2010-01-10 37 -121

Location

On the carpool lane of 101-N in South San Jose, 200 ft before the Metcalf Road bridge.

Participants

JBQ

Expedition

JBQ figured that'd be an easy target for his first geohash, being reachable by car, especially since he wanted to be back home for lunch. The good news about the coordinates being right smack on a freeway is that it opened up possibilities for additional achievements; the bad news is that getting photographic evidence without anyone else in the car wasn't going to be easy. The trick ended up being a tripod installed above the passenger seat, with one leg in the passenger footwell, one leg stuck within the backseat, and one leg along the door, plus a fisheye lens and a cable release. After making annotations on a map, and leaving home at 9am, with a pit stop to get some gas and refill one of the tires that looked a bit flat, the general area was reached around 10am. A quick stop to double-check the camera framing and settings, and the exact spot was reached at 10:13am (the car's clock was off by about 5 minutes, but the camera's clock was accurate). Luckily, there were no other geohashers at the spot at the exact same time, or there'd have been a car crash. For extra evidence, a second pass was made abut 20 minutes later, with a GPS-enabled phone, but unfortunately the screen is not readable in the photo.