2012-07-21 35 33

Sat 21 Jul 2012 in 35,33: 35.0420860, 33.4041931 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox

Location

Halfway up a short (but steep) hill 100m from the main road and about 15km from my house.

Participants

Gevorest

Plans

I was planing on taking a drive there (after a short midday nap) in time for the Saturday meetup.

Expedition

Well, I ended up oversleeping. By the time I got up it was past 5pm, which ruined any Saturday meetup plans, so I switched to plan B. I though I knew roughly were the hash was, and remembered it close enough for a bike ride. Big mistake. I then proceeded to fiddle with my computers for an hour, trying to get my phone to link up so I can have some riding tunes, which was a long but ultimately successful endeavor. I installed my brand new bike light and realized that I didn't have any batteries for it. Finally, I got going sometime around 6:45 pm. After a stop at a local mini market for batteries and refreshments, I hit the road hard (idiomatically speaking). After a bit more than an hour, and twice the distance I remembered, I got to the general area of the hash. I took out my GPS, i.e. my phone, and tried to find the exact point. I moved about 200m away from the road and checked my GPS. It had me still on the road. I moved further north, it placed me 300m to the east. I restarted the GPS function on the phone and it still wouldn't place me correctly. I spend close to 40 minutes fighting with my phone before I finally got the GPS to work properly. By the time I found the hash it got very dark, very quickly. I had to leave my bike about 8m from the actual hash, as the hill got to steep for me to carry the bike up. I got to the hash, snapped a few TERRIBLE pictures with my phone (including quite a few that were unfocussed and completely blurred)and got back to the road, where I promptly discovered that the batteries I bought were quite dead. After a long 15 minutes, I got to another mini market and bought a fresh pair of batteries and a few more refreshments and headed for home. I then realized my biggest mistake. You see, the road to the hash was a fairly easy ride, since most of it was slightly downhill, which made cycling rather effortless. The back, however, was almost entirely uphill. Add to that a road with an 80km/h (50mph) speed limit and barely any street lamps, and you have a very intense bike ride. It took me two hours of continuous biking to get home. I got home sweaty, dirty, exhausted and utterly satisfied with my adventure. Nevermind that my thigh muscles felt three sizes too small. I'm part of the internet now!

Achievements

Gevorest earned the Bicycle geohash achievement by cycling 32.6 km to the (35, 33) geohash on 2012-07-21.