Major Takes Disasters to New Heights @ Hornsby
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There is a well known Buddhist saying which is…”Expect the Unexpected”
So never presume a disaster will not happen on a Major Disaster run. Major is never far away and he has an uncanny propensity to make the unexpected …well …Downright Bloody likely. But that’s the intrigue and adventure of a Major Disaster Run. You never can tell.
And the unexpected was that was that it was all good! In fact… Very good,. OK, it was generally familiar territory to many, but if you only visit the fire trails and tracks of Berowra Regional Park just once a year then it is fresh each season. And so it was. To be sure, to be sure! Major D. only had a couple of weeks notice but made the most of it.
We droned our way out from Stewart Avenue and headed around the firing range. Everyone assumed that the place (firing range) would be empty so were shocked and all dived for cover when there was sudden and very loud rapport, like the rupturing bowels of the earth. Now, if the mass of anatomy and noise are proportional, then Centre Point has to be up there with the best. A fart like a thunderclap heralded danger to come for the evening. Recovering themselves, our shell shocked hashmen made their way deep down to the bottom of the valley where the darkness was already closing in. Baron von Drut trailing at the rear asked me how long it would take to walk around the trail. “Depends how fast you walk” was the reply. Seeing that not even a bead of sweat has formed on his furrowed brow I wondered at the purpose of his question.
As far as I can tell the walkers trail soon merged with runners and we all kept plugging on together through the picturesque valley savouring the last of the summer season of ‘sizzlingly’ good runs. Boooo Hooo!.
All the hares this summer have put in the hard yards and set some absolutely T’riffik runs. Likewise the committee, and the JM’s in particular, have worked tirelessly and have served up some excellent On-On meals, the likes of which surely cannot be matched by the restaurants, clubs and pubs this coming winter.
But back to the run. A rocky, twisting but well established track led us parallel to and upstream towards the Benowie Walking Track.and as we did so the dark descended and looking back down the valley to the stragglers their torches looked like a line of glow worms in the forest. But have pity on these stragglers…including Drut, WC, Sheep Dip, Tyre Fruck and a few others. Centre Point’s thunderclap turned liquid, and seeing yards of dunny paper trailing from the trees, grabbed handfuls of the stuff and ducked into the bush several times to clean up his doings. And with that the trail markings disappeared, leaving the back of the pack wondering where the hec the trail went.
It turned left off the main trail and went up, and uphill, and not without a puff and a pant, culminating in the steel ladder leading up and over the cliff and onto Manor Road leading to Mt Wilga Hospital, from whence it was a short stretch home on the road. A well set run even if the last third was essentially in the dark.
Meanwhile Fox Face and Molly (an ever willing stand in JM) had cooked some first class sirloin steaks, with the usual array of salads etc. Pee Dub was utterly impressed. He loved the slight pinky juicy bits as he nibbled into his portion. (Don’t we all?). And as a few steaks were extra over at the end, some lucky bastards near the BBQ got lucky with seconds including Peed Dub & Mr Neat.
Our ever ebullient MC, S-BnZZZ called up the usual suspects including Major Disaster for their well earned and perfunctory down-downs.
The truth be known, Major Disaster would love to take you down his schoolboy fantasy alley all those bygone days ago. Try to imagine a young Major D. (from stayed hashman he is now) to the small strapling English schoolboy, with an eye for adventure and always buried deep, reading about his favourite a comic strip hero, Captain Disaster and other “penny dreadful” super-heroes. As he grew into his teens and early twenties he donned a superhero costume and dabbled in the dark arts of leaping from building to building, electrifying and creating havoc and mayhem wherever he went.
“Why can’t life ever be easy?” mused the young Captain Disaster. (It was only later in his career when he joined the BSAP that he was promoted to a Major).
Now, it shouldn’t immediately be assumed that just because Major Disaster was different from his peer group that this was the only cause of his problems. This was only the start. He was generally a little cack-handed always mild-mannered, indeed gentlemanly in good company, but a “bit different” from the others to say the least.
His favoured form of fantasy transport back then, if you could call that heap of scrap metal a ship, was called ‘Disaster Area’ by his mates. It was a particularly appropriate name. All along the hull, there were dents to mark the areas where numerous collisions had taken place with other ships, cars, meteors, flying fish and even small satellites. Not to mention the blackened areas that commemorated various laser blasts at his ship from angry road users. He had a name for each one of them (the dents as well as the road users). One was called “Enterprise”. That one came from an armoured security truck when he inadvertently cut into them outside a high street bank.
However the largest burn mark on the hull on his much loved ship (intergalactic code # JAG -AZA 35G) was called ‘Mum’ from the time his mother shot him down in flames for leaving the gas on at home while he nipped down to the local shops to buy his superhero comics.
His early youthful exploits became ever more daring and the bane of genteel English society and after causing a few problems around London and Tower Bridge…see Reuters photo below, was deported from UK to British South Africa, later named after his other hero, Cecil Rhodes, or as he prefers to call it in his very proper accent ….‘Rhodesia’.
Major D. as a strapling schoolboy to Captn. Disaster with the power & will to reap havoc
(Before he was promoted to Major Disaster)
On arrival in Salisbury (now Harare) he joined the BSAP (British South African Police) as a trooper in the hope that he would be promoted to Major and wield his uncanny powers and influence over the local natives there. That was until the Authorities caught up with his disastrous exploits and subsequently shipped off him in shackles to that vicious penal colony eastwards across the Indian Ocean. Landing in Sydney by mistake, rather than in Van Diemans Land, he had lost only a touch of his youthful powers, but not his attitude and so brought his adventurous spirit to the POSH SH3.
Ever since he has caused consternation with this hashing mob, but has mostly confined his misdemeanors and dark arts to losing himself in the dense bush…usually at night. Gone too are the powers where he was able to light up his finger tips, and instead relies on co-conspirators at the back of the POSH pack, like Tic-Toc to illuminate his way home, usually well after the bucket is drained dry and packed away for next week’s run. But his deeds are never far from his next, and our POSH adventure. .
…….And now for a quick message to Darwin.
Like teenagers we were quick to come and celebrate Darwin’s Birthday which wasn’t actually last Monday but last Saturday.
Polish Joke has written in to say that now Darwin has reached the esteemed age of 90 that his aim in life should be being issued with a substantiated paternity suit from a gorgeous 25 year old! .
Go Darwin ……GO!.
Your Hash Journo