2008-08-16 52 12

The first of a long series of stupid grins.

Sat 16 Aug 2008 in Brandenburg: 52.3351359, 12.6121764 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox

Expedition map - Stops: Brandenburg, Magdeburg, Braunschweig, Hannover, Hamburg (West), Hamburg (East), Schwerin, Müritz, Uckermark

The expedition

It was one of those dull days at the office, when one keeps browsing through the peeron map, just to see which hash points might be interesting. And which ones reachable. And speaking of which - how about these two? Or three? ...

This was the day when relet was drawn to the dark side of geohashing. Without consent, a question had buried itself deep into his mind. How many hash points could you reach in one day - assuming you're not a relative of Mr. "I live on the north pole and walk by all your hashes before breakfast" Claus. There they lay, all neatly aligned along the autobahn, a long line of stars screaming "I'm a POI! I'm a hash! I could be yours." And he had not the character to withstand the temptation. Frankly speaking, he delved right into it on first sight.

Still on Friday evening, relet rode his trusty mount to the airport, to trade it for something faster. Something more powerful. Something more attuned to the dark forces of combustion. Something with a built-in navigation system. The dark side makes you powerful, yet weak.

With his newly gained powers, it was just a matter of three quarters of an hour to reach the vicinity of the first hash point - still one hour to go to midnight. The all-seeing eye, Hugin of Thor Satellite View of Google showed the area as being some kind of construction site - however with small bodies of water. Relet half expected it to be finished by now, having turned into a well-fenced garden center, entertainment park or industrial site. He eventually reached the area by a single-lane, paved road. It was dark, an the place was deserted. The road turned out to be the service road to the facility, changing to gravel pavement in the continuation. Relet was greeted by a common sight - the Sign of No Trespassing[tm]^1. No fence though, just a huge bar of concrete blocking the way to carkind (and probably truckkind, tankkind and whatnotkind, from the size of it). The site was some surface mining area for stone or adobe. Not many details could be made out, but for some large pits, some larger machinery and a set of ramps to reach the different areas.

After spending some half hour idling and sorting through his stuff, relet began the expedition. The hash itself was conveniently located on the ramp nearest the entrance, half-way down into one of the pits. It is now decorated with a geohashing paper tag. Relet took some photos of the earth below the spot, and the devices to prove that he was on site at midnight exactly. The flash of his camera unfortunately was not sufficient to reach further into the pit.

With the excitement of having -despite his speculations- successfully reached his first midnight hash, relet quickly took off to the next spot. It was kind of creepy to scramble through the mine by only the light of the full moon (and several backlit digital devices).

^1 With a comment commonly seen in Germany, even though its not legally sustainable: "Parents will be held liable for (damage done by) their children".

Photos

• Ready for take-off.
• Closing in.
• Värböten!
• Hashed.
• A dark pit in the dark.
• Hashmark.
• Midnight.
• Stupid grin at midnight.

Ribbons

relet earned the Multihash Achievement by reaching 8 hash points on 2008-08-16. It's a MONSTER Hash.