2010-04-15 49 -123

Thu 15 Apr 2010 in 49,-123: 49.3641781, -123.1059508 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox

Location

About 20 meters off the shore in a widening of the Capilano River, 49.364178°, -123.105951°

Participants

• Rhonda
• Xore
• Wade

Plans

Planning? That's a fairly strong term for this event.

During breakfast, Wade checked on the location of today's geohash. It seemed to be in the water, but surprisingly reachable for the Vancouver graticule. Unfortunately, Wade had to work today, so it wasn't likely to happen.

By an astounding coincidence, Xore happens to work in the same company as Wade. Around 6:30, Xore wandered past Wade's desk, and Wade asked him if he knew that today's hash is reachable and in his area of town.

Xore asked "Are you serious about going tonight?"

Wade wasn't. He was actually just suggesting that Xore might want to go. He didn't want to kayak or swim in a glacier-fed lake in May April. Wade's more into comfortable geohashes. But before vocalizing that, he realized it sounded kind of lame. So he replied, "Um, maybe. I thought you'd be interested."

Xore then commented that it was so close to shore that we could probably walk out into the water and reach the geohash. He got on the phone with Rhonda, and insisted on using the term "Wade to the geohash" as often as possible. Eventually Rhonda was convinced to participate in this event.

Before Wade quite knew what he had set in motion, the plans were made. Xore was going to catch Seabus home, and Wade was going to ride home, get ready, and head over meet Xore and Rhonda, where we'd all ride Rhonda's new and improved Hashmobile as close as possible to the point, and kayak or Wade to the point.

Expedition

Wade

Just after Xore headed off to catch the bus, Wade realized that he wasn't going to be able to ride home, change from "Wade at the office" clothes into "wade at a geohash" clothes, grab a towel and GPS, and meet Xore and Rhonda at the agreed-upon time. Oh well, the speed limit is a suggested minimum, right? Fortunately, it was a bit past rush hour, so the traffic wasn't too bad.

Wade spent 15 minutes on the ride home, 5 minutes at home to change and grab the GPS (and get a message on the answering machine to confirm the tickets for the show he's seeing on Sunday), 30 seconds to program the address in the GPS, 20 minutes to get to the meet-up point, and arrived only about 20 minutes late. Rhonda and Xore were patiently waiting.

Rhonda

As Rhonda was already at home when the decision was made, all she had to do was load kayaks and other typical Vancouver geohashing gear into the hashmobile, then wait for the others.

Everybody

Once the team was assembled, we set off. Xore drove, Rhonda attempted to program a GPS that had last been used in Europe, and Wade navigated from the back seat using his motorcycle GPS. Not that it was difficult: "follow the signs to Grouse Mountain" would have been adequate instruction for most of the route.

We parked at a parking lot helpfully located at the closest point on the road to the hash, crossed the road, and began to look for a way to get past the houses to the road behind the houses which Rhonda had seen on Google maps. Unfortunately, we could see from the road that there was a fence behind all the houses. As we walked from driveway to driveway looking for waterfront access, a car stopped to ask us what we were looking for.

"We're looking to see how we can get to the water!", we replied.

"You can't get to the water, because it's the watershed. But you can get a nice view down at the dam", the driver replied.

We forgot all about the water shed. The hash point was not legally and safely accessible. It is annoying that the three Vancouver-area watersheds make many otherwise wonderful geohashes unavailable, but since we all drink the water here, I think we're all happy that people aren't walking around in our water supply.

Instead of reaching the geohash, we spent some nice time walking around the Capilano dam, photographing the hashpoint from a distance, and recalling the dam scene from The Fugitive.

We had a nice drive, a nice walk around the Capilano dam, got some nice photos, and nobody had to get their feet wet. It was an ideal geohash attempt.