It has been really busy. Friday was spent trying to get some things organized while researching and preparing for the week long hash cruise. I was able to get some free lawn tickets to the Counting Crows / Goo Goo Dolls concert at the amphitheater and invited several of the hashers from Naples and Orlando that were staying at my place that evening to join. I got there decently early, and met up with Adrienne and Jesse and got ourselves set up on the lawn. I told Turf to call me when they were a couple of minutes from the gate so I could come down and hand them the tickets. She called, but either got lost or severely underestimated the time and took 20 minutes to show up. Overall the concert was good, but I think the Goo Goo Dolls should have headlined instead since I think most of us were there to see them anyway. We hung out though until the end of the concert and headed to my place for the evening. I know Saturday was going to be completely insane and I wanted to get a bit of sleep. The hashers got lost a few times and I felt like traffic control trying to get them in; 'no, when I said head west, I really meant it, not east. Have you no idea in what direction the sun usually sets?'.
I didn't have a lot of time to get anything ready since I had to meet BANGS HER MASH in the early afternoon so we could plan the trail. For some reason I volunteered to hare the pre-cruise trail and I knew with so many out-of-town visitors that I needed to make it a good one. He showed me a great little hack of Google Maps that is used by runners when measuring distance. With that tool (http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=405192) I was able to get a good assessment of the terrain and distance. After pouring over Google satellite maps and a bit of scouting the weekend prior, I figured I had a good trail lined up. I had a couple of beer stops including beers from Caribbean countries to represent the places the ship would travel. There was a turkey/eagle split that took the walker over a bikeway currently being built while the runners were lead through Tampa Bay. I literally mean through the bay. It was low tide and the bottom was pretty packed, so it was fairly easy going, however going through the mangrove and swampy area to get back to dry land was pretty hard. It had rained pretty hard the day before and there was a lot of loose dirt piled up by the earth movers for the construction project. This made for some slow going through the waist deep, shoe sucking, mud. When I went through the weekend prior, it wasn't nearly so bad. Oh well, if I had to go through it carrying 10 pounds of flour then so did the rest of the pack!
We had a great turn-out with not only most of the cruisers showing up but also a fair number of Tampa folks that hadn't been seen in a while. A few hashers from Naples even decided to come up for the run as a road trip even though they weren't going on the cruise. The true trail ended up being just a hair over 5 miles and though the circle was a bit SNAFU* with a last minute decision to return to the start in order to avoid the bugs and ensuing madness of transporting everyone back (* note to self: plan A to A trail next time) to the start. We had our circle, only having lost a few folks along the way, and then headed over to the house party. Thankfully there were stacks of pizza waiting since I was starving having gone through most of my energy reserves already.I hung around for a while, however I had to soon take off before the party was over since I was exhausted and since I had to lead the caravan to my house since I had 10 folks staying overnight.
With a bit of fussing around, I was able to set up all the inflatable beds and get everyone a comfortable spot, though I had to take the army cot and sleep in the kitchen since my bed was being used by a couple from Tallahassee. They did me a wonderful favor by bringing down the teardrop camper that I bought the week prior and were able to save me an incredible amount of driving and gas.
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