2011-05-12 50 11

Location

In the middle of nature near Porstendorf, on the edge of Jena. Of course it's on top of the hill - Plattenberg, as for today ;)

Plans

This is so easy that Juja should somehow make it.

Participants

Juja and Hans the rat

Expedition

Indeed this should have been easy - today's hash point was only at about 10 kms distance to my home, so it might even have qualified as midnight or sunrise geohash - but I admit I was just too lazy to try this, and anyway it's supposed to be fun, isn't it? Well, I should have gone then.

After a dry night and a dry and sunny morning I sat at work for eight hours and witnessed the first big shower for today, accompanied by pessimistic weather forecasts on the radio. At 5 pm it wasn't raining, so I started (by bike, of course!) anyway. I used the cycleway to Porstendorf and the forest path that went up the hill, and all was bathed in sunlight, the wet leaves were twinkling, it smelled of warm, wet earth (if only I could can that smell!), it was nice and warm and the whole scenery had a certain touch of rainforest to it.

But Geohashing isn't the romantic crap you would imagine by now, and that's why it got darker and darker the nearer I got to the point and I even heard faint thunder in the distance. The path was soon reduced to a narrow mud slope and since my back tyre somehow lacks tread recently my bike gave me a free fun lesson in drift cycling.

I finally arrived at the hash field, but of course there were some plants on parts of it that might be useful or not - I did not dare to step on them, so I took the long way and approached the hash from the west side of the field that was all stubble. Point reached, stubble field number #983, I took the usual photos and went back to my bike that waited in the forest, and that's when a bad noise crawled over the hill towards me: the sound of heavy rain.

The first drops fell before I was back at my bike, and I already knew I was lost - although I went on for some hundred meters, I soon stopped under a huge tree and hoped that would save me from the worst of this ridiculously mad rain that started then. Drowned rat anyway, I have a proof photo and that was only taken at the beginning of all the fun!

After about a quarter of an hour the ridiculously mad rain tuned down to just ordinary rain, so I went on and cycled/slid on home through even more mud and water, passing waterfalls and little creeks that ran over the ways. I arrived at home after two hours, thoroughly wet and incredibly dirty.