2009-08-13 52 13

Location

Behind a Bohle building in an industrial site on Kienhorststraße.

Right next by is the Museum Staatliche Münze. Opens Mo - Fr 10.00 - 16.00 Uhr.

Participants

Plans

see talk page.

Expedition

live from the expedition

davidc found the cache with the first grab. -- relet 17:24, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

picture selection seems to fail. have to check if it's user fail or script fail. -- relet 18:18, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

davidc

I arrived around 18:50 after having tried (and failed) to find a few geocaches on the way. I would therefore claim earliest geohasher, except I think that only applies for Saturday meetings. lyx arrived just after 7 and, with no sign of the others, we headed over to look for the nearby geocache aroung 19:15, meeting relet and pari on the way.

lyx

I had planned to leave at 6, so it was 6.20 when I left the house. But the weather was nice and I felt like jogging. It was fun. I met some real joggers in the park "Rehberge", and one of them even recognized me as one of their kind by smiling back at me. Shortly after returning to the streets (and no longer running) I could observe two aircrafts descending over Tegel airport right above my head. My final destination wasn't far from there, and I arrived at the federal mint at about 7. Two buildings further, I caught sight of a lonely person on an empty parking lot near a fence. I waved hello to davidc.

pari

It was about 18:25 when I started at home to get to relet's office which is about 5km away. Arrived, explored the area, and waited a few minutes. Nothing really interesting till then. :)

Phoenix

relet and pari

Relet had been hacking on his android phone for two days now, hoping to get live messaging and wiki picture upload up and running. It worked. Almost. Somehow. The picture indexes were a little off, but most of this has been fixed now - both on this page and the code.

Anyway. The hash lay conveniently close on yet another industrial/commercial plot in the north of Berlin. Having made good experiences with these [cf. recent expedition with davidc], he was positive that it was good to go. Soon, the wiki page filled with enthusiastic participants and a planning.

Relet and pari met at relet's (and Phoenix') office at 6:40pm - pari that is. He proceeded cycling in circles around the place, until relet eventually managed to shake off a talkative colleague and turn up with his bike. They both set off at some time before 7pm.

They cycled through the Rehberge parks roughly north, on the direct way to the geohash. The museum was reached. They shortly considered whether to wait here for the others, or a little closer to the hash. Deciding for the latter, they stumbled on lyx and davidc who had met at the hash earlier. Davidc is going to claim the earliest geohasher, I believe.

davidc, lyx, pari and relet

Phoenix had announced that he would be coming by car, having to do some shopping. The group therefore decided to wait for him before attempting to get closer to the hash, and to search for the nearby geocache along the way. davidc, who had trained his caching skills during the last weeks, identified the correct location on first sight, and had a successful hand.

We signed the cache, and davidc introduced his new hashcot. The cache was not within line of sight of the hash, failing the hash collision criterion, but qualifying us for (yet another, for some) honorable mention.

Walking back to the hash, we were overtaken by Phoenix' car, who parked close to the hash. Introductions were made where necessary.

all together

Lyx and davidc had already identified the fence that lay closest to the hash upon their first passage. The hash itself, unfortunately, lay on the back of the building, and the property was gated and fenced. The gate was impressively high, and wide, and - as we later realized - rested on only two massive hinges.

Near the fence, we came as close as 12 meters. Judging that there was no possible way to get any closer to the spot, we left, attached, taped our various visiting cards to the fence, and took a stupid grin picture.

While we were still busy attaching the cards, and discussing their respective contents, someone had driven up to the gate. We only realized late that he was actually going to open it.

This was our chance!

But, at first, no one volunteered to do the ambassador. The man got back into his car, and the car drove on the parking lot.

Eventually, having nothing better to do at the fence, relet begun to inspect the now open gate. The man still sat in his car in the parking lot, making a phone call. relet approached him, grinning politely, and asked if it would bother anyone if the group took a picture on this property. He showed the map and the flag on the GPS, and said we were going to score some points for taking our picture here. It is unclear whether the man realized what we were up to, but he said we just shouldn't take too long, as he was going to close the gate again.

Woo! Ambassador! Finally!

The group quickly gathered around the back of the building, near the commercial wastebins, and got busy. Some of them tried to take another stupid grin picture. Some of them tried to identify the correct coordinates. And some just didn't know where to look first. Eventually everyone hurried back to the gate, resulting in some pretty good coordinate proofs and some less complete stupid grin pictures.

the aftermath

Statistics

Geocaches found: GCY864 (hash collision honourable mention: proof here), GC1HA8Z, GCTK25 and GC1404F.

davidc's approximate route: google maps (24km)
lyx's approximate route: google maps (6km (one way))

Google maps is unable to display relet's and pari's route accurately, as it does not know the correct footpaths we took.

Photos

This picture tells you that relet is ready to rumble. He just spent two days coding image upload and live messaging for the geohashdroid.
ready to go (picture thumbnail still does not update for me)
the museum
met lyx and davidc. yay!
Huggy Bear and Lost visit the State Mint Museum
hash collision honorable mention. wasn't the criterion "line of sight"?
Phoenix came by car
bohle company was hosting today's hash.
12 meters - a fence!
First silly grin shot, 12m from the hashpoint. phoenix, pari, lyx, relet, davidc, rabbitfox
left our cards at 12m.
The hashpoint was behind a fence, we thought this was as close as we could get.
someone at the gate! ambassador and coordinates reached!
relet runs over to play ambassador
Map Screenshot
GPS Screenshot
relet strides towards the hashpoint
It did say three-something just before I triggered the release.
What a silly grin group shot looks when three people pull out their cameras at the same time.
Silly grin "group" shot, 2nd POV
The hashpoint from behind
orderly retreat
this is how we train for Vancouver.
hammocks!
More caching on the way back
A nice hiding spot for a cache - ekorren will recognize it.
writing up the reports :D