Both sides now

Front view

Rear view: the SH3 contingent merge seamlessly into KSH3

The folks back home; but where's Gan Yao?

HH3 Sunday: grim reality returns

Evidence above of the far flung activities of SH3 last weekend, with a fair contingent abandoning our own run for the pleasures of the KSH3 600th run, others staying home to make the most of what was left, and still more globetrotting and incomunicado.

Saturday's SH3 turnout was pretty good considering how many people were away, and almost everybody attempted either the long short run or the short long run. At 4:30 there was no sign of the hares at the run site as they were still making their way there on foot from the A site. After some telephone calls it was decided that Aftershock would drive everybody out to the A site in Sex Sprinter's truck, picking the hares up on the way. So it was about 4:50 before all the runners arrived at the A site  between the big quarry and the new Hatyai road and were instructed to follow either Buk Toy for the short run or Sex Sprinter, ominously carrying a bag of shreddy, for the long run.

Not long after setting off however, Sex Sprinter relinquished the bag to Aftershock and halted the long run for long enough to allow him time to get away from the rest of the pack, and the long run then became a live hare run, the original run set by Buk Toy and Sex Sprinter having been judged to be too long to complete in the time remaining before dark. At the time this was not made clear to Gan Yao, who not long afterwards made one of his increasingly unreliable leaps of intuition and set off southwards towards Nam Noi, while the rest of the pack performed a small oval and returned northward to the A site in about 30 minutes.

The short run meanwhile took a different and rather longer route to make it back to the A site, by which time Gan Yao's absence had become apparent, and a decision was made for the 2 vehicles at the A site to split up in search while returning most of the pack to the B site, leaving Egghead, Innuendo, R2D2, Itchy Bitchy and a small sack of beer at the A site in case Gan Yao should make his way back there. He, meanwhile had reached the old Hatyai road in record time, in the process running about twice as far as the rest of the pack, and been picked up by a sympathetic tuk-tuk driver and deposited back at the B site.
Eventually the whole hash made it back to the B site, except that the hares had by then buggered off to a social engagement leaving Aftershock to be iced and to take the faint praise awarded to the run.

Sunday's HH3 run was similarly depleted by the absentees who failed to make it back from Ko Samui etc. in time. So a not dissimilar group gathered at the back of Kao Ko Hong and were informed  by hares Sex Star and Sexy Girl that they would be climbing up to the metal chedi, then coming back down partially by road: Surprise! Surprise!

First however, the long run was transported down the road by pick-up and began the run by climbing up through a building site, before plunging down into the valley behind and then commencing a long and  rather pleasant ascent to the chedi, taking in a lovely trail around the back of the hill where, much to most people's surprise, we were allowed to run for about 10 minutes. Then after a scramble up the hillside we hit the trail to the chedi, before following the road up to a semi-beer stop (only  half a can each!) followed by a precipitous descent, which it has to be said avoided the road for all but about 100 meters. The short run meanwhile which had avoided the road trip, laboriously slogged half way up the hill in impenetrable jungle, avoiding all the nice bits of the long run, then followed the long run on the steepest parts of its descent back to the run site.