The Abu Dhabi Rehydration Run
One of the first groups I joined after moving to the Dhabs was the local branch of the hash house harriers, mostly because they continued to run even during the heat and privations of Ramadan.
Everyone else seemed to adopt the otherwise seemingly compulsory expat position: horizontal and poolside with a drink in one hand.
Once a year when the temperature had cooled off, a few hundred people from all the hash groups in the region would gather in the desert outside Abu Dhabi and have what’s known as the rehydration run.
Apart from being a demonstration of skill (or not) at desert driving, and the corollary display of skill (or not) of bogged car extraction techniques, this involved a circular route through the dunes visiting eight checkpoints themed on and serving food and drink from a particular country. There was Curacao, USA, Japan, Ireland, Germany, Transylvania, and South Africa.
I volunteered to do the New Zealand stall, serving Kiwi kai and wine.
A far smarter move than volunteering was enlisting Stacey, a trained chef who’d cooked for the Queen and in a Michelin-starred restaurant, as a helper. (Obviously “helper” in this context means she was the brains behind the outfit, with me as honourary dishwasher and cleaneruperer)
She opted for ginger kisses, a staple of Kiwi bakeries and tea houses which in less-PC times went by the name Maori kisses.
After she had a couple of days of experimenting with the recipe, of which Chris was the primary beneficiary, we went into production zone at 9am.
I lasted five hours before I was due elsewhere and it was humbling to note that she worked another five hours after that, putting 34-plus trays through the oven to creat the 400 component parts of the two-piece cookies to feed the expected horde.
One of the 34 trays baking.
And the finished product, ready to transport out into the desert.
It seemed a little unfair then that Ariana caught a cold and prevented Stacey coming out to the run site and getting the praise for her baking efforts. But Chris did a day trip and Wendy, another of the Kiwi contingent in the Dhabs and fresh from the Venice marathon, joined us.
One of the race organisers showed us to the location for Checkpoint Four, which so far as we could tell was in the middle of B*tt F*ck Nowhere.
A few snafus meant Chris’ Land Rover was getting repaired, so we’d borrowed a Toyota 4WD but it had a broken CD player, preventing us using classic Kiwi playlist Wendy had carefully compiled.
But that paled in comparison to an ordering snafu where instead of having 24 bottles of Kiwi sauv blanc, we received six and had to supplement the supply with … the horror… SOUTH AFRICAN wine!?
WTF!!
Who got Saffa wine and who got Kiwi wine was decided by a series of tests: “What was the score in the third 1986 Bledisloe Cup match” “On what ground did Zinzan Brooke kick the longest drop goal in test rugby history” “In which Olympics did the New Zealand rowing team win more medals than the entire Australian contingent.”
The wrong answer on any of these meant the recipient was served Saffa wine!
While I set up, the actual race got underway.
The distance between checkpoints was in inverse proportion to blood alcohol levels, so there was a long haul to the first checkpoint and then each leg between checkpoints decreased appropriately.
I was fortunate that I could see the first runners well before they arrived.
The advance warning was exacerbated by the presence of the Japanese checkpoint in between.
This featuring a blood-covered whale and some less-than-fully-covering sumo outfits that looked more like badly tied nappies.
It was gratifying to see that the first runners did not include any of the Abu Dhabi island hashers, displaying the commendable absence of conscientiousness for which they’re renown. The first one to arrive was a dog, who was served water rather than sauv blanc.
Wendy found this wasn’t like the Venice Marathon, partly because in Italy she hadn’t have to stop at each waystation to empty the sand from her shoes. And of course those waystations didn’t offer sauv blanc.
Most of the competitors were walking by this point. The later ones clearly looked like they’d dined not wisely but too well at some of the previous checkpoints.
The next checkpoint had an Irish theme, despite the token Irishwoman having injured herself a couple of days before and finding herself unable to make it.
Instead it was run ably by Jenny and Juliet, who dressed appropriately and doled out Irish Car Bombs, a form of cocktail made from Guinness, whiskey and Irish cream which were just as lethal as their IRA namesakes.
This might in turn explain why those who left the Irish stand chose to go over the top of the tallest dune to get to the next checkpoint, Germany.
Then it was on to Transylvania, run by some Kiwis.
They went to a lot of effort, and of course each runner was offered a bloody mary as well as vodka worms and garlic shots.
In keeping with diminishing capacity, the checkpoints became increasing close to each other like a reverse Fibonacci sequence.
Finally there was an 800m stroll back to the base, where the South African stand offered what was euphemistically termed “punch” and served by Thea and Louisa, who had adopted a sartorial style they’d dubbed “slutty zebras”.
The South African butchery in Abu Dhabi created a magnificent brai meals, prompting a sudden silence among the assembled hashers.
Dancing on Mikey’s car became the thing to do, at least until a loud crack was heard to come from the roof of his Jeep.
And we were impressed by Simon dancing on the roof of his Land Rover Discovery, thus creating a disco on a disco.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a night in the desert without a fire.
And it wouldn’t be a fire involving men unless it was so big that you couldn’t sit within 5m of it and it merited its own chapter in the Kyoto Protocol.
And it wouldn’t be a fire without inappropriate stuff thrown onto it, in this case a camp chair.
And it wouldn’t be a fire without marshmallows, although this provided the opportunity to soak up that burning petrochemical goodness…
With people having started drinking at 2pm in the sunshine, there were by then some sorry-looking participants.
This was the race organiser, enjoying a break from the cat-herding efforts of trying to organise hashers. Or, as my friend Marion put it: “Lucy looks like that typical angry wife burning down her ex-husband’s car and celebrating. haha!”
Our hashmaster Prancer led us all on a lion hunt.
Then how wholesome is this? A fireside sing-song. Except for the lewd hash lyrics…
Of course it didn’t take long to turn less wholesome.
Expat + desert + alcohol + fire = n*ked fire jumping.
Most people jumped the fire by the shortest axis, others by the longest…
“Why does my foot hurt and why is there a smell of overcooked sausages around me?”
I’m never going to be able to think about nuts roasting on the fire in the same way again after this…
Mostly it was good natured, with only one incident late in the evening when someone had a fight with their partner and got behind the wheel of their car, tried to thread a route through the campsite and hit the course setter’s 4WD.
This could have been way worse since the idiot who decided to get behind the wheel could just as easily have driven over a tent with people sleeping in it rather than hitting a car.
However the Japanese whale survived the night bloodied but intact and we packed up to go back to the Dhabs, with yet another surreal Abu Dhabi encounter under our belts.