Nice legs, shame about the place.

SH3 run # 1473, Saturday 5th September 2009

Tinseltown without the rain

We were in Dannock on Saturday for a joint run with Sadao H3, our daughter who makes a virtue of living on the edge. Well, some of us were anyway; there were some notable absences, but enough of us made the effort for the idea to have seemed worthwhile. For the record, the named SH3 attendees were:
Hunter, Palm Job, Stick Insect, Solong, Buk Toy, Chao Ngor, Superpig, Ram It In, Rotten Johnny, Safe Sex, Egghead, Only a Yolk, Tuttee Fruity, Yolk’s Poke, Last Lover, Peppered Pussy, Home Alone, Meals on Wheels, Screw Girl, Duck Fart, Sex Sprinter, Dark Ling, Mugabe, Knob Gobling and Twenty-Ten.
Added to these were a fair number of Malaysian runners who had managed to make it across the border, so as turnouts go this was a pretty good one.
The first problem with Dannock of course, is that it is not in Songkhla – the amazing healthy city that is, as opposed to the province, to which it clings to the very edge, just past the customs post and just before immigration. This is not a problem if you happen to live there but these days the residents seem to be mostly Burmese migrants. So for most of us, the first issue to be negotiated in running with Sadao H3 is an 80km drive.
The Egg contingent set off from Songkhla just after 2:30 p.m. choosing to by pass Hatyai via the Old Yala road. Unfortunately this seemed to be the route chosen by large numbers of other people not going to Sadao including a drunken idiot who narrowly avoided being decapitated by the rear of the Egg-mobile when it was forced to apply its brakes suddenly by the appearance ahead of a large truck on the wrong side of the road. We stopped to help him pick up his bike, but apparently intimidated by our appearance, the motorcyclist quickly picked himself and his machine up and rode off hurriedly in the opposite direction. Delayed but unbowed we resumed the journey. But it was apparent that we were going to be lucky to make the 4:00 p.m. kick off.
Shortly after that it began to rain. It rained hard, so hard that by the time we were approaching Sadao, you could barely see the road ahead. A hurried telephone conference with Stick Insect however established that the rain was also falling in Dannock and we were advised to proceed to the load up point as they would wait.
We hit traffic. It was moving, but slowly. The reason was that there was a body lying in the road and everyone wanted to get a good look. It was another motorcyclist who had met a truck; someone had thoughtfully covered it with a tarpaulin but Knob Gobling who was five minutes ahead of us sadly reported that this one had not managed to avoid decapitation. It was not living on the edge anymore; it had slipped over it. We drove on more carefully.
Shortly after we cleared the customs post and hit more traffic. A line of trucks waiting to leave Dannock which we raced past on the inside until a coach thoughtfully pulled across the road only to be blocked by a moron in a Mercedes. The minutes ticked by; it was already 4:15; we thought about turning back and looking for the A site, but then magically there we were, through the line of trucks and heading up Soi 1 for the Bagus Bar, where the rain seemed about to let up and the Sawng-Taows were already lined up waiting for us.
From that point on it all began to look up. We loaded ourselves up into the transport leaving the women and children gazing fondly after us as we retraced our steps back towards the customs post, turning off just before we hit it, along the track to the water tower where we disembarked and were instructed about the run: shreddy followed by some squares which by now might have been a bit water-logged; a fair number of checks etc. and 30 beer tokens distributed in a manner which infuriated Palm Job sufficiently for him to fall out with Knob Gobbling and Only a Yolk over the issue, who would also later almost come to blows over a beer token.
The next hour and a half or so was sheer joy. A lovely rolling run ranging around the gentle hills of Sadao. We started North, I would guess, and at some point we must have turned East. As usual, Sex Sprinter seemed to know where the paper was going to be at every check, but then suddenly he was notable by his absence, last heard screaming on! on! in the wrong direction as we headed Northwards again. Sadly for him he had found the short run, thoughtfully laid so that Tuttee Fruity would have something to do. He had other ideas and avoiding the brotherly advice of Last Lover made a dash for freedom and stayed with us for the whole of the long run. Nice one Gerry!
The shreddy ran out and we came to terms with following disintegrated squares; after a while it became second nature and some of us even managed to slip the nannying attentions of Rotten Johnny as he sensibly hung back to make sure that Tuttee Fruity stayed with us, offering some hints about the finer points of beer token placement on the way. Knob Gobbling and Only a Yolk gave us an excellent demonstration of the correct offensive lunging and grabbing technique, with OaY coming off marginally worse from the encounter, but KG gave up the token anyway. Palm Job, who was of the opinion that it was all unfair to front-runners, swooped vulture-like for another token which OaY had secreted in her knickers but was forced to hand it back as no-one comes between OaY and a beer if they know what is good for them! Then just as we were beginning to think we had run enough we met Sex Sprinter who was walking back along the trail and shortly afterwards the lake hove into view and we were running along the southern shore before a quick lope across the bridge by the Water View restaurant to the welcoming site of the beer truck.
The pack drifted back in dribs and drabs with the last drab home in about an hour forty. Most of the short runners had already been removed from the scene and we were only given a few minutes to enjoy what is probably the nicest spot any where around Dannock before being hustled into the Sawng Tauw for the return trip to The Bagus Bar. Some of us wondered whether it wouldn’t have made more sense to stay at the Water View. The amazing unhealthy city of Dannock does not look at its best in the rain. In fact arguably it does not have a best to look at. It’s just a dump. It exists on the edge of existence.

