2012-07-16 52 6

Location

On the roadside in an industial part of Hoogeveen.

Participants

Shevek

Plans

I'll go there. I hope I can get Elwingelfje to join me, so we can go by car, and we can visit Dwingelderveld, which would be nice. If not, I'll go hitch-hiking and see what else I'll do.

Expedition

This is a continuation of 2012-07-15 53 5, 2012-07-15 52 4 and 2012-07-15 52 5. After that last one, I didn't make it back home to Groningen, but instead to my father's house in Emmeloord. So my original plan didn't work out. Also, I had no response from Elwingelfje, I suppose she's on holiday, so no meetup there. My new plan was to hitch-hike back home with a small detour over the hash.

My father was going to Vollenhove early in the morning (a bit too early really; I had spent a large part of the night writing the reports of yesterday's expedition), so he dropped me of at a bus stop at the Zwartemeerweg, at the edge of the polder. That was an awful place for hitch-hiking, because the cars were going very fast. But there was a bridge just after the bus stop. When it opened, all the cars had to stop, of course. So they were driving very slow, and soon one of them gave me a ride to Zwolle. They went to the north, which meant I was dropped at a good place for going to Hoogeveen.

From there, I soon got a ride from someone who was going to Groningen. I explained about geohashing, but it was obvious that she wasn't going to drive me to the hash, so I didn't ask. Otherwise I could have continued with her to Groningen, which would have been nice. :-)

Anyway, in Hoogeveen the place was quite close to the highway, so I started walking. But first I prepared my computer for the hash location. Oops! I completely forgot to write it down. And I didn't have internet access. What to do now? After asking all three people I met there if they had internet with them (none of them did), I was thinking of calling a friend. But then I saw a woman working on a computer. (I was walking through an industrial area, but most of the buildings were still unoccupied.) So I walked in, explained my problem, and asked her for today's coordinates. I said "just click anywhere on the map, I only need the fractional parts". Luckily, it wasn't weekend, and it wasn't past 15:30. So instead of a number, it said "no market data available". Oops, right. Anywhere in Europe, please. So finally I got the coordinates. Very good, let's continue.

When I got at the intersection of the Edisonlaan and the Europaweg, I turned on my computer. Unlike yesterday, the gps worked very well. That is, until I was about 10 m from the hash. Then it started jumping, and stopped giving new coordinates for long intervals. So once again I had to guess where the hash was exactly. I looked again on the satellite pictures, and it seems I guessed well. I didn't look too well at those pictures before: I hadn't noticed that there was an airfield, and I hadn't noticed that the hash was almost in water. Good thing it was only "almost", or I would have had to try for the MacGyver achievement. On the other hand, it would have been cool if I got that. :-)

At the hash, I took some pictures of me, and Relet's marker that I printed uit with my 3D printer. Then I made some movies of me playing with my diabolo, which I turned into an animated gif so I would be able to post it here. Then I went back. I took a picture from the other side of the water, and with my camera still in hand, I saw a glider plane being towed into the air by another plane. I watched them, and when they were far away, thought it would have been nice if I'd have taken a picture. I tried anyway, but it would have been nicer if I'd thought of it earlier. I waited a while for the next glider to go up (it was already waiting), but the motor plane didn't seem to return, so eventually I walked back to the highway.

At the highway I soon got a ride, all the way to Groningen station. From there I took the bus home, so I could finally get some sleep. :-)