2013-11-16 47 -122

Location

Someone's front garden in Bridle Trails, aka the Bellevue/Redmond area.

Participants

Plans

Meetup at 4:00, then attempt the geohash. Perhaps find a geocache also - any "premium members" ?

~~Still not quite sure if I'll be there at 4, or a less conventional time. I'll aim for 4 though... -- OtherJack (talk) 12:51, 16 November 2013 (EST)~~ OK, I think I should be there around 4:10. Walking from the bus stop... -- OtherJack (talk) 14:23, 16 November 2013 (EST)

Ton of traffic - be there @ 4:30. -- Thomcat (talk) @47.5770,-122.3202 15:50, 16 November 2013 (PST)

Okay -- OtherJack (talk) 18:59, 16 November 2013 (EST)

Expedition

I didn't end up arriving until 4:15 due to a somewhat delayed Sound Transit bus and a brief stop to have part of the above wiki conversation while walking over to the hashpoint. Actually, it was a very good thing the bus was a little late, because the Metro bus I took downtown was very late, and so I nearly missed the connection! If the sound transit bus had been running perfectly on time I probably would have missed it and not gotten to the hash until 4:45 or so.

In any case, the walk from the bus stop to the hash was interesting because I unexpectedly went through part of Microsoft's campus at the beginning, and saw the Xbox building, complete with handmade Xbox 8.5"x11" pixellated window decorations. After that things got much more rural and exclusive, with big wooded properties, rolling hills and private drives. It was quite pretty in the dusk. I thought about exploring the neighborhood more but decided to press on in case any other unexpected hashers showed up (they didn't.)

The hashpoint turned out to be up one of those private drives... it was signed private, but had many houses so I figured I wouldn't look that suspicious. After determining which house's lawn had the hashpoint, and that this house appeared unoccupied, I sat down in the crook of a tree facing the road to pass the time until Thom showed up. For the next ten minutes I saw only one other soul - the driver of a small blue sedan who came up the road past me, and then thirty seconds later came right back down and out.

But right about 4:30 Thomcat did show up as predicted, and we proceeded on foot up the long driveway to the front of the house. The point turned out to be in a small landscaped garden just in front of the clearly unoccupied house and was straightforward to locate with my gps and just a bit of hashdance. (Our android phones, on the other hand, had no clue where we were with all the trees and clouds... mine was telling me I still had to walk 2km north!)

After the obligatory photos Thom very kindly gave me a ride home. Another successful Saturday meetup for 47,-122...

-- OtherJack (talk) 23:32, 16 November 2013 (EST)