2009-03-29 49 -124

Sun 29 Mar 2009 in Comox, BC: 49.6765237, -124.8240546 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox

March 29 was thepiguy's Birthday. He was determined to stop at nothing to reach these coordinates. They are in the Port Alberni graticule, west of the participants' home graticule. The closest land is on Vancouver Island, an hour and thirty-five minute ferry ride from the city of Vancouver. For anyone unfamiliar with the markings on the map shown, blue is ocean, and at maybe 10 degrees celsius, is cold enough that there is a good chance you would succumb to hypothermia before managing to swim the three kilometres between the geohash and the shore. Also the nearest shore happens to be at a military airbase, not visible in map view. As thepiguy said when this was pointed out, "This just keeps getting better!"

Planning

The plan included:

• thepiguy waking up around 5:00
• a van full of crazy people leaving UBC around 6:30
• an 8:30 ferry
• a 11:00 kayak rental
• a long drive
• a beach
• a cake (Boy, was the lady at Dairy Queen ever confused! "And you want the cake to say... this?")
• no one getting hurt

The plan did not include, as we discovered during the day:

• consultation of tide tables
• allowance for paddling a kayak in 20 knot winds
• allowance for driving a vehicle with two kayaks on top, in 20 knot winds.
• meal breaks that did not occur on the ferry

Participants

In order of seating in the van, left to right then front to rear. (Although Arbron and Robyn traded places for one leg, slightly startling MylSh).

• thepiguy
• Elizabeth
• Galaxstar
• MylSh
• Arbron
• Robyn with T-Rex

Not in the van, but part of the celebration at some point on the trip.

• Elizabeth's parents
• Many random strangers, none of whom was harmed in the production of this geohash

Expedition

Getting to the Island

The meeting at UBC went exactly as planned. No one slept in. Everyone managed to find the east parking lot at the corner of Agronomy Road and Health Sciences Mall, even where it involved impossible left turns and subsequent U-turns of questionable legality. Everyone and their baggage fit in the geohashing van, along with a stunningly and professionally decorated ice cream cake of which you will hear more later in the narrative. The geohashing van departed the rendezvous point at 06:20 and was soon en route to the Horseshoe Bay ferry terminal, thepiguy wincing at every bump in the road, knowing that the cooler and hence the cake was packed on its side, the only way it would fit, thus subject to collapse.

We reached Horseshoe Bay without visible mishap to the occupants or cake (although we didn't check the latter), and pulled up to the ferry tollbooth. "Two of you?" asked the toll-taker. She seemed surprised to learn that there were six in the vehicle, but quite capable of multiplying "too much" by six before adding it to the vehile toll, and charging us that much. We parked in our assigned lane at seven a.m. "So, what time does the ferry leave?" asked someone.

"Eight-thirty," replied thepiguy. The assembled party of adventurers had a very high aggregate mathematics score, and soon asked the relevant question, relating it to the sound of alarm clocks sounding at five a.m. "You can never," explained thepiguy, "be too early for a ferry." The next hour and twenty minutes was spent walking around Horseshoe Bay, doing homework, trying to guess the WEP key to the nearest linksys network, playing games on Arbron's iPhone, and programming a route to the our destination, located in the "state" of "Canada," into the onboard talking GPS unit. It was neither a recent nor high-end model.

We were among the first cars loaded onto the ferry, managing to avoid our GPS's increasingly frantic insistence that we make a U-turn now. The GPS appeared to know of only one location in the state of Canada, and that location was somewhere behind us. We turned it off and divided the party into two ferry-based missions, to ensure that we would have both food (mostly Belgian waffles, with one holdout for bacon and eggs) and comfortable non-cafeteria seating, obtained for us by the non-breakfast eaters. We enjoyed both breakfast and after-breakfast activities. These included finishing an iPhone checkers game started before loading, playing tic-tac-toe just long enough to determine that all of us had mental ages adequate to avoid ever losing, as long as we remembered whether we were playing noughts or crosses, and looking for a wireless network within range. There may have been napping involved, too.

Napping was definitely involved elsewhere on the ferry, when after docking the car ahead of us appeared empty. After a few moments ferry staff came over and rapped on the window to wake up the driver. We're thinking he may not have been too awake to begin with, as his left turn indicator had been on throughout the entire boarding process, despite his having loaded on the right side of the ferry. He turned right, without recourse to either turn indicator, after leaving the ferry. We turned left into a boat ramp area where thepiguy had arranged kayak rentals.

Obtaining a Kayak

"It's behind the taco shop," he explained, pulling into a large, mostly vacant parking lot.

No Mexican restaurant was immediately evident. We could see the boat launching ramp, a pub, a very closed-for-the-non-tourist-season seafood market, an a closed-due-to-fire fishing licence outlet, where a sign still advertised the availability of bait and tackle. "Is it possible that it is behind the tackle shop?"

And indeed the kayak rental place was behind the tackle shop.

Write-up to be continued after the writer has had some sleep.

In Progress

• Got kayaks from guy at store (status: suspicious)
• Driving to Comox somewhere much closer (status: terrified)
• Flying a kite on the beach (status: glorious)
• Traveling back to Departure Bay w/ kayaks (status: satisfied)