2010-07-18 45 -122

Location

Adjacent to a set of new houses near Camas, Washington

Participants

Plans

Jim's headed to the blood bank around noon, so he'll probably be able to get to the hashpoint around 3, depending on how much grief he gets from the I-205 bridge construction. I'm thinking of crossing over the Columbia on I-5, then going east on some road to get to the Camas area.

Expeditions

Expedition One

Michael5000 tried a second straight day of non-motorized geohashing expeditions. It was a 33-mile round trip on the bicycle, easily the longest ride so far this year. The actual hashpoint, though, was in an awkward position, in a rocky bramble patch uphill from, and clearly visible from, the backyards of a new residential development.

I made a cursory attempt to reach it, but it looked like it would not only be a miserable slog, but would probably make the natives nervous. In fact, a native came up the street after my abortive attempt to ask if I "was looking for something back there," his grammar offering assistance but his tone radiating suspicion. To preserve my dignity, I implied that I had just been looking for someplace to pee.

Technically, it was a thwarted expedition, but in terms of the reasons I started geohashing -- a provocation to exploration, fitness, and getting out of the usual routine -- it was one of the most successful hashes to date.

Expedition Two

Ah ha! I had looked earlier and not seen any evidence that Michael5000 was going to try for this hash, so when the (adjacent) homeowner reported that someone else was looking at that same area, I thought "Ninja??" The answer is "No, just Michael5000."

So, I set out for the hashpoint from the Red Cross, and the traffic was really slow headed north for reasons that were unclear to me. Once I finally made it to the bridge, it cleared up. Maybe everyone else was trying to avoid the I-205 bridge.

I headed east on Washington route 14 and soon passed I-205, along with signs that translated to me as "Don't even think of going Southbound on I-205 from here". I headed into a small development, and eventually the GPS got down to a few hundred feet. I got out and walked back towards the undeveloped area. I talked to the adjacent homeowner, and they said it was fine for me to skirt around their fence to try to get to the hashpoint. However, the back corner of their fence was still 60 feet away, and after the first 10 of those feet, it turned into a wall of blackberry.

I returned to my car, and switched to my hiking boots and attempted to reach the hashpoint from the "back" side. The only thing that I accomplished was that ripping open the back of my hand in a battle with the velociraptors. Luckily, I still seemed to have enough platelets left so that I was still able to clot the wound, but I decided I'd lost enough blood factors for the day and that tearing my way through blackberry and fighting Velociraptors didn't meet the Blood Bank's admonishment against any "heavy exercising or lifting" for 5 hours.

I tried again from the front end, and plunged in 8 feet, took pictures, and retreated to head home. Traffic wasn't as bad in this direction, and those at home were happy to see me, but I'm pretty sure that throwing the tennis ball continuously for hours wasn't what the Red Cross had in mind either.