2016-12-30 42 -91

Fri 30 Dec 2016 in 42,-91: 42.5320265, -91.9938169 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox

Location

In a farm field just outside Littleton, below ominous-sounding high-tension power lines.

Participants

CJ Sprogis — Author of this report

Tyler, a friend and co-worker of CJ, drug along for the ride.

Expedition

First geohash! I've been lurking on here for about a month — playing around, learning how to geohash, seeing what points are nearby me, etc. It's sad to see that there isn't much activity in this community anymore, and virtually no activity near me in Iowa. Nonetheless, I love the random nature of the game and plan to do it frequently — maybe I can infect other people and start to revive it! =)

I had already told Tyler about geohashing about a month ago, when I first started to get excited about it, and I told him the couple of times the hashpoint was exceptionally close to us. On one occasion, we even drove out to the area of the hashpoint, but didn't have the guts to get to the actual coordinates, as it would have involved trespassing near a house on a long driveway.

Tonight, I just happened to notice that the point was relatively close (~10 miles) to us, that it was in a not-too-trespassy location, that we were both getting off work at the same time, and that we both had the next day off. So I was ready to complete our first hash! I convinced him, and we were off!

The actual coordinates were in a pretty boring (but pretty typical for Iowa) place — in a farm field. This one was in a relatively dark area, with only one house nearby that could've wondered what we were up to, and their lights were off, as it was approaching midnight. I'm terrible at estimating distances, but I'd guess we had to walk less than a quarter mile from the road, through the field, to access the point. There were high-tension power lines overhead that sounded very ominous in the dead winter night, though — the transformer buzzing near the road; the lines themselves blowing in the wind in such a way that they sounded like that sound effect from movies when a cable breaks, whips through the air, and slices someone in half at the waist. *shivers* But after trudging through snow, uneven ground, and ice patches, we were successful! The moment was not momentous, with just a quick selfie and screenshot of our location in the Geohash Droid app. (I hadn't figured out yet how to create the expedition page from the app, though I did figure it out when I got home and facepalmed myself.)

So the expedition and point themselves weren't all that interesting, just cold. BUT we had a couple interesting stories on the way back. On the way back to the car, Tyler went to use his car's remote starter but couldn't find his keys. He has a notoriously bad habit of locking his keys in his car at least once every month or two, so this was not the best sign. Our stomachs sank at the prospect of having to wait 20 minutes in 20°F weather for my roommate to show up with Tyler's spare key from work (yes, he keeps a spare at work). Luckily, his keys were actually in one of his deeper pockets.

From here, he suggested we try finding a traditional geocache — which I had also told him about. We ran all around the area surrounding our town trying to find some geocaches in the dark of night, occasionally with success. After finding a few in town, though, we ended up getting pulled over by the cops. For what, we weren't sure, but assumed it had something to do with the fact that we were inspecting the base of a lamppost in the parking lot of a closed store. XD Turns out, it was because Tyler's license plate light was out (and, also, probably, the whole looking suspicious thing). Woops. But apparently, they've had problems with gun trafficking (!!) in town recently, so they asked permission to search the car. They also probably thought we were drunk, being out at 2am on the weekend of New Year's Eve. We were looking to be as gracious as we could so we didn't have to explain ourselves further and had no problem with a search. Not to mention this is a small town, and we see at least one member of the PD every day at work. (One of the officers who stopped us even had a flash-in-the-pan moment of Internet Notoriety, but that's a story for another day.) We even had to turn out our pockets to show the officer standing outside the car that we didn't have anything that would "surprise" him! Of course, nothing bad came of it, and they let us go.

Tyler and I proceeded directly to our nearest Wal-Mart — a necessary evil in small-town Midwest life — to get a his license plate bulb replaced. Grabbed a couple more geocaches on the way home. A successful geohash, a funny story to tell people. Not a bad night. If you've read this far, I hope it entertained you as much as it did us. =)

Photos

• 

  First geohashie! Not the best picture, but we were freezing and weren't taking multiple.

• 

  Proof of success

Achievements

CJ Sprogis earned the Land geohash achievement by reaching the (42, -91) geohash on 2016-12-30.

CJ Sprogis earned the Drag-along achievement by dragging Tyler to the (42, -91) geohash on 2016-12-30.

Near misses:

Frozen Geohash — didn't have proof

Police Geohash — encounter with the police was far removed from the geohash, and in no relation to it

Midnight Geohash — forgot this was an achievement, so didn't stay long enough