2012-08-19 40 -75
| Sun 19 Aug 2012 in Allentown: 40.2624920, -75.0300963 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox |
Basically
A painful and irrational hash.
Location
The hashpoint itself was within a fenced-off area on Swamp Road in rural Pennsylvania. It was actually pretty boring as hashpoints go. Despite the lack of explicit "No trespassing or risk being shot" signs, I took the fence as meaning that it was private property. Unfortunately, the location was surrounded by thousands - and I do mean thousands - of hills, because Pennsylvania is stupid that way.
Participants
Askew and bike
Expedition
I left home (Central NJ, Newark graticule) expecting to make it only halfway to the hash because of lack of time (5 hours until sunset). Armed with bike and Google map, I met the first hill about 5 miles from home. Climbing felt nice; we don't get a lot of hills in Central Jersey. I took the Canal Towpath across Route 1 and onto Princeton Pike, ending up on Pennington Lawrenceville Road (in NJ, a lot of streets are creatively named based on their start and end points). After getting sort of lost (Google Maps said something about making a sharp left), I arrived at the Washington Crossing Bridge, about 16 miles into the trip. I was ready to turn back, but it was only 4 PM, which was ridiculously early. So, I crossed the river.
Pennsylvania was hell. The hills were inescapable.
Around 10 yards from the hash, my front derailleur gave up. I was going up a hill (go figure) and suddenly pedaling got a lot easier. And suddenly I was going down the hill. After un-derailing the derailed chain, I got across the road from the point. Seeing the fence, I gave up on getting any closer. And anyway, being GPS-less, I wouldn't know where the hash was exactly anyway. I took pictures (stupidly, I forgot to take pics of the bike itself.) and left.
All in all, the trip took 5.5 hours. 56 miles in two states and 1100 vertical feet climbed. I think I'm sticking with the Newark and Atlantic City graticules from now on.
Pictures
Coming.
