2009-10-06 -37 145

The Place

On a suburban street in Chadstone.

Expeditions

Felix Dance and Pip

I pretty easily managed to talk Pip into going for this one (especially since I'd been talking about Geohashing for a fair while), and we were already planning to see the permanent art installation depicting a model of the solar system on a one to one billion scale which was on the way.

So after Pip had arrived at my place and me faffing around for a while we set off on our bikes towards Pluto, located at the Beacon Cove Beach near the end of the 109 tram line.

From here we worked our way around the coast towards the inner planets 6kms away, taking photos of each other at each planet (and, umm, dwarf planet/stellar body).

Once we'd got to the sun we took off along Balaclava Rd towards the hashpoint, stopping only to get some chocolate milk and reapply our jackets to protect us from the intermittently shitty weather.

After some degree of darkness had descended on our party we closed in on the hashpoint. Turning off Warragul Rd we entered the small side street near the powerlines where the hash had been determined to be. I had my GPS out and as the numbers ticked down to zero we noticed that there was a car right behind us. I was hoping it would overtake us but the more I slowed down the more it seemed to. Soon it parked just behind us near the point on the road where the hash was and I was worried that the driver would ask awkward questions about what we were doing so close to his house.

But as he got out of his car and approached us it became clear that he was not a local resident but a fellow Geohasher! (The give-away was when he started giving us advice about where on the road to stand).

It was Myka - who had been to many of the hashes in Melbourne that I had without us ever having actually met before (despite frequent attempts).

After a few photos and expressions of amazement that we'd finally executed an unplanned meetup Myka generously offered to load our bikes into his ute on the way to some food.

We drove to an Indian restaurant an Malvern Rd where we had some pretty awesome grub, washed down with a bottle of Tempranillo Pip and I had bought on our way from a cleanskin shop, and discussed the fine subtleties of geohashing.

A short yet chilly ride along Malvern Rd and north of Albert Park got us home at around 10:30pm or so.

Here is the route of our expedition. Myka gave us a lift between B and C.

Time of departure – 6:00pm
Time of geohash - 8:00pm
Time of return - 10:30pm.

myka and possibly Fergus

success
met up
speed racer?

Photos

Felix and Jupiter
On the way along the Bay
Pip and The Sun
Felix' GPS at the hashpoint
Pip, Felix, Possibly Fergus and Myka at the hashpoint

the following photos have all been enhanced somewhat to compensate for the crappyness of using an iPhone camera to take pictures in bad light conditions.