2023-08-12 41 -87

Location

In a corporate building in downtown Villa Park.

Participants

Haberdasher (talk)
Tarasaurus

Plans

Long time, no hash! Planning on visiting this one sometime in the afternoon. -Haberdasher

I'll try to make it for the official 4pm meet-up time. - Tarasaurus

Expedition

Expedition Haberdasher

I had the day free today and had vague ideas of checking out the Illinois Prairie Path in my area, perhaps walking a chunk crossing through Lombard and Villa Park, but decided to check the geohashing spot of the day in case that would give me a new destination before heading out... and as luck would have it, it was in Villa Park, not far from the Prairie Path! Clearly, it was meant to be!

Unfortunately, I didn't check the website again in time to see Tarasaurus' comments here, and it had been long enough that I forgot about the whole Saturday 4:00 official meet-up thing, too. D'oh!

The walk on the Prairie Path was pleasant, if a little warm and sunny, and unfortunately while much of the Prairie Path is nicely shaded by trees, the Villa Park segment is decidedly less so. Still, I came prepared with a water bottle and sunscreen, and I kept at it until reaching where the Prairie Path met Villa Avenue, not too far from the hashpoint. I checked the hashpoint's location and saw that it was near where Kenilworth Avenue met Myrtle Avenue, so I walked north on Villa until I hit Kenilworth, then headed west until I hit Myrtle, then got out the geohashing app for more details. (As an old-time geohasher, I am very appreciative of the convenience that comes with having the app now, rather than having to haul around a whole different device!)

As I got closer, the hashpoint area looked more residential than I had been expecting. I thought it was a corporate building, and maybe it was, but the surrounding buildings at least were living spaces, not businesses. I had hoped that there would be a business open to the public where I could wander around inside, but no such luck.

I started to do the hash dance. Sticking to Myrtle, I couldn't get closer than 10 meters. Taking the unknown side street on the west, I could get to 8 meters, but no closer. I was starting to think that this expedition might be a failure...

...until I saw the corner of the building right by the hashpoint and edged closer to it. Eight meters became seven, then six, then five... and I got within GPS accuracy of the hashpoint! I'm still not sure I reached the hashpoint exactly, but it was within accuracy, so I'll take it!

As my app screenshot showed, my successful hashing happened around 3:15 PM. If I had seen Tarasaurus' post, I could have hung around the area for another 45 minutes, no problem. (Ignore the phone battery; my preparedness included bringing a battery charger.) As it was, I wandered around the area aimlessly for a similar length of time before heading home. An unfortunate near-miss on the meet-up front, but a success on the geohashing front, at least!

Expedition Tarasaurus

Initially I was hesitant to head all the way out to Villa Park for this hash because I didn't want to drive that far and the train schedules are poor on weekends. However, I just received a brand new camera literally hours before this expedition and decided that testing it out was a good enough reason to head out and give this one a shot. I was very pleasantly surprised to see Haberdasher active again and so I planned to time my arrival for 4pm for the best chance at a meet up.

On arrival in Villa Park I decided to park my car at the park by the local historical museum. Way back in the day Villa Park was a hub of railroad activity, but many of those rail lines have since been converted into long distance bicycle trails and in fact the historical society museum is located in an old train station building. There was even a helpful map of all of the long distance trails in the area where I discovered I actually could have ridden my bicycle all the way to the hash on an unbroken network of trails. Not that I would have the endurance for that, but it's nice to know I could! Since I arrived early around 3:30pm I pulled out the new camera and wandered around the little downtown area taking photos of whatever caught my eye to kill some time. Eventually I made my way over to the building the hash point lay behind.

For some weird reason, among low-rise suburban buildings on a clear sunny day, I had trouble getting a reliable GPS reading near the building. I ended up standing next to a garage that the hash point appeared to be in for a few minutes while the gps slowly zeroed in on my position. To my surprise Geohash Droid appeared to show my location also inside the garage on the satellite image. I'm not sure if that means the image is not accurately mapped in the software or if my gps was still not giving me accurate data but it said I was close enough to the point to count it. I hung around the general area keeping an eye on the point for a few more minutes waiting for other geohashers but none came by. At 4:04 I called it a '404 Geohashers not found' error and headed back to the car to go get some food and head home.

Only later when I am reading Haberdasher's account do I realize that we may have actually seen each other briefly while we were both wandering around and not had any idea. Maybe next time!