2010-10-18 50 10

Location

The hash is in the middle of a field between the Autobahn A4, Möbisburg and Molsdorf, two very small villages next to Erfurt. It's also incidentally not far from the train station Erfurt-Bischleben, which is only 5 minutes from Erfurt main station.

Participants

Mampfred

Expedition

I left work a little early to prepare for my first expedition with my brand-spanking new Garmin GPSMAP 62s. Didn't have a torch with me but thankfully it was a cloudless night, near-full moon and no rain. So I packed a bottle of water and set off.

Took the N1 tram line to the main station in Erfurt and managed to catch a RE train to Erfurt Bischleben (about 5 mins out), all that with a "HandyTicket" (a ticket you buy with your mobile phone), a great new invention ... no more paper tickets and having to carry around lots of change.

Anyway, when I arrived it was already dark albeit there were no clouds and a big bright moon lighting me the way. Which was quite scary and made me realize what a stupid hobby this really is - in other words I loved every minute of it :)

While being prepared to be jumped at any time I walked down a very very dark small road and passed through a little village before getting out into the fields. Fortunately enough the little trails between the fields were exactly where Google Maps had shown them so it was fairly straight forward to actually reach the hash a couple of meters into one of the fields (don't look at the track log right? I said DON'T ... ;o).

That's where I discovered a couple of things:

Brilliant feature of the Garmin GPSMAP 62s: you can take screenshots with the device, no photo required
On the other hand here's no view showing you the distance to the waypoint AND the coordinates of the waypoint ... so I had to take two screenshots
It's IMPOSSIBLE to take decent photographs at night with the Samsung Wave

So I took the mandatory Stupid Grin (tm) photo and headed back.

On the way back I quickly called my wife to let her know that I'm still alive ... and the weirdest thing happened. Our connection got cut off for a about 15 seconds and we could both (!) hear a strange clicking followed by a whining sound, a bit like the typical "alien-mothership-landing" sound from a 1980s movie, and before you know it we were back on the line. Imagine that happening to you alone in the middle of a field in the dark of night ...

... well, not being amused, the best thing I could come up with was "OK, if you don't hear back from me in two hours, call the police and tell them to look for me approximately at the 50 10 geohash of the day" ;o)

I got home safe though and the GPSMAP performed flawlessy as you can see from my first ever track below (which actually includes both the train ride and the walk). As this was the longest distance I've walked to a hash so far, I'll be as bold as to award myself both the walk and the public transport achievement :)

Tracklog

See here.

Photos

Equipment ready, let's go.
A HandyTicket, note the keyword of the day, "Hecke"
Very very long very very narrow very very dark alley ... *gulp*
Pretty much the best picture I could get with the Wave. I call it "Moon. At night.".
Right Coordinates?
Yup, that's it!
Stupid Grin (tm)