Hash – Chain of Pain – 26 Jan 07

Today the Hash was at Upper Wadi Digla. It was a fair way out, but a beautiful place. Unfortunately the directions that were sent out were a little bit wrong, so some people missed the turn off and it was after 2pm before most people arrived.

There were quite a few people, not as many as last week, but a good sized group. The walk was quite long, with lots of hills and valley’s, but really good. In fact the last three walks have been really good. They were getting too short, now they are a little longer and require a bit of exertion, but are lovely.

Someone forgot the cups for the down downs, so Wesley got this massive knife out of his car (it was Crocodile Dundee – “that’s not a knife, this is a knife!” size). He then cut a bunch of water bottles in half to make substitute cups. It worked quite well.

Last week Mary (wife of Peit that Chris hared with) got awarded the Chain of Pain. The Chain of Pain is one of the ‘sacred relics’ that are passed around the group. There is a toilet seat, a smelly galabiya and a new galabiya and the Chain of Pain. They each have different meaning and are suppose to be awarded for very different reasons, but I’m not exactly sure what! I think the Chain of Pain is suppose to go to someone who’s done something wrong – a kind of punishment. Last week Mary got it for walking too fast on the walk – she was out in front by a ways for the whole time.

That meant this week she had to carry the Chain of Pain on the walk. When it was time to pass on the challenge she called into the circle three people as candidates. Firstly it was Wesley, for dodgy directions. Kim (one of the hares) had provided a map, Wesley and Martina updated but made one small error, actually they provided too much information – consequently half the cars ended up at the recycle centre instead of turning off about 3km earlier.

Irina (the Russian chick) was summoned into the circle next. On the walk she’d pulled a vodka bottle from her hand bag. Just a small one, the 250ml size. She claims it just had juice in it, but the general consensus was that there was no way it was just juice.

Next Chris was called to the circle. He’d said to Mary earlier in the day that it’d be interesting to try doing the run carrying the Chain of Pain… He was chatting when his name was called. So had no idea what was going on when he entered the circle. There was some small debate as to who was the most worthy candidate – Chris won. Now next week he has to carry the Chain of Pain on the run… should be interesting. It’s about a metre of thick chain looped in a circle with a padlock – then padded with a towel and duct tape… its heavy, but no too bad – it’s just going to be uncomfortable lugging the thing around the run.

The On-On was at a place called Red Onion. Really nice food. I got a ‘nut steak’. It was a really nice cut of steak stuffed with nuts and topped with a nutty gravy. It was lovely (but the two beers I’d had earlier in the afternoon on an empty stomach did dull my taste buds a bit!)

After a couple of hours some people started to drift off and about a dozen of us went onto another bar. Three people were driving so we piled into their cars and headed to the bar. It was a funny little bar, looked like it used to be someone house (probably was!) There was a pool table, and some tall tables and lower tables. We got a big table and most of us sat around that just chatting and drinking. The bars here always serve popcorn… on the tables there are always little dishes of popcorn – very yummy.

My driver man had taken Chris home about 5:30pm and he’d told him to come back for me about 9pm. I got a missed call from him at 9pm and sent him a text saying I’d be another hour or so… when I was finally ready to go about midnight I had to get one of the waiter staff at the bar to tell him where I was. Partly coz I had no idea where in Maadi I was, but mostly coz its so much easier if the waiter speaks to him in Arabic! That’s the good and bad thing about having a driver – I feel guilty if I say about 9pm then aren’t actually ready until midnight… but I was having fun and wasn’t ready. If I’d been catching a cab it wouldn’t have mattered. But the really good thing about having the driver is that I was able to collapse into the car and be driven home without having to worry that he was dodgy, or that he would get lost.