Lehigh Valley 50th, Tumbling Bill

After a month of very mild weather, winter actually returned to Pennsylvania. Many people have said that the previous mild weather makes our current temps feel colder. That may be true but the weather on January 20th WAS cold.

Congratulations to the Lehigh Valley Hash on making their third attempt last for 50 trails. The pack gathered at a fish hatchery before busting brush (that's right, no pub crawl - not even a pub!) through some scenic and interesting terrain.

Several out of towners celebrated this momentus occasion including hashing legend, TUMBLING BILL whose mother hash is Kuala Lampur. This from the Columbia News Service, 3-14-06: In the United States, nary a city is without a hashing group. William “Tumbling Bill” Panton, although British, is the grandfather of American hashing. After 20 years in Kuala Lumpur as a soil scientist for the British Agricultural Department, Panton, who ran with the original Hash House Harriers club, started the United States’ second-oldest chapter in Washington in 1972. At 78, the retired Panton still hashes once or twice a week and travels around the world compiling a genealogy of the hash. To his knowledge there is a chapter in every large country except Chad and North Korea.

“That’s the way I waste my retirement,” Panton joked from his home in Chevy Chase, Md., “but it keeps me fit and it’s better than having Altzheimers"

Hanging on the wall above the bar was a neon light that a few months ago approached the status of work of art. Today it is almost obscene - it's "PRIDE OF PA" statement is enough to make some beer fans blood boil. F those big corporate wheeler dealers - at least the damned foreign owners kept #33 in Latrobe.

I just don't get why A-B chose to dismember this beer. Hopefully, people will choose not to drink this now that its made in New Jersey.

Today was a worthy road trip: good trail and people, fun, nice dive bar, a few hot bimbos and a living legend.