2008-08-30 53 -113
| Sat 30 Aug 2008 in 53,-113: 53.1190723, -113.4226173 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox |
Location
This Edmonton, Alberta geohash appears to be in an agricultural field, about 400 metres from highway 814, just south of highway 616. That's about 30 km south of the Edmonton International Airport, in between the communities of Leduc and Millet.
Participants
Robyn is spending the night at an airport hotel, so came to experience the local geohash scene.
Expedition
I know I said I wasn't going to geohash today, but what's twenty-eight cents per kilometre and a buck thirty a litre compared to the thrill of making it to a Saturday meetup, on time, in a populous graticule? This could be the first time I actually meet other geohashers. I was literally excited. As I drove along I saw that some fields had crops on them, some had already been harvested, and some were fenced with livestock. I hoped my coordinates would be in a field of stubble, so I could go in and get to them without trampling crops.
I left some time to get lost, but thanks to the regularity of the Alberta Township and Range numbered road system, I didn't need any of it, and arrived in the area at 3:30. There was a good place to park at the side of the road, where perhaps there had one been a farm gate. I parked over to the side so there would be room for one or two more cars, put a sign in my windshield so any new arrivals would know they were in the right place. The field with the geohash in it was planted with a tall grain that I don't know to look at.
I crossed the road and walked up to the edge of the field. The GPS showed 0.25 nm, on a bearing perpendicular with the edge of the field, so I was the expected four to five hundred metres back from the geohash. There were no spaces between rows or anything to walk in, so I set down the compass and GPS and photographed them to show I was there. I was going to count it because it was respect, not no trespassing edicts, that kept me out of the crop, and no one who has been reading my adventures in geohashing would ever doubt that I could walk 400 m through grain. I had twenty-five minutes to wait until four o' clock, so I decided to pass the time geotrashing along the side of the highway. I discover that the hardest thing about the geotrashing achievement is taking a picture of yourself piking up garbage. I'll have to go through my photos and see if any qualify as proof of the achievement. it was hard to see the little screen in the beautiful weather.
What I did see was that there was an unseeded path between the end of the crop and the fenced in cows in the next field over. By going up the path, I reasoned, I could get closer to the geohash. And kill some time waiting for four o' clock. The path not only led all the way up the field to a point abeam the geohash and within a hundred meters of the geohash, but at that point there was a flattened path leading into the crop. Geohashers or alien crop circles? I followed the path through the grain and got to a wider area where the grain was all flattened. It didn't go quite to the geohash, but I was very happy that I had succeeded by being that close, and sat down to wait for other geohashers.
Then I remembered that I was supposed to be playing games, but had left my bag with all my gizmos in it, in the car. I thought I might do circus tricks but realized that photographing myself walking on my hands was going to be significantly harder than photographing myself picking up trash, so I just looked at the timer on the GPS and wondered if anyone else would come.
No people came, but while I was sitting there, the geohash moved over to me! I had another 0.00 distance thanks to random wanderings of the atmosphere. I stayed in the field until four, then walked back down the path and stayed in my car until almost twenty after. No one else came while I was there, but I'm kind of hoping that as I go to save this page there will be an edit collision between me and someone who came later. Perhaps he or she will have seen the little sign I made on the path with sticks.
Photo Gallery
No one was around when I parked,
so I picked up some trash
and found a path that led almost to the geohash.
So I just hung out
and the geohash came to me.
Even if no one else did.
