I've been to several dozen Hash House Harriers chapter events all around the world and one thing that kind of stands out in almost all of these is the fact that the members tend to be around retirement age. There is a very good reason for this and it isn't that these events exclude young people. In fact, we try to encourage a lot of younger people to attend but they just can't do so because of work or school obligations
The average age of the above picture, and most of the other pictures we have is around 65 but this isn't because we are lame and young people don't want to go or wouldn't have fun. It is because young people tend to have jobs and in order to come with us on Mondays and Thursdays you need to be ready to roll at quarter past 3 in the afternoon.
I've had a lot of jobs in my life and other than the part time ones that I had at various points, there was almost no chance I was going to be off work and ready to go for a beer run at that point in the afternoon.
We have around a dozen on again off again members in their 20's here in Chiang Mai, but they are normally teachers or offshore workers, so they can't possibly attend with regularity. We did have one teacher in our ranks, who unfortunately had to leave because of Covid, that re-arranged his schedule to accommodate attending on Thursdays - which was seriously impressive to all of us and we made sure to punish him by putting him on the ice on a regular basis.
The deal is, if you turn up and see mostly people your parents' age at a Hash event just know that this is kind of the global standard since most members tend to be retired. There are exceptions in metro areas like New York City, which I attended once, where the members adjusted the timing of the events in order to accommodate the busy lifestyle of the average NYC professional. They could pull that off in New York because the entire city is illuminated by lights and doing night events was no problem there. The places we go on runs in Chiang Mai often don't even have electricity, let alone lighting all over the place.
But when you do get to meet the "old boys" of the Hash House Harriers just know that I can guarantee that none of them are going to be stoic and deadpan like your grandfather might be. We all have spent most of our lives being very silly boys and girls and we don't intend to ever grow up, even if our bodies disagree with this notion. I guarantee that a group of 20 Hashers in their 60's are going to be more youthful than a room full of 30-somethings at happy hour after work. We have no inhibitions here at the Hash and we encourage people to be as childish as possible at all times. It keeps us all younger by behaving this way.
So come one come all, old or young. Hell, you don't even have to be terribly mobile to be included. Just get out there and do what you can and have a few beers! It's all about the camaraderie anyway!
