2024-11-12 31 34

Location

Kfar Truman, in a park, near a synagogue

Participants

Plans

Yosef

I took a couple of smurfs with me this time around. Stop off, walk fifty meters to the hashpoint by looking at the phone. Take a picture with your eyes closed. Get everyone dinner in Airport City.

Yerushalmi

I was very excited to see this geohash. It's exactly 14 meters away from my very first expedition back in 2009. The point is near the synagogue that was at the center of my expedition back then. Should be pretty easy: train to Ben Gurion Airport, bus to Kfar Truman, reverse to get back.

Expedition

Yosef

Went great.

Yerushalmi

For various reasons I didn't leave until the early afternoon. And I had miserable luck the whole way. I missed the train out of Jerusalem by thirty seconds and had to wait half an hour for the next one. Then, when reaching Ben Gurion Airport, I couldn't find the bus station (it's in a stupid place) and missed the bus I wanted to take from there, and had to wait fifteen minutes for the next one.

The walk from outside Kfar Truman to the point was pleasant and uneventful. I did my usual proof+panorama, then decided to open a can of worms: I didn't have a GPS when I did that first expedition; I only went by satellite photos. So did I really make it, or was the point inside the synagogue?

Well, I wandered around the edges of the synagogue until I found a place where, if I pressed my phone against the wall, it was within the margin of error. So I probably *didn't* make it back then, because I didn't lean against the wall at that particular spot. (I'm not going to undo my success, though; I made it under the best criteria that I had at the time, and it's not a good idea to start unraveling old successes with new technology.)

On the way back, I *again* missed a bus by thirty seconds and had to wait for the next one. After which I was presented with a choice: take another bus to the train station, which will add a lot of time to my journey, or take a bus directly back to Jerusalem? I chose the latter, which turned out to be a mistake - though Moovit claimed the bus would arrive in 2 minutes, it kept claiming that for the next 10 minutes. Such a waste of time.

The expedition to the same place in 2009 was much smoother. I had taken the car.