2012-05-15 36 -80

Location

Just to one side of a Y-intersection of two roads in the Country Club neighborhoods of Winston-Salem.

Participants

Birdray, who also dragged a friend (Vera), unintentionally achieving the drag-along achievement. (Mostly it was just fun to have an adventure buddy.)

Plans

I was thrilled to see that the day's hashpoint was not only within two miles of my apartment, but was also on a residential road, i.e. somewhere I could reasonably show up without having to talk my way onto someone's property. We planned to acquire a copy of the day's paper, just to have an old-school timestamp on the expedition. There was also a pre-hash nap planned in, because that's how we roll.

Expedition

I went to pick up Vera from the bookstore and we went in search of a newspaper. After finding the New York Times at Harris Teeter, we used the Android Geohashing app to map directions to the hashpoint, which was at that point about a mile away. I had my fingers crossed that my phone wouldn't die, as I had somehow fried my charger and was running on about 30% battery before I turned the GPS on. We came to the Y-intersection, parked the car, and started wandering in search of the hashpoint.

"What does it look like?" Vera asked.

"I'm not sure, we haven't found it yet!"

"Oh! It's... it's not a thing?"

"Nope, just a set of coordinates."

Vera commented on the likelihood of getting the cops called on us for wandering around cluelessly in a very affluent neighborhood. Vera had a point.

The app lit up about ten feet from the kerb, to which we promptly had to relocate when a car came along. We took pictures, in which I look like a rabid groundhog given that I'm exceptionally prone to red-eye, as it was getting dark, and then headed back to the car.

"I hope there have been lots of other people today," Vera said.

"Oh, I doubt it. There are very few Geohashers in the area."

We got back to the car and ate Sour Patch Kids.

Postscript: I greatly regret not attempting the Speed Racer achievement, but as it was getting dark, we decided to hightail it out.

Postpostscript: As it looks like the 2010-07-31_36_-80 meetup never actually occurred, I believe this is a virgin graticule achievement. Sebejias and LevinSerra, if you made that meetup, let me know, as the honor then belongs to you!

Photos

Really nothing much to see here--a dark residential area--other than my absolutely rabid red-eye, which happens in almost every photo of me. Taken by my friend Vera.
A closeup of the coordinates. Also the tell-tale "Your battery is ABOUT TO DIE A HORRIBLE DEATH" red light.