2013-01-16 43 -116

Location

On Wamstad Rd. south of Parma.

Participants

Eldin
Pojana

Plans

This one looks like it should be possible to get the Speed Racer achievement, so I'm going to try for it. I'll shoot for being there about 7:30pm, if anyone else cares to make the attempt.

Expedition

When I got home from work and told my wife I wanted to go out geohashing, she surprised me by offering to tag along. She's never shown any real interest in this sort of thing before, but I think she was curious as to what this 'geohashing thing' is all about.

The trip to the hashpoint was largely uneventful, though as we went westward and darkness fell, the thermometer in my car showed the outdoor temperature plummeting. The reading got as low as -4°F while we were in route, though it only showed -2°F while we were stopped at the hashpoint. Near the hashpoint, we hit unexpected patches of dense fog, which combined with the darkness (by 7PM it's well dark around here in January) made navigation difficult. We missed intended turns several times, requiring course adjustments. We arrived at the hashpoint just after 7:30PM. As expected, the point was on the road.

However, due to icy conditions it was unsafe to drive across it at the posted speed limit of 45mph. We got out and tried to take some pictures, but it was too dark for the auto-focus on my phone-camera to work properly, so none of them came out at all good. I've posted the picture showing the coordinates on a 2nd GPS device and the best one of the other pictures below.

We returned home by a somewhat different route than we took to get there (again, due to wrong/missed turns in darkness and fog), but the return trip was similarly uneventful to the trip getting there.

Unfortunately, I think that my wife still doesn't really see where the fun in geohashing comes from, and I doubt that I'll get her to come out again unless we get a particularly nice destination (and much nicer weather). But I love her even if she does think some of my hobbies are silly.