There is something edgy about the vistas of uncleared trash behind the grubby chicken shacks and the desperate looks in the eyes of the girls as they followed us up the road. There weren’t going to be too many marks around braving the weather that night and we were probably as many men in one place as they were going to see. Tinseltown in the rain; just sad.
But the Bagus Bar was full of happy people and the brats didn’t seem to have come to too much harm. Home Alone chased Peppered Pussy around the bar getting in practice for being all grown up, as the new junior Rotten was passed around and cooed over by broody harriets, managing to smile engagingly about the experience. Get used to it kid, big brother can tell you there’ll be a lot of that sort of stuff in the next few years! And when you get older and don’t have those youthful good looks anymore, you’ll still have Dannock pussy to fawn over you; as long as you’ve got the money to keep them interested.
We circled quickly as the lure of the food became too great to resist. In the absence of proper ice, two Leo cartons were filled with ice cubes and some visiting GM’s from Malaysia were made to sit in them. Palm Job was greeted from Hatyai H3 and Egghead was forced reluctantly to sub for the absent Beaver. Sinners included Knob Gobbling and Only a Yolk for squabbling over beer tokens and Sex Sprinter for run-avoidance. There were probably others… but Just Rotten (Johnny) and Chi Bai Salleh (Last Lover) were the hares and there was a pretty general agreement that the run had been excellent particularly bearing in mind that it had been set in a tropical storm.
Some people began to disappear, mostly to prepare themselves for the rest of the evening. There was some discussion about which bars were less unpleasant than others, largely based on the volume of their music and the degree of darkness. But faced with the drive back and an enforced abstinence from sufficient quantities of alcohol to make even those bars seem attractive, the Egg contingent withdrew and were mostly asleep by the time we cleared the customs post on the way out.
And that is the problem for Sadao H3. No one disagrees that the idea of running occasionally with Malaysian hashers is good and that there is some great running country around Dannock; but Dannock… well it’s just Dannock. Once you’ve been there and got over the novelty it’s not a very nice place; and that’s putting it mildly. Those notable absentees from the run on Saturday would probably be more inclined to run in Dannock if they didn’t actually have to have Dannock in their faces. Clearly there are alternative venues - the Water View for instance where people who wanted to run but didn’t want to have to dump their women and kids in Dannock could feel more comfortable.
But that’s for the future and for the Sadao H3 committee to contemplate. For now in my willing role as scribe and reluctant role as substitute Beaver, let me extend a big thank you to Sadao Hash for a great afternoon’s running and a lot of fun afterwards.
On! On!