One of our hashmen recently drew my attention to the Chaing Mai Interhash site, and in particular, the availability of a certain statistics. There is a train ride pre-lube to Interhash, and the statistics for the participants are available in various forms, such as t'shirt size, drink preference, home hash and a number of other categories. http://thai-american.com/hashtrain/whoscoming.asp One of those other categories is by age group, and that's where it got interesting.
I was very surprised to see that only around 2% of the participants are under about 30 years old. A whopping 65% are over 48 years old. There aren't many runners over 68 years, less than 5%. So what picture does this draw?
Around 60% of the hash have got around 20 years or less of hashing left in them. And there's nobody coming up behind to fill those places.
I accept that the train ride participants may not be completely statistically indicative of the make up of hashing across the world, but I reckon it probably goes fairly close. Look around at your hash - do you see what I see? Canberra hash, which has been running since 1969, probably fits about into the picture drawn by the train ride statistics.
So, have we enjoyed the golden age of hashing? Will it now go into a gentle decline, as we also, hashers and harriettes, go into our autumnal years? Thirty years from now, will the cries of On On on a Monday evening be as rare as Duff beer?
uo uo from downunder
MsCheeky