2010-10-04 34 -84

Mon 4 Oct 2010 in 34,-84: 34.7033384, -84.8540478 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox

Location

In some woods off of Davenport Rd. not far from the Dalton Airport.

Participants

• turbomagnus

Plans

turbomagnus 22:59, 9 February 2011 (EST): Having just acquired a GPSr in the form of a Garmin GPS72, I intended to test it and me with a series of retro expeditions to hashpoints near my daily delivery route. In the end, I narrowed the list down to two; one in a set of woods to test without any landmarks and the other in a cemetery with landmarks.

Expedition

turbomagnus 22:59, 9 February 2011 (EST): Since my route takes me close to the 2010-10-04 hashpoint, I chose to begin there. As the miles ticked down to feet, I was taken by a sense of wrongness. I was sure the map had shown trees, but the GPS kept pointing me towards an open field. Having looked at so many different candidate hashpoints the night before, I put it down to being confused and followed the GPS in the direction it indicated.

• 

  Where I thought the hashpoint was.

At the field, I pulled off the road and exited my car to walk the remaining hundred feet or so with my trusty hashcot. As the distance to destination clicked down and entered the circle of accuracy, I ended up confused as the direction arrow and distance began to shift around. Finally, I gave up on perfect zeros and placed Chibithulu on what appeared to be roughly the right spot for the hashcot picture.

• 

  GPS works fine...

• 

  Hashcot

• 

  This smugness will come back to haunt me.

Retrieving my minion, I posed for my own picture, grimicing with the sun in my face. Retro-Mission accomplished... or so I thought. Upon returning home and downloading the records of my expeditions, I discovered a horrifying sight - I had somehow completely futzed the minutes and seconds of the coordinates for this hashpoint, the field I ended up in was almost a quarter-mile away from the actual hashpoint.

• 

  ...Operator doesn't.

Though the expedition was failed, there was still a victory. Returning to my route from my Geohashing diversion, I saw an amazing sight on the side of the road. It made me feel both proud and humbled... and to me, any day where you can see something like this is a good day.

• 

  A good day.

Achievements

turbomagnus earned the Blinded by Science Consolation Prize by failing to reach the (34, -84) geohash on 2010-10-04 through technological ineptitude.