German Hash-a-thon...

We got up early the next morning to drive to the German Hash-a-thon, which was taking place at a campground in Idstein, north of Wiesbaden. Unfortunately, we drove around in circles for nearly an hour before we actually found the small private campground. We arrived just in time for Pieter and me to head out on the first of the four 10K trails for the day. I didn’t bring my camera on trail and my phone was acting up, so there’s only this one photo.

Each trail was laid by a different German Hash kennel, who were each assigned a quadrant to lay their trail so that only the entrance to the camp would overlap between trails. I never intended to do all four trails, but after running the first 1.5, I just walked the rest and was glad I did as all four were really good trails with varied terrain.

The organizers had arranged with a local sports club to allow us to take showers, which was much appreciated. One of the ladies, who was dealing with having lyme disease herself, did lice checks; I didn’t have any, but she found three on Lisa. Thank goodness that we made it back to the camp before the skies opened up and that we had a giant tent to keep us dry as it poured for most of the night.

We had no running water or electricity at the campsite, just long-drop toilets. One of the girls dropped her cell phone into the toilet and asked for help to get it out. There was much discussion of methods, including her horribly sh*tty suggestion of finding someone small to hold by the ankles and lower into the toilet; needless to say, she gave us lots to laugh about. One of the guys did a full Macgyver stunt of tying a metal cup onto a flag pole and managed to rescue the phone. Most of us thought she’d just take the SIM out to put in a new phone, but she used the disinfectant that she found in the outhouse and declared it clean. Yuck!

I was happy that Melissa and Pieter decided to stay, but I was glad not to be in their tent with crying Norah.  Instead I was happy to be with Lisa and Nat in Simon’s massive and well-built tent as we stayed dry unlike some of the other campers. 

It was foggy in the morning, but dry and warm.

We hung out at the campsite until after lunch, helped Simon clean up and then hit the road back to Holland.