2017-10-07 31 34

Location

Nahal haB'sor Retrohash on 2017-10-08. In Hebrew nahal usually means a stream. The problem in the Israeli deserts is that often there isn't any water flowing in the streams. At the very least there were some plants growing there without any irrigation.

Participants

Yosef (talk) and his wife

Adam and Jennifer (engaged couple)

Planning around the Jewish Holidays

I've probably hinted at one time or another that I'm a Sabbath observant Jew, but here the details are actually kind of important. Be ready for a short lesson in Judaism...

All holidays in Judaism starts minutes before sundown the day before and end at nightfall on the day of.

First we start with Shabbat (Sabbath). Shabbat starts about 18-40 minutes before sunset on Friday and ends 40-70 minutes after sunset on Saturday. The restrictions of the day are quite extensive and make it to the point that one is more or less spending time with family at home or visiting neighbors. Traveling is not allowed and so geohashing is nearly impossible.

This month is full of holidays. If you don't believe me look up September/October on this website: http://www.yeshiva.co/calendar/

For example, last Thursday was the first day of Succot. That meant that Succot started minutes before sundown on Wednesday and ended at nightfall on Thursday. Succot will continue until Wednesday after which will be Shmini 'Atzeret/Simchat Torah. Shmini 'Atzeret also starts on Wednesday before sundown and ends at nightfall on Thursday.

Both the first day of Succot and Shmini 'Atzeret have similar restrictions to Shabbat which means that on those two days geohashing is also nearly impossible. The middle of Succot is almost like a normal part of the week.

That's a very dry practical introduction to Judaism for the purpose of this page.

Catch all of that? If you didn't you can keep reading anyway.

Plans

Wednesday for Succot, my wife and I visited our friends Moshe and Chani in Migdal he'Emek in Northern Israel. Moshe likes having large groups of people over. In total we were five couples (four married one engaged) and probably something like six single men and five young children. I told you that nobody can travel for the day so they found us all places to sleep and had food for us to eat together. If you're thinking that Moshe and Chani must be great people, they are. I'm lucky to know them. That Moshe's my friend is not luck, because Moshe is friends with everyone he meets.

Wherever I go, I tell people about geohashing. I don't say "the internet sends me places." I call it "random trip of the day." Most people are pretty cold to lukewarm about it. However, Adam and Jennifer thought it sounded cool.

We talked before the holiday about the hashpoint in Ramat haGolan 2017-10-04 33 35. When we saw the hashpoint for Thursday come out 2017-10-05 32 34 in the Carmel Mountains we thought maybe we could do a night hash after the holiday finished. When we saw that the next hash in Northern Israel on Friday was in the Kinneret Lake: 2017-10-06 32 35, we talked about how we would do it super early on Friday morning, but I would have to travel to the south in Netivot and be there before Shabbat started. Adam then told me that he was going to be in Zimrat for Shabbat, which was a village very close to Netivot. Excellent.

On Friday afternoon at 1630 in Netivot, the weekend hashpoints came out for Israel. The nearby ones looked pretty good. After Shabbat, on Saturday night, we could possibly go to the hashpoint for this write-up and then possibly to the one on Monday, which also looked good. Sunday looked far so we would likely skip it.

Of course, my wife was very much against going to the hashpoint at night. Nonetheless we told Adam and Jeniffer to come over Sunday anyway to visit with us and meet my wife's family.

Adam was still interested in going to the hashpoint and my wife got her parents to lend us their car, so we went.

Expedition

Relatively easy. We drove from Netivot to a parking lot south of the hashpoint. From there it was a short one kilometer walk through a nice dry stream forest and farm until we reached the hashpoint. We then walked back to the car. It felt good to finally introduce someone to geohashing even though it was only a retro-hash. Jennifer said it was really satisfying to arrive, so I felt like we had a successful introduction.