Another Celebration: Mother’s Day...

For Mother’s Day, the girls went all out to make an incredible high tea featuring blueberry scones with coconut cream, cheese scones with an incredible peanut chickpea topping, and Cruesli and vanilla yoghurt parfaits. 

I felt truly grateful to be surrounded by so much love. 

The delicious spread looked incredibly professional with the food served on giant Delft platters and our mismatched china, which we hadn’t used in years.
 

Still a Half-Mind...

After the beer break, Opee live laid the next section through Vlietland. He laid a shortcut for Slippery and her son so they could avoid true trail through the nudist beach, which was surprisingly busy. 

Eventually the trail crossed back over the Vliet and followed one of our usual dog walking paths...

…where we encountered our second balance beam. 

Once back at our house, we had a short circle with the usual beer and junk food. 

Later that night, I arranged Zoom calls with our old hash friends in Raleigh...

…and San Diego (although half of those SDH3 friends no longer live in San Diego). It was the first time we had chatted with many of these folks in years, so it was great to catch up. We especially were thrilled that Rambyte and Mainframe stayed on long after the others had faded. They were on both calls because not only had we met in their kitchen in San Diego in December 1991, but we had followed them to North Carolina after Rambyte had helped Opee find a job. It was the perfect way to end my half-mind celebration. 

 

Truly a Half-Mind...

On May 9, I hit a major milestone: I had been hashing for half of my life and thus had truly become a half-mind. Apparently this term dates back to 1978 when a New Zealand hasher was interviewed and said, “If you have half a mind to hash, that’s all you’ll ever need.” Hashers have proudly called themselves half-minds ever since.

I had originally planned to hare a prom dress hash in Amsterdam that day, but had to shift plans. Instead, Opee helped me pre-lay my trail for a small in-person hash starting at Voorschoten Station. Slippery Edge, On the Edge and their 11-year-old son came down from Amsterdam, and Start Me Up and Give It a Blow came from Hillegom. 

Start Me Up was over seven months pregnant and borrowed one of our neighbor’s bikes to cycle most of the trail. 

I was happy to be able to design a trail that greatly differed from the many trails that Opee had already laid in our area. 

Before our first beer stop, we posed for this socially-distanced photo in front of this truck with the motto: Nothing Really Matters.

We took a quick diversion to see the newborn lambs at the newly opened Van der Valk Boederij (Farm).

I was thrilled that we had recently found this new waterfront path in the field that we had been walking in for over six years. 

This was the first of our balance beam features.

We surprised the group with the arrival of Boar Whore and Tasty Piss in their boat. She even had a hash mask that she’d received in China years ago.  

Rather than join us for the trail, they brought us beer for our second beer stop...

…and then took us two-by-two across the Vliet for the next part of the trail. They then took Start Me Up and her bike down the Vliet to meet us when we crossed back over the bridge into town. 

 

Tempting the Gods...

May 5 was the 75th Anniversary of the Liberation of the Netherlands. Sadly, all the special celebrations had to be cancelled due to the coronavirus, but Veronica and Brett joined me and Jimmy in running another virtual hash (without a trail) in honor of Liberation Day. 

Afterwards, we dared to tempt fate by drinking Corona beers to start our Cinco de Mayo celebration. 

Ashlynn and Bjarne made margaritas along with quite an incredible Mexican fiesta. 

To appease the Gods, there were several initiatives around town to try to cheer folks up. A friend let us know that people were encouraged to place teddy bears in their windows to give little kids a fun activity to try to find the bears all over town. Ashlynn happened to have received a giant bear for her 18th birthday, so he sat proudly in our front window for months. 

Another sweet initiative was for folks to paint rocks, often with words of encouragement, sometimes even in English. 

It really made us smile as we saw the line of rocks continue to grow over the days, although long gone now.

I’m always excited when I spot a stork, especially since it doesn’t happen very often in our neighborhood.
 

More Commune Hashing...

On April 19, it was Ashlynn’s turn to hare (her first time without one of her parents along) and devirginize Bjarne (as a hare for the first time, of course) for an Amsterdam H3 Virtual Hash. 

We started in a small park around the corner from our house, which was the perfect spot for some group photos.

It was nice that they had prelaid the trail so they could run with us. 

I was thoroughly impressed that they managed to not only find spots in Voorschoten that we hadn’t already hashed through, but spots that we’d never been to in the 7+ years that we’ve lived here including this wooded spot for the beer break. 

On May 3, Opee laid yet another Amsterdam H3 Virtual Hash. This time our beer break was in a parking lot behind an industrial area with a nice view of a canal and farm. 

I captured this group shot in a sideview mirror of a classic car. 

On May 7, Opee laid a FILTH H3 trail from our house towards De Vink train station. Along the way, the kids all tried the zipline. Bjarne and Ashlynn managed to stay dry, even though they were clearly over the weight limit, but Brett ended up dragging his feet through the water. 

We were quite excited when the Dutch government announced it was relaxing the “shelter-in-place” guidelines to include only those who were feeling ill starting on May 11. We decided to tempt fate four days early by meeting up with Reinhardt and Inga near the station for a beer break. Clearly this isn’t a usual pose for us; I think we were pretending to grab the full moon. 

The trail ended at our house, where we did a quick circle and then Reinhardt and Inga ran the first part of trail before continuing back to their house. It was so great they could join us.