2009-08-02 48 9

Sun 2 Aug 2009 in 48,9: 48.5333294, 9.1774206 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox

Location

A residential road at Sickenhausen (part of Reutlingen).

Participants

• Ekorren

Expedition

The weather forecast had expected a little bit of light rain in the morning, and slightly overcast but dry weather all of the rest of the day.

In the morning, there was heavy rain.

Around noon, there was light rain.

Early afternoon, it still rained.

Then it stopped, but it still was almost fully overcast.

And for some time, it didn't start raining again, and finally the clouds got lighter.

And the hashpoint was within of "can't not try that" range.

So, at a time much later than reasonable, I started.

Already shortly after leaving home, I noticed that it had been too optimistic to expect the clouds lighten up any more, and that I was hunted by very dark clouds. I tried to flee, but didn't get further than to Kirchentellinsfurt, where they caught up with me while I had to slow down to get up from the valley into the hills. Given that after K'furt, there would be a significant part over the hill, I took the clouds serious when they started to thunder which was followed by some cats and dogs pouring down. So the thunder probably was more of a barking. To be secure of lightning, I stopped at a bus stop (although being no bus, but since there is no traffic on sunday anyway, there wasn't anyone who could get confused by that fact), but since the thunder didn't really continue, instead of it I continued.

While on the road between the villages, the rain got significantly stronger again, and when I reached the hash I was really wet. Whether wet enough for a Drowned Rat achievement, I can't really decide, and in any case can't prove anything else than that it actually was raining.

The hashpoint was just at the end of the village from which I approached. I found it at a fence at the side of a residential road. With a maximum legal speed of 30 km/h in that area (as usual in residential areas in Germany), a bike speed racer would be feasible, so I tried that. It wasn't really easy - there was little space for accelerating as the road makes a sharp turn shortly before the hash, and I had to go northbound (as the point was at the very side of the road), which was slightly uphill. I did two attempts, and according to the bike speedometer, I reached 30 km/h shortly before the hashpoint both times.

No proof photo, sorry. With it raining all the time (camera is not waterproof), and accelerating needing basically all power, I didn't want to risk anything with using a camera during the ride. I can offer a GPX tracklog of the ride as a proof.

I then chose another route for the way back. It continued raining and didn't stop before I was home again. The only thing really worth reporting probably was the rainbow - I can't remember that I ever saw a rainbow which was that stable. It turned up shortly after I had visited the hashpoint, it never faded and never went away during my entire trip back home - which was, with a number of breaks, significantly more than an hour. And when it finally vanished, that was because the sun had gone down for the night.

Gallery

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  Grey mountains behind hash village

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  Entering hash village

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  Maximum speed 30 km/h in the entire area

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  Turn right

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  Coordinates reached

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  The hashpoint

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  View from hash

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  At the end of the rainbow, there's - a hashpoint?

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  The other end of the rainbow

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Tracklog

... will be provided on request as GPX, since that's my only proof of the Speed Racer. A .kml is useless for this task, as it doesn't include timestamps.

Achievements

Ekorren earned the Speed racer achievement by passing through the (48, 9) geohash on 2009-08-02 at 30 km/h.