The Hash is aging, and it may end with us

The Hash House Harriers is a wonderful thing that changed my life for the better. The other people that I have met in the Hash from all over the world agree with me on this and we are a wonderful global group of people that are for the most part, genuinely good people that help others out whenever we can.

We get together, we drink beer, we do a bit of exercise, and we help others who are in the group. There's really nothing to not like there.

But I was looking around at the group in Chiang Mai as well as other places I visited for Hash events around Thailand and one thing really became apparent to me: We are old.

There's nothing wrong with being old though, if you are lucky it will happen to you one day as well. The tragic side of this is that the Hash House Harriers has been such a wonderful thing in my life and the others that are involved that while it will not affect any of us directly, it is kind of sad to see that the global organization as well as our local group, kind of fades in popularity each year that passes.

It's easier to point a finger here in Chiang Mai about why this is because in order to live in Thailand you have to either be rather affluent, or retired and almost all of us are just retired. We have a few members that are of working age but they cannot attend with any sort of regularity because our events take place during the week and they can't work AND come and join us at 330 for the pickup to attend events. I'm afraid there just isn't any other way for us to do it.

none of us mind that we don't generally have a lot of younger people in our ranks but when we are being honest and reflecting about the future of the Hash, we all can acknowledge that there is a very good chance that after we are gone, the Chiang Mai Hash doesn't stand much chance of carrying on. Our youngest actively participating members are in their 40's and people in their 30's and 20's are few and far between.

It does concern me a bit because I have seen our attendance dwindle over the past 4 years or so and it is extremely rare for us to ever see someone that isn't on social security or some other pension come and join up with us.

I will say this though: If you are in your late 30's or 40's and are starting to feel old you can go to a Hash event and immediately feel young again.

I have no plans of ever abandoning the Hash. I love it and it is a highlight of all of my months and weeks, but I can see the future a bit and realize that this organization, not just in a local sense but also a global one, is fading and interest in it just isn't really there. It seems as though this is one of those things that like waterbeds, used to be all over the place but now they are increasingly rare.

I think maybe one of our flaws was that we didn't embrace technology and integrate that into our workings. We don't want to. When the administration is a bunch of mostly dudes that already worked their entire lives, you don't have a great deal of enthusiasm for using the latest thing in order to entice new members to join. This is compounded by the fact that exactly zero people make any money off of this. If anything it ends up costing us money to keep it afloat.

It will be a tragic day when our senior members cease to operate in the CMH3, because I don't see much interest or capability in the younger members to take it over.

There's no reason to get upset about it at the moment though, if it does die at least all of us that got to experience it will have some epic stories to tell to other people that we meet. In the meantime it is still alive and well for the most part in Chiang Mai, it is just getting a bit slower in its steps and probably takes a daily multivitamin.

until the day it stops, we will always be ON ON!