I’m gonna guess that about 12 of the “Teeming Millions” already know what this is about. For the rest of you…
If it has ever seemed to you that there really should be no reason why drunkenness and physical fitness couldn’t go hand-in-hand, allow me to introduce you to the Hash House Harriers (or “Hashers”, informally).
Billed as “A Drinking Club with a Running Problem”, the Hashers are an international group with thousands of participants. We get together whenever we dang well feel like it (usually somewhere between daily and semi-annually, but it varies), drink beer, run (or not, depending on personal preference), and sing bawdy songs, most of which were blatantly stolen from rugby.
The activity itself (there is no way to call this a “sport”, no matter how broadly you care to define the term) is taken from the British game of “hares and hounds” or “paper chase”. One or two hashers are designated as “hares”. They take off with a head start to lay a trail using flour, chalk, whatever. Everyone else is a “hound”. They try to follow the trail to the end (where the beer is).
The hounds act cooperatively, rather than competitively, to follow the trail. The hares try to make things more difficult by laying false trails, trails that loop around, and leaving beer along the way to slow everyone else down.
Anyway, if you have any interest in this, you can get more information at www.harrier.net, and you can find a group near you (really, pretty much no matter where you are) at http://www.gthhh.com/gtroster.htm.
Further, if you’re in the Denver, CO area, be on the 16th St. mall on 6/16 at around 3:00 p.m. You might get a good laugh…