2012-07-21 35 33

Sat 21 Jul 2012 in 35,33: 35.0420860, 33.4041931 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox

Location

Halfway up a short (but steep) hill 100m from the main road and about 15km from my house.

Participants

Gevorest

Plans

I was planing on taking a drive there (after a short midday nap) in time for the Saturday meetup.

Expedition

Well, I ended up oversleeping. By the time I got up it was past 5pm, which ruined any Saturday meetup plans, so I switched to plan B. I though I knew roughly were the hash was, and remembered it close enough for a bike ride. Big mistake. I then proceeded to fiddle with my computers for an hour, trying to get my phone to link up so I can have some riding tunes, which was a long but ultimately successful endeavor. I installed my brand new bike light and realized that I didn't have any batteries for it. Finally, I got going sometime around 6:45 pm. After a stop at a local mini market for batteries and refreshments, I hit the road hard (idiomatically speaking). After a bit more than an hour, and twice the distance I remembered, I got to the general area of the hash. I took out my GPS, i.e. my phone, and tried to find the exact point. I moved about 200m away from the road and checked my GPS. It had me still on the road. I moved further north, it placed me 300m to the east. I restarted the GPS function on the phone and it still wouldn't place me correctly. I spend close to 40 minutes fighting with my phone before I finally got the GPS to work properly. By the time I found the hash it got very dark, very quickly. I had to leave my bike about 8m from the actual hash, as the hill got to steep for me to carry the bike up. I got to the hash, snapped a few TERRIBLE pictures with my phone (including quite a few that were unfocussed and completely blurred)and got back to the road, where I promptly discovered that the batteries I bought were quite dead. After a long 15 minutes, I got to another mini market and bought a fresh pair of batteries and a few more refreshments and headed for home. I then realized my biggest mistake. You see, the road to the hash was a fairly easy ride, since most of it was slightly downhill, which made cycling rather effortless. The back, however, was almost entirely uphill. Add to that a road with an 80km/h (50mph) speed limit and barely any street lamps, and you have a very intense bike ride. It took me two hours of continuous biking to get home. I got home sweaty, dirty, exhausted and utterly satisfied with my adventure. Nevermind that my thigh muscles felt three sizes too small. I'm part of the internet now!