2010-12-23 41 -90

Location

The verge between two roads in Bettendorf, Iowa

Participants

Dvdllr
Near-at-hand: Rachel and Marvin

Plans

The first leg of my family's Christmastime travels was from 40,-89 to 42,-91, and in advance of this drive, I checked the geohash locations for the five graticules we'd intersect. Happenstance was that in the Quad Cities grat, specifically the Bettendorf portion, the hashpoint was just off of Interstate 74, which made for an easy grab. I simply planned to take this minor detour while passing through.

Expedition

The expedition went off without a hitch. The two roads that the hashpoint lay between were a kind of busy road, not conducive to stopping alongside, and a residential road, very conducive to stopping alongside. Our GPS guided me to the residential road, and I parked where I thought I was orthagonal to the hashpoint. I ended up being a little too far down the road from where I needed to be, but it was still fine. The verge was a bit of a slope, and given the snowy conditions, slippery. I managed not to wipe out, so that was positive. I was pleased to find that I could get my GPS to line up its coordinates with the destination relatively accurately, so when I was standing in the right spot, I did a little snow art to mark the location. I wrote "xkcd" in the snow (with my hand), and attempted to make a tiny snowman. It ended up being two snowballs stacked atop each other, with eye and nose holes poked into the top one. I was rather limited in my equipment to make something better, since there weren't any rocks or sticks to avail me.

Like the last time I claimed the Frozen Geohash award, I didn't have a thermometer with me. But like last time, I can see from here that the high for the day was -2.8°C, so it was most decidedly below freezing while I was there.