2024-04-30 32 34

Tue 30 Apr 2024 in 32,34: 32.1352540, 34.9037178 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox

Location

In the collective backyard of a bunch of houses in Hod Hasharon.

Participants

Yerushalmi (talk)

Plans

I'm delivering artwork to a gallery in Tel Aviv for my wife. After I take the train there, I can take a bus to Hod Hasharon, walk to the point, then bus back to Tel Aviv and train back to Jerusalem.

Expedition

This expedition took place the day after Pesach, which means that the night before we had to turn over our kitchen: put all the Pesach dishes away for the year and restore the year-round dishes. I also had a massive allergy attack that completely blocked up my nose.

Between those two, I not only pulled an all-nighter, but also set out late for the expedition, getting on the 9:09 train instead of an earlier one.

Luckily, I got about 40 minutes of sleep on the train itself. Unluckily, I slept through my stop (Tel Aviv Hashalom), waking up just in time to realize we were at the station after that (Tel Aviv Savidor) and barely making it out the door before the train left again.

Okay, so let's check Moovit for instructions. It says my best route to the gallery is to take the train in the other direction at 10:02 to Hashalom, then a bus from there. In a sleep-deprived daze I moved to the other side of the platform, where a train was due to arrive at 10:02.

Those who read that paragraph carefully will guess what happened next.

Still in my sleep-deprived daze, I noticed that a train on one of the other platforms had just pulled into the station... going the direction I wanted to go in. That's odd. Why didn't Moovit tell me to take that one if it was arriving earlier? And where is the train due to arrive on this platform, which is headed to.... Binyamina? In the north? Shit!

Run up the escalator, run across to the other stairwell, run down, into the southbound train, just in time.

I'm pretty good at functioning on no sleep. Not great, but good enough.

The rest of the route to the gallery went without a hitch. I sat down on a bench for a few minutes to clear my head and rest, then checked how to get from here to the point: a bus stop just around the corner, in 20 minutes. So I rested there for a while too, got on the bus, and fell asleep. With headphones in, so Moovit's notifications would wake me up when I arrived.

Luckily or unluckily, there was a massive traffic jam two stops away from my destination, so I woke up even a little bit beforehand. And I felt almost completely rested now, so sleep deprivation will no play no further part in the proceedings.

I reached the southern edge of the street to the west of the point. There were three relevant driveways heading east: call them north (N), middle (M), and south (S). The point was directly opposite the S driveway, but I didn't want to just walk past someone's house without permission. Since I was going into the collective backyard I didn't think it would matter which one I took, and the N driveway seemed to be my best bet for anonymity, since it was long enough that it appeared as its own road on Google Maps.

But just as I walked past the S driveway, a car started coming out. How convenient! I can ask them permission and then just walk in. I hailed the car: "Excuse me, do you live here?" "No, we're just visiting here."

Never mind, then. I did walk a bit down the driveway but couldn't see any obvious way to reach the house, given the fences and beware of dog signs and lack of doorbell or other attention-grabbing mechanism.

Okay, back to my original plan: walk past M and up to N. The N driveway curved a bit then reached a large, wide-open gate. The gate was clearly not at all in use, and there was no house beyond it either; just a bunch of trucks and pallets at the end of the road and overgrowth throughout the area. Looks good to me! I started walking down the road when one of the trucks at the far end began driving in my direction.

Hmmm. How private is this property? Am I making a big mistake?

I carefully modulated how I looked at the driver as he passed, trying to give the following impression: "I am not specifically looking to get your attention, but I am aware of your presence and am happy to talk to you if you decide to stop."

He did not stop, just gave me a quizzical look and drove past me.

Okay, into the overgrowth we go!

The point is somewhere down there, by what is marked as a river but clearly (according to satellite) doesn't much exist. As I walked into it, I could see lots of ruined bits of fencing; clearly this area used to be subdivided and belonged to somebody, but hasn't been touched or used in decades. There were signs of trampled foliage, so I'm not the only person to have ever walked here. And I'm getting closer to the point.... fifty meters... thirty... there's a ruined fence just up ahead... ten meters...

Six meters away from the point, just before I reach the fence, I get stopped by a natural fence made entirely of thorny overgrowth. Okay, some careful stomping is in order. I stood there for about ten minutes, crushing overgrown branches and amused at how much more work these last few meters require. And now I'm through, and I've reached the man-made fence, and...

Four meters away. Damn it.

Well, if I lean on the fence, and hold my phone, and stretch my arm as far as I can, maybe, just maybe, I can *barely* get within the circle of uncertainty. No rules of geohashing say it has to be your torso that reaches the point! Stretch... careful, don't drop the phone... stretch...

Three meters away. Damn it.

Okay, here's what I'll do. Clearly the other side of the fence is more accessible if I walk down S driveway. I'll return to the street using N driveway and see if I can get the owner of S driveway's attention again. And if I can't, I can always come back here and climb over/through the fence. It's just one meter, after all!

Taking careful note of which houses I'm behind, I walked back to the truck area, then down the path towards the... open... gate...

Oh dear.

Turns out the gate wasn't as disused as it looked. And the truck driver padlocked it behind him. I'm stuck here.

Well, nothing for it. I still don't want to climb over that fence without permission, but I have to get back to the street somehow. Luckily, there are no fences between me and M driveway. And I used my time-honored tactic of playing a podcast loudly on speakerphone, so nobody who hears me thinks I'm trying to sneak around. (I was wearing my giant purple hiking backpack, so nobody who sees me thinks I'm trying to sneak around either.)

I walked back to the street using M driveway, then returned to S driveway. Still nothing. Still no sign of how to even approach the house, much less ring the doorbell. What do I do? But while I deliberated, the owner of M driveway walked out of her house and towards her car.

I approached her as unthreateningly as possible and tried to explain what I was doing. "It's like Pokemon Go but without the Pokemon," I eventually said, which seemed to get the point across.

She confirmed that the area in question belonged to the owner of S driveway, but beyond that couldn't help me.

Well, I'm in no rush. I have my lunch with me. I'll sit down on the curb and eat, and if I'm lucky the owner of S driveway will show up. Which she did, not three minutes later! So I showed her the app, explained what I was trying to do, and at first she seemed fine with me walking down her driveway to the area behind her house, but just wanted to give me one warning first: you don't really want to go in that area, because the river's pretty dangerous and you might fall into it.

Oh, and another warning: There are snakes. And hedgehogs. And I saw a wild boar the other day. And I have a dog that's a bit crazy and might attack you. Yes, even if I accompany you; I have no control over this dog. Why don't you try going all the way around to access the river area from behind the auto repair shops instead?

I can be a bit slow on the uptake when it comes to hints (I wish people would just come out and say things), but this was clearly a thinly-veiled f*** off.

So f*** off I did.

(I did check out the auto repair shops in case she was telling the truth. She was not.)

Yerushalmi earned the No trespassing consolation prize by almost (3 meters) reaching the (32, 34) geohash on 2024-04-30.