2009-08-16 31 34

Sun 16 Aug 2009 in 31,34: 31.8929070, 34.8161114 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox

This geohash follows the standard format of every Israeli geohash to date:
1) It will be successful if and only if two people attempt it together; AND
2) if and only if it takes place in the Beersheba graticule; AND
3) if and only if none of the participants actually live in that graticule; AND
4) Something, no matter how trivial, will not go according to plan.

Location

Among a set of buildings between Max Nordau Street and Netiv Moshe Street in Rehovot, Israel.

Participants

Yerushalmi and his wife.

Plans

Yerushalmi decided to drive straight to Tel-Aviv after work so he could buy two tickets to a movie his wife wanted to see, then surprise her with them at her university. And since the movie was set for 7:30pm, we would have time to head down to the geohash point first.

Expedition

Armed with a printout of the hashpoint, our new digital camera, our trusty Mazda2 (Elphaba, who should really get her own page sooner or later), a good road map of Israel, and the ticket times for "Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea" at Dizengoff Center in Tel Aviv, Yerushalmi left Jerusalem at a little after 2:00 pm headed west. Sometime after 3 he reached the mall, parked, went inside, and bought the two tickets for the subtitled (not the dubbed) version to be played that evening at 7:30. By 3:30 he was out of the mall, and doing circles in the confusing one-way streets in the area trying to find the way out of Tel-Aviv and towards Bar-Ilan University.

Shortly after he did so, however, his wife called. "I've finished early and I've headed for the bus stop. I'll see you soon."

Uh-oh.

"No, wait, don't. I'm-"

"You're what?"

After explaining that he's actually in Tel-Aviv and no longer in Jerusalem, Yerushalmi then had to come up with a decent excuse as to why.

"I came to visit you. I wanted to surprise you and... um... check if you're following safety protocols in the lab."

"And for this you came all the way to Tel-Aviv? Oh well, at least I'll get a ride home out of it."

After hitting a bit of traffic on southbound route 4, Yerushalmi made it to the bus stop where his wife was waiting, with the tickets to the movie firmly planted on her seat. Surprise!

It was now 4:00, and we had three and a half hours to kill until the movie started, so we decided we might as well head down to Rehovot. Two reasons: One, the geohash, and two, Yerushalmi's wife is interested in applying to a doctorate program at the Weizmann Institute and wanted to look at the campus and get some information. So we went south on Route 4 until reaching the turnoff to Route 44; headed the wrong way on Route 44 for a bit and, though we realized it immediately, took some time before a U-turn was possible; completely neglected to take the turnoff on route 412, which we realized in retrospect would've made the trip a lot shorter; turned south on route 40 instead; turned right on Derech Menahem Begin, the first street in Rehovot, and did a lot of circles in northern Rehovot until actually entering the University.

Northern Rehovot is an amazingly beautiful place, and it was at this point that Yerushalmi told his wife to take out the camera and start taking pictures. And this is where the biggest complication was revealed: it turns out that we neglected to notice that the camera (which is brand new, providing us with the excuse) does not: a) charge itself from the computer; or b) shut itself off automatically while connected to the computer.

Therefore, Yerushalmi having left the camera plugged into the computer for an entire night on Thursday under the assumption that one or both of these would have been sufficient to keep it in working order, the camera was completely and totally dead.

(to be continued)