2012-09-15 42 -71

Sat 15 Sep 2012 in 42,-71: 42.3909236, -71.1767951 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox

Location

In someone's back yard, right outside of Belmont centre.

Participants

Knyx

Plans

I found out about this plan Friday night. It was too good to pass up, and so I created an account on the wiki, and started looking at maps and such. According to goggle maps, the hash is in someone's back yard/the back corner of the house. I was planning on getting as close as I can, but wasn't planning on trespassing to their back yard.

Saturday morning I decided to call two of my friends to see if they were free. The first one I called was at home sick. The second didn't pick up, but I left a message telling him to call me back. Around three he did. I invited him to come along and he readily agreed. I had previously shown him geohashing, but this would be the first expedition for both of us.

Expedition

I had a short, 5.7 mile ride over to the hash, and arrived a couple minutes before 4:00. As I was looking for the house I realized that the one that my Google map said it must be had been repainted. While it was definitely the same house I had looked at, same shape, same bay window, it was a completely different color. I then settled on the bench with a book to wait for Oliver to arrive. I had barely gotten into the story before he biked up. He joined me on the wall, and we just sat and talked. Eventually we decided we needed to get some proof. We didn't have a GPS, but we planned to use his iPod's location by local WiFi networks feature. Unfortunately it only picked up two, and we were left with my camera witch gave us degrees/minutes/seconds and my goggle map. But we knew which it was, and so we took some pictures, pretended to be cyclists just stopped for a rest to all the cars going by, and watched the house.

After about twenty minutes, someone pulled into the drive way in a pick up truck full of what looked like landscaping tools, and went into the back yard. We decided not to talk to him, as 1) we were nervous, 2) we didn't know if he was the owner or a gardener, and 3) we had no idea what we would say. After another 15 minutes, four people came out, one of which was the man we saw get out of the truck originally. He seemed like he recognized us as the people he had seen 15 minutes ago, in the exact same spot across the street from his house. He seemed to confer quickly with others, but did not approach us. We ourselves were conferring about whether to approach them, and what the worst case scenario would be if we did or didn't. Then they got in two different cars, one of which idled in front of their house for two minutes, whether to watch us or make sure they had everything, I don't know. When they left, we quickly taped up a marker to a nearby lamppost and made our getaway.

Google maps says that the hash was 16m from the side walk, so close and yet so far. Whether I should have tried to talk to them and go for the ambassador I don't know, but it's too late now. There will always be another chance, although perhaps not such a good one.

Achievements

Knyx and a friend earned the Prize poultry Consolation Prize by chickening out on the (42, -71) geohash on 2012-09-15 because not daring to ask for permission.