When I tell people about the Hash House Harriers they sometimes think that I am really committed to exercise because at first glance it appears to be a running club. Yeah, we do go running but that is a rather minor part of the entire ordeal. The biggest part of it all is the social aspect of it. Most of the people I know today I know them because of the Hash House Harriers and I likely wouldn't know them if it wasn't for this group.
We come from all different walks of life and even though when we get together we are normally a very silly bunch all of us have interesting stories to tell. I was talking to one guy that I have known for a long time in the Hash in the bus the other day named "ABB" and it came up what he did before he retired. Turns out this guy, who is silly and just a joker like the rest of us on the trail, was an extremely high-powered Wall Street type. He was one of the guys working on massive deals on doing meetings on golf courses and yachts while he managed billions of dollars of finances in a portfolio. This guy sitting next to me on a bus wearing $10 worth of clothes was some dude that wore a suit and commanded hundreds of people. Next to him was a guy who I later found out owned dozens of franchised restaurants and still maintains ownership of many of them to this day.
Then there was a guy that worked on oil platforms and another guy who was a welder. Then we had a girl who spent 20 years as an air hostess and when she revealed that it turned out that there was someone else on the bus that had been a pilot for a competing airline. It was kind of crazy when this information came out because up to that point we had all just been talking about silly shit and acting like loons.
It's not against the rules or anything but generally speaking we don't "talk shop" a great deal at Hash events. I thought it was kind of interesting to speak about how different all of our pasts were on this one bus trip. If I needed to do some networking for professional reasons, we had a wide variety of people that have contacts that would be more than willing to give someone an "inside track" on something in life.
I'm not suggesting that people use the Hash House Harriers to this end but if you did need help with something there is a certain bond that exists with HHH members that can't really be compared to anything else.
We are basically one huge global family that are joined together by a mutual appreciation for never growing up and being able to act silly on a regular basis. I kind of think of it as being similar to one of those secret societies like the Masons, but without the ritual sacrificing that it is rumored that they do.
So if you needed another reason to seek out the Hash here is a good one. No matter what it is that you are needing help with, there is probably someone in the pack that can help you and they would be more than willing to do so!
We are still doing 3 runs per week in Chiang Mai and if you would like to join us you are more than welcome to do so. Full details are available on our official website
ON ON!
