2010-04-01 43 -79

Location

Yet another geohash foiled by Lake Ontario's watery grasp. Well, I had a lot of free time, so I was not about to let the day go to waste; instead, I decided upon the decihash (43.5, -79.5) directly north of the actual location. This turned out to be in the Colonel Samuel Smith Park.

Expedition

Lessica

After some rushed, last-minute checking of coordinates, I decided not to take the easy way out (the decicule closest to 'Toronto' on Google Maps was tempting, as it also happened to be a lot closer to home). Instead, I took the subway all the way to Kipling station, then hopped onto the 44 Kipling South bus, which took me within a hundred or so metres of my final destination.

Fortunately for me and my poor choice in clothing (NB: white coats make terrible wilderness attire), I was able to reduce the distance to about 10m without ever stepping off the nice, neat paths of the park. However, as I continued to walk and the GPS counted down, I had the brilliant idea to stop and take pictures of the countdown with every step. No sooner had I tried to do so (I was only 2m away!) then the location suddenly changed, landing right in the middle of the only patch of bushes in an otherwise wide-open space. Despite my best efforts, I could not get any closer than 4m, and was eventually forced to admit defeat (it turned out I didn't have as much free time as I thought, so waiting around for the location to jump again was not an option).

However, neither this failure nor the fact that it was only a decihash detracted from what turned out to be an absolutely lovely day for my first geohash attempt. The sun was shining, the birds were singing (not an exaggeration - I even tried recording it, but it didn't work), and the location was just perfect, with a nice view across the lake of the Toronto skyline, CN Tower and all. Glad I chose the place I did - I can't imagine a cul-de-sac at St. Clair being nearly so interesting.

Photos

Skipping over the boring TTC trip, this is the beginning.
Apparently my terrible cellphone camera makes everything look a desolate wasteland.
Or at least when it's on zoom. This is more like it.
The Toronto skyline from a distance. Can't see much here, but you get the idea.
More lake.
Only 2 seconds to go!
What.
WHAT.
After some fruitless stomping around, I head back.


Thu 1 Apr 2010 in 43,-79: 43.4900747, -79.5103400 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox