Difference between revisions of "2013-06-06 33 -96"

Latest revision as of 06:02, 6 August 2019

Location

About 1/4 mile south of a small county road in a field, north of Bonham.

Participants

Neimster

Plans

This one was completely spontaneous. After the last hash, I noticed this one would only be about an hour away, so I decided on the spot to go for it.

Expedition

First of all, I will address the phone battery issue. When I left the house, about 30-40 minutes away from the previous hashpoint, at noon, the phone was at 40% battery. I assumed that I would be making a quick trip up the Interstate and back, and that I would return well before 2 o'clock. As evidenced by this photo, when I reach the point in Gainesville, the phone was at 25%. Many (perhaps too many) pictures were taken at and around that hash, and by the time I had chosen to go for the multihash and begun the journey east from Gainesville the battery was at 14%. Based on the fact that this was the easiest and quickest multihash opportunity I was likely to encounter for the time being, I decided to soldier on, conserving battery (and isolating myself from the rest of the world) through airplane mode.

Another thread of the story worth initiating at this point is the weather conditions. Thunderstorms had rolled through in the early hours of the morning, and I had encountered numerous residual showers over the course of the 85+ miles I had driven by the time I reached the second hashpoint. Therefore, I knew the field I was headed for would be wet; however, I failed to realize how wet.

At about 2:15, I reached the area. Minutes earlier, necessity had forced me to re-enable the network connectivity on my phone, resulting in another steep loss in power, this time down to 5%. As I approached the field, it was clear that I would have to act quickly if I was going to acquire the necessary proof photographs.

At first, the journey was quite easy, but this changed abruptly less than 100 feet from the road. Suddenly, I found myself in 3-5 inches of standing water. Fortunately, this newly formed marshland only stretched a couple hundred yards into the field, but by the time I reached dry ground my shoes and socks were soaked. In addition, my pants were wet nearly up to my knees thanks to a few unlucky steps into flooded and well-hidden snake nests. However, my troubles did not end with the unforeseen marshland. It soon became apparent that the dry portion of the field had recently been inhabited by some sort of livestock. The water had distracted me from the unrelenting stench of manure. Not willing to be defeated after all I had been through, I carried on.

Finally, I reached the coordinates. The two pictures shown below were taken at 3% battery. In fact, I was halfway through a panorama when the phone finally died, stranding me 80 miles away from home without any means of navigation. Of course, I made it back, but the journey was not without its detours, both necessary and unnecessary. However, I won't weigh this description down with the uninteresting details of the return trip.