It was a small but feisty crowd that gathered at
Wat Rang Bua for a pre-holiday bit of exercise. Wat Rang Bua is not
the easiest place to get to, I explained to my better half as I was
being read the riot act for never, ever getting us to the run on
time. Amazingly, we pulled into the Wat parking lot at 5:15 on the
button with the pack still in preparation mode.
The esteemed hare, Todzilla quickly set the tone
for the day when he advised us to take our torches as the run was
'one hour and ten minutes', eight kilometers, and we would be
finishing in the dark. Oh, well. Nothing like a good long run to
make the drive worthwhile.
We set off in good spirits with the whole pack
together through the first few checks. That tricky hare had us all
checking in every possible direction with little success until the
inevitable "On On" was called from the absolute farthest possible
point from where I was standing on each occasion. Isn't that always
the way it is? Anyway, the pack carried on together for what seemed
like an awfully long time. As darkness fell, it was reduced to a
half a dozen hearty souls that refused to give up in spite of the
huge distance between the paper and pseudo-checks at virtually every
intersection. Eventually we found ourselves back in the gardens with
a choice of either swimming across a klong or getting back on the
out trail. Fortunately right there in the woods there was a guy who
was most certainly the long lost Thai cousin of the Clampett twins
from Deliverance. He insisted there was a bridge across the klong
even though we were all looking right where he was pointing and
there was clearly no bridge. Suddenly, as if by a miracle (it is the
season of miracles, isn't it?) a single plank bridge appeared. We
ultimately concluded that this guy's real plan was to keep the young
lady from San Diego in the woods. I think that had he seen her later
wearing the prick-of-the-week, he would have wanted her even more.
She sure seemed to like wearing it.
So we inched our way across the bridge, some of us
having a harder time of it than others, and happily ran out the last
several hundred meters back to the Wat. As we approached, it was
noted by more than one of us that the run had that unmistakeable
N--------i feel to it. Which, as all those of us familiar with
hashing in Thailand will know, is a compliment of the highest order.
Well done, Spinning Dwarf.
