2009-12-25 42 -72

Location

Bethlehem Church (in Sturbridge MA) on Christmas Day

Participants

Expedition 1: Sara and her son

Expedition 2: Guinea-pig and his girlfriend, Chedrania.

Plans

Sara: As I have indicated in other write-ups, the kids and I are Jewish. However, my husband is Christian, so we celebrate a secular Christmas at his mother's house (Rudolph, tree, no mention of the religious basis for the holiday.) We needed something to do between opening presents in the morning and Christmas dinner in the afternoon. This Christmas location was too good to pass up, and we hadn't been out geohashing much in the past few weeks and hadn't had a successful hash in almost two months, and my four-year-old son wanted to try out his brand new Travel Bingo. My daughter and husband chose to stay home.

Guinea-pig: My girlfriend is Jewish, but wanted to join me for my family's Christmas celebration. This hashpoint was too coincidental not to pass up, as even if it weren't a double-holy hash, it just happens to be near the interchange I'd be using to get on I-84 and head down to Connecticut anyway.

Sara's Expedition

What luck! A hashpoint at Bethlehem Church on Christmas Day!

My son enjoyed playing with his new Travel Bingo and listening to xmas music in the car, and it was easy to reach the hashpoint from the parking lot. We built the snowman at a location which the GPS had said was only a couple feet from the hashpoint, which would be well within the margin of error of the GPS. However, the GPS changed its mind.

I'm surprised that both of the holy hashes in this graticule have been at Lutheran churches, because we have several popular Christian denominations around here and I don't even think Lutheran is the most popular. Maybe the Lutheran churches take up more space per church or more space per parishioner?

Photos

Can you believe our luck on Christmas Day?
My son was really happy to hold the GPS and lead the way. The hashpoint was just beyond the end of the church's parking lot, on church property.
My son designed the snowman.
After we finished the snowman, my son pretended the stone wall the marked the edge of the church property was a train.
This shows about 11 ft from the hashpoint, which is within the range of accuracy of the GPS.

Ribbons

Sara and her son earned the Snowman Geohash Achievement

by building a snowman at the (42, -72) geohash on 2009-12-25.

Sara and her son earned the Holy hash achievement

by reaching the sacred (42, -72) location, which is Bethleham Lutheran Church in Sturbridge MA on Christmas Day, on 2009-12-25.

Sara issued a challenge for the Tale of Two Hashes achievement

by geohashing in a place named Bethlehem from the (42, -72) geohash on 2009-12-25.

Guinea-pig's Expedition

Without a GPS in hand, I printed out a google-maps areal view of the hash, and put fresh batteries in my 7-year old camera. I'd been talking to Chedrania about geohashing ever since we met Randall at Pi-Con 2008. This was my first successful hash, and the first one I'd been able to drag her to as well. We left my house in the Boston graticule around 1pm, and arrived in the vicinity of the church around 1:30. I drove around the block completely once before I actually found the driveway. We were approaching from the wrong direction, so the signage wasn't as clear from our perspective.

Lacking a GPS, we did the next best thing: eye-balled it. And roamed around the area for a bit just to be sure we were in the right spot at least once. It looks like google put the coordinate in a slightly different place than Sara's GPS did, as it had us in the trees slightly off the parking lot. A photo of Chedrania holding the printout, with the church in the background, and another of my phone showing the date (which turned out to be major fail... my phone cannot display the current date in a sane manner... or at least in one that's photographable) and we packed back up and headed down to Christmas dinner in Connecticut.