2011-03-21 50 11

Location

On a meadow near Bürgel, in the middle of nothing.

Plans

The hash bunny will be there :)

Participants

Juja and the hash bunny (a.k.a. the April Hare)
Jens and a bunch of other hashcots
Reinhard

Expedition: Juja and Jens

In the course of the day Juja had hoaxed Jens into believing her stories of 10-km-beelines once more, so he agreed to meet her after work and accompany her on the way to the hash. But when Jens arrived Juja was far from ready, so it was already quarter past five or later when they started. Jens blindly followed Juja (obviously the example she set in a previous expedition wasn't shocking enough) on the bikeway to Bürgel, and until they got there it all was quite nice.

But "quite nice" just doesn't describe the nature of Geohashing expeditions, so when they got out of Bürgel, the trouble began: when two persons both have working GPS devices with different beautiful maps with them, whyever should they have a satellite picture printout? Well, since imaginary fieldways aren't always mapped, it would have been a good thing for them to know which imaginary fieldway is right. Like this, they just had to guess: "Probably on top of the hill - all of these random points are on the top of a goddamned hill..."

They finally got off their bikes when the grassy hill got too steep and pushed them on: "Of course, it's there on the top. Right in front of us. Just... wait... 200 meters?!" 30 meters further, the hill was so steep that Jens left his bike behind. Another 20 meters further, the steep hill was so full of thicket that also Juja left her bike behind and they both struggled on through hedge and ditch. Jens walked circles following his GPS and Juja walked different circles following her own. Always in safety distance of at least 150 meters to the point.

When they got on top of the hill, they were still at over 100 meters distance, but at least one thing became clear: 1) the climb was senseless because this was the wrong way and 2) the actual point probably lay peacefully on the meadow below them without any thicket around. So Juja decided it might be more clever to first get back to the bikes and try it again from the other side, so they again struggled through the thicket for a while, until Juja was surprised to find her bike again somewhere in there. Who would have thought she left it right there...? Jens probably silently resolved never to join in Jujas expeditions again while Juja happily claimed that it's just not a proper Geohash if you're not doing incredibly stupid things to reach the random destination.

On the other side, the way was fairly easy, they reached the hash and started to take photos, when they saw a biker at the bottom of the hill, coming up to them. That was Reinhard! They took some photos and then cycled back together - starting on a way Reinhard knew, but which meant to climb the complete hill again, together with their bikes... well, some of us always have a heavy weight to bear, and some have carbon bikes and will be envied by their fellow geohashers ;)

Expedition: Reinhard

Reinhard started from work in Jena few minutes before 6 pm and knew that he wouldn't make it quick enough to the hashpoint that he would meet Juja and Jens there. Like in the case of Juja and Jens it all went very well until he got to Bürgel, where his chain got jammed between the bike frame and the lower chain ring during shifting. This had happened some times before in the preceding year and it always ended with Reinhard using his bare hands for loosing the chain from its miserable circumstance and adding several deep scratches to the frame. This procedure lasted about 5 minutes and since the hash was already close and Reinhard expected Juja and Jens to travel through Bürgel on their way to the hashpoint, he now was even more assured, that they already have to be on their way home. Nevertheless, Reinhard put his dirty fingers back into his gloves and went on towards the hashpoint. Soon after leaving the road he had to push or carry his bike and leaving the hill right-hand (as his GPS device told him) he more or less quickly approached the hash, where surprisingly two people were standing around and taking photos.