2009-06-12 49 -123

Fri 12 Jun 2009 in 49,-123: 49.1575185, -123.2913042 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox

Location

The official coordinates are inaccessible (off the coast of Richmond), so an alternate has been designated at where Elbie is delivering a talk on geohashing!

The talk is at 17:30, and part of the Computer Science Un-Distinguished Lecture Series at UBC.

Participants

• Elbie
• a bunch of computer science grad students
• Rhonda
• Xore
• yangman

Live expedition report

Talk was a success! We're at Koerner's Pub celebrating right now. :) - Elbie 03:51, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Expedition

Elbie

My journey was pretty trivial, since I work in a lab two floors directly underneath where the talk was happening. I arrived at the X Wing boardroom around 17:00 to set up the projector and prepare for the talk. There was one grad student already there waiting for me, and a bunch of others trickled in early, including Rhonda.

Rhonda

I had ridden all of the segments of the route from home to UBC, but never as one trip. Since the times added up to 1h30m, I decided to be safe and leave 2h before the talk began. It was a good ride on a gorgeous day; over the Lions Gate bridge, through Stanley Park, along the beach in English Bay, over the Burrard St. bridge, waterfront trail around one of the hills, then climb, climb, climb up to the university. I arrived 20m early, not too far off my estimate but enough that I was glad to have left the extra time.

After locking my bike up, I tried to figure out which entrance would be the most appropriate to chalk, since I had left my GPS at home due to knowing exactly where the building was. Instead of chalking I went inside and found a building map, then the elevator. As I stepped out of the elevator, Elbie opened the door from the stairwell. Good timing!

yangman

Long ride was long: http://vimeo.com/5148418

Due to a single unexpected task I had to perform at noon, my entire day's schedule was pushed back about 45 minutes. This ultimately lead me to depart on my 30km trip at 16:00, but then suffered an even further delay when I realized I may not have packed my toolkit, and had to return home to look for it. The last thing I wanted to was to have a mechanical failure stop me dead entirely. Having failed to find said toolkit, I stuffed a 5mm hex key into my pannier and finally got on my way some time after 16:15. (Later, it turns out my toolkit was still in my pannier.)

Arriving at UBC an hour and a half later, I managed to miraculously find my way to the correct street, building, and even elevator (only one of the elevators reach the floor in which Elbie's presentation was occurring.) I called for the elevator, entered, then selected "8" from the panel.

*beeeep*

The light on the button doesn't come on.

Exhausted and utterly confused at this point, I let the doors close, and the elevator promptly took me, not up, but down a floor.

I wish I could have seen my own expression exiting on to level 1, 7 floors below where I wanted to be.

At this point, I call Xore requesting to be rescued from my apparent inability to operate elevation devices. I took the same elevator up to the 3rd floor to meet up with my rescuer, and we safely took the very same lift together to the 8th—the light didn't come on this time either.

Final arrival time was 18:00. The presentation was already over, but I was happy to have arrived at all.

Group expedition

The talk went a little over time due to questions; in the interest of time, Elbie didn't tell nearly as many geohashing anecdotes as she'd had planned. The audience seemed to have absolutely no inclination to be awake and at a bus stop for 8:30 in the morning, but a handful of attendees did provide their emails for notification of future expeditions. A fair fraction of the audience stuck around for questions and chatting afterwards, but mostly everybody did their normal post-UDLS routine of going to Koerner's Pub.

Elbie, Rhonda, Yangman and Xore packed up their stuff and detoured to leave a chalk message about the hash outside the CS Building. The first three of them then hopped on their bikes and followed Xore as he walked at approximately 7.5 km/h. Soon, however, a Bike Co-op Purple & Yellow bike was spotted by Elbie, who unlocked it for Xore. The four had a leisurely bike ride across the UBC campus, arriving at Koerner's shortly before 19:00.

The four geohashers joined the CS grad students at a patio table, and enjoyed some water, beer, yam fries, salads and hamburgers, relaxing on a nice Friday evening.

Photos

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  Elbie sets up the projectors and stuff.

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  Some of the grad students that came early.

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  Group shots of geohashers after the talk.

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  Another group shot.

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  We left a message outside the X Wing.

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  And then we hopped on our bikes to go to Koerner's.

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  Biking across campus.

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  The CS grad students had already migrated there by the time we got there.

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  At the pub!

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  Yangman and his new hashscot.

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  The group at the pub.

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  We parted ways at the pub.