First Social-Distanced Amsterdam H3 Hash...

It was just a few days after our amazing weekend in Paris that coronavirus started rapidly spreading across the Netherlands and the US. By that Thursday, Jimmy realized that trying to go to Jacksonville was futile and he started scrambling to find flights back home instead. I was so relieved that he managed to make it back from the US on the 14th as all flights back to Europe are cancelled by the following day. He debated about attending the hash on the 15th as he was tired, but was very glad that he did. It was nice to have a distraction while we were waiting to see if Veronica could make it safely across southern England by train and then the North Sea by ferry, her boyfriend tried to fly here from southern France and Ashlynn tried flying home from Vietnam. Not sure if we were living in a dystopian love story or a new form of The Amazing Race.

The St. Patty’s Day hash started in the Amsterdamse Bos. 

What a great surprise to see that the cherry blossoms were in bloom! I had never been to this part of the park, so was very excited and took lots of photos that are now lost due to my phone crashing. Luckily a few other hashers caught a few of our group amongst the beautiful trees. 

The 400 cherry trees were donated by the Japan’s Women’s Club in 2000 to celebrate 400 years of cultural ties between the nations. Each tree has a women’s name, split equally between Japanese and Dutch names.

The Dutch government had begun advising that we maintain 1.5 meters (5 feet) distance away from each other, so we tried our best. 

It was a great trail with lots of off-road deviations from the well-groomed paths. 

We had both a Guinness beer break and lime green shot stop.  

Clearly we were breaking the rules when posing for this photo of our variety of colorful running shoes.

Slippery Edge, the hare, provided some nice Irish whisky and a large bottle of hand sanitizer...

…plus coffee filters to pour chips into instead of dipping our hands in the bags. 

Not only were we glad not to have missed this great trail with a fun circle, but it turned out to be our last in-person AH3 Hash for 2.5 months due to the rapidly changing coronavirus restrictions. The Dutch government had just announced that restaurants, bars, nightclubs, museums, gyms, salons and schools were all ordered shut by 6 p.m. that night.

We stopped at Schiphol on our way home to meet Brett’s flight. He had debated about flying back to Exeter, but Veronica convinced him that he would be better off with us than stuck in his crappy student house on his own. Little did he know what he would be getting himself into. It was shocking to arrive at the airport to see that Starbucks was already closed and Burger King, supposedly the busiest BK in the world, was shuttering up.