2013-01-11 -38 144

Location

In a paddock near Lara

Participants

Expedition

(As recounted by Ed) It was a warm Friday afternoon and I had just returned from work. Mere moments after setting foot inside, I was greeted by the sight of Lachie wearing his familiar "getting organised" expression (and accompanying cycling ensemble). "I'm going geohashing, wanna come?". After four days of envious onlooking while he completed consecutive hashes I couldn't really refuse. I don't own a road bike, but conveniently we still had Felix's awesome spare in our garage in the aftermath of Monday's hash expedition to Warragul. So without much further delay, we headed to North Melbourne station. Our train trip to Lara passed fairly quickly, the highlight being the view out the back window of the train, and soon we were on the road again. A fairly breezy 10ish kilometres later and we were but a gravel road away from our destination - a fairly unassuming paddock. The fence was decidedly un-electrified and there was a disappointing lack of cows. There was a lot of tall grass though, and a smattering of thistles. From there it was simply a matter of wading through the grass to the hash. Lacking a fancy phone app to navigate, we wandered in a spiral until the GPS indicator read out the magic numbers!

Afterwards, we rode to the nearby Little River Pub (where we received two very generously poured jugs of beer) and then caught the train back home. To cap off the evening, we spotted some smurfs at Spencer St Station, fresh from a day at the cricket.

All in all, the trip was a fun first hash for me. I've been a regular XKCD reader for years but never tried geohashing until now. I'll definitely try and do it more often!