2009-01-26 44 -122

Mon 26 Jan 2009 in Springfield, Oregon: 44.4282392, -122.9659910 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox

Participants

• Haschel Cedricson,
• Lizzy97396

Plans

I woke up on this day with absolutely nothing planned. Lizzy97396 asked me what we wanted to do. The subtext, of course, was that another day of me staying inside on my laptop was unacceptable. Unfortunately, I had no ideas, so I suggested geohashing. Our home graticule is the Eugene, Oregon graticule, but the hash location was way up on a mountain in a national forest, and neither of us wanted to climb 500 feet on foot. However, the Springfield graticule looked reasonably acceptable.

I didn't think she'd actually do it, but a few minutes later we fired up the GPS and headed off on an adventure.

Incidentally, during this conversation, Lizzy was playing Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy Kong's Quest. The level she was playing while we discussed geohashing was "Bramble Blast". I didn't know it at the time, but this would later turn out to be prophetic.

Expedition

Lizzy and I discovered found a random creepy doll in her car as we headed out of town. We decided that she would be our official geohashing friend. With a good-luck charm such as Creepy Doll, we knew that we would have an excellent adventure.

Google Maps told us the quickest way to get to the hashpoint was to take I-5. Luckily for us, we chose to follow the car GPS and were rewarded with some views of picturesque farmland.

We arrived at the final road, but soon ran into a minor problem. A gate was across the road, along with a sign informing us that this land and these roads were owned by a timber company.

After careful consideration, we decided that the sign only forbade VEHICLES, not trespassers. We parked the car, grabbed Creepy Doll, and moved onwards.

Logging roads only took us so far. Eventually it became clear that we were going to have to leave the road and make our own trail. Considering all the underbrush, this was no small task.

We don't have a ton of pictures of this part, because all four hands were busy moving branches and avoiding thornbushes. Anyhoo, eventually we ended up in a small clearing, which fortunately enough was where the hash was located. Victory!

I asked Lizzy if she was interested in having sex on the hash spot. She said that there was no way in hell that would happen. Luckily, my request had been phrased with such a tone of voice that I was easily able to pretend that I had only been joking.

We grabbed some more pictures with Creepy Doll and then headed home.

Achievements

The following were achieved for the first time by both Haschel Cedricson and Lizzy97396:

• Land Geohash

Photos

• 

  We found this creepy doll in the car. She became our Creepy Sidekick.

• 

  Haschel Cedricson looks alarmed at our creepy stowaway.

• 

  You can't tell, but the iPod is totally playing the song "Creepy Doll" by Jonathan Coulton.

• 

  Goodbye hometown, hello adventure!

• 

  You don't get THIS view from the freeway.

• 

  An unexpected obstacle.

• 

  This logging road was conveniently placed.

• 

  This is where the logging road and the shortest walk to the hash point ceased being the same.

• 

  You can't tell in this picture, but there is a huge thorny branch stuck to my groin. Oh, the things I do for the Internet.

• 

  The hash was somewhere in this clearing.

• 

  We tried getting a shot of the coordinate readout, but the camera wouldn't focus.

• 

  We made it! And didn't get murdered by a Creepy Doll!

• 

  We didn't get many pictures of Lizzy97396, but I managed to steal the camera for a little bit.

• 

  I was shot down on the Sex Geohash achievement, but this was nice too.