2009-08-31 50 11

Particpants

Explanation

Looking at the most active graticules page, Reinhard saw a draw of the Atlanta graticule and the Erfurt graticule for August 2009 still in the evening of August 31. Of course, Reinhard didn't knew, whether there were expeditions in Atlanta after August 27 that hadn't been described, yet, but to maintain the chance of a win or a draw, Reinhard had to go for this expedition though he really would have preferred lazily staying at home.

Expedition

The hashpoint was located near Schwarza, which is about 50 km from Jena. So there was the possibility of cycling 100 km on well-known roads, which Reinhard had taken just one week before or driving there by car and investigate some unknown roads by bike, which was the one that Reinhard surely was about to choose. The small roads Reinhard chose were quite empty that evening (Reinhard started from Jena at 20:20), so he could speed to Schwarza in 40 minutes and get on his bike, firstly aiming at the hashpoint. It was less than 3 km, but mainly on gravel paths and the last few meters appeared to be thicket. Reinhard didn't like it there very much (afraid of permanently running into spiders' webs), so he hurried taking some photos of the hashpoint and got back to the path, this time finding a way with less thicket. It was still about 2 km to Unterwirbach, where Reinhard wanted to continue the ride on major roads. The first some hundred meters there turned out to be a sand road (Now again looking at the map I should have known it: The road in Unterwirbach is even called "sand path"!), which is by far the worst condition of a path for using it with a road bike. It meant that Reinhard had to push the bike for a good distance. Originally, he planned a 60 km trip at home (with a lot opportunities of shortcutting), but then a road wasn't paved and would have required him to go back the way he came for several kilometers, and he saw an interesting shortcut leading directly from Dittersdorf to Bad Blankenburg, that even cars were using, so he explored this one and finished the short bike trip after only 25 km in Schwarza, from where he quickly drove back to Jena.

Post-Expedition discussion

Looking at the Atlanta graticule page again, NWoodruff obviously went on an expedition as well that day, so it seems to be a draw with this evening expedition being absolutely necessary.

Funfacts: One good hour after Reinhard created this page (and NWoodruff had already created the one of his latest expedition) some undercover user created this page which said that NWoodruff also went to this hashpoint 2 weeks ago ... which is a bit strange since he already reported several later geohashes. I (Reinhard) hereby declare that I believe that NWoodruff invented a time machine (hooray for the flux capacitor!) to get to the other hashpoint and gain the most active graticule achievement solely for Atlanta! :-)

Photos

Photo Gallery
That's where I had to leave the forest path.
View from there to the chimneys of Schwarza.
Proof of coordinates - 0 m - close enough.
Me with the bike at the hashpoint.
The bike and a bit more to see of the forest.
View from there to Schwarza.


Mon 31 Aug 2009 in 50,11: 50.6765723, 11.3132829 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox