - they yelled out each name until some were more obviously being cheered for more than others. In the end it came down to ‘Nivea’ and ‘Squashed Balls’. So Karin is now known as ‘Squashed Balls’.

Once the name had been chosen, Karin ‘Squashed Balls’ crouched down, they sung the naming song threw sand on him and poured beers over his back. The naming song had something in it like ‘by the sands of the desert’ that’s when they threw the sand on him. It was fairly funny.