2008-07-25 26 -80

About

This hash point right near the Tarmac facility north of the Palm Beach Fairgrounds.

Expeditions

Rozard

This was my second attempt at a geohash, and my first successful one! I was fortunate enough to check today's coordinates and see that today's weren't in the middle of nowhere. Even better, I was off work today. I set out on the road not long after 3pm EST, to account for traffic, in hopes to get there before 4pm.

I took I-95 south from Northlake Blvd, and got off at Belvedere Road. As I traveled west, I spotted a 7-Eleven on the corner of Belvedere Road and Military Trail. I pulled into the parking lot and checked my GPS: I was under 5 miles from the hash, enough to earn the GeoSquishy Achievement (Note: At the time, I thought the distance for the GeoSquishy Achievement was in miles, not kilometers). I bought a Slurpie and proceeded to the hash point.

The mark landed near a sidewalk alongside Fairgrounds Road, north of the Palm Beach County Fairgrounds. I arrived a little after 3:30pm and parked in the parking lot of a Tarmac facility several yards from where the hash was. My GPS, like several I've seen on this site, is one digit short of what The Algorithm generates. Using some...thing I found on the ground, I dug "XKCD" into the dirt where I was standing, with the 'X' marking the spot I took the GPD reading at. The object itself looked like a set of fingers, perhaps from a mannequin. Unless someone set that there as their way of saying they made it to the hash mark before me (and it wasn't actually on the mark), I was the first person there.

After several minutes of digging and pulling of grass to better see the marking, I looked up so see my Slurpie nothing more than syrup and slush. I downed some and checked my watch; it was 3:45pm. I decided I'd wait until 4pm to see if anyone else would show up. There were a few people on site at the plant working, but I guess either no one saw me or didn't care about what I was doing. 4pm rolled around, and no one else showed, so I left. I had to go to the bathroom, so instead of leaving the way I came, I followed Fairgrounds Road to State Road 7, where I figured I'd have a better chance of finding a gas station or something.

Lo and behold, there was an Icee machine in the gas station on the corner of SR7 and Fairgrounds! According to the GPS, I was 0.62 miles from the hash. I remembered when I was filling it up that the GeoSquishy Achievement was measured by kilometers instead of miles, it's a good thing I found this station. I quickly let loose the juice, then bought an Icee to take back to the hash point. After a picture for posterity, I packed up and went home.