2010-11-15 28 77

The Place

Who Went

Felix Dance - by bicycle.

Expedition

Felix Dance

Knowing about this particular geohash a few days in advance, thanks to the lack of stock trading on weekends, I had plenty of time to prepare. Setting out after a frustrating internet session of frequent power outages by bike I navigated the wild and curvy streets of New Delhi across the sacred Yamuna River towards the hash location.

With me I had my camera and GPS and a few snacks in my backpack. I thought about bringing my bike repair kit with its allen keys but decided it wouldn't be worth-while for such a short trip. BIG MISTAKE!

Across the Yamuna, where I'd never been before (geohashing is good for going places you've never been), I was happily riding along a major freeway when I suddenly felt my left leg give way. My left crank had disconnected from my trusty bike, disengaged from my cleat and hit the ground. Only a couple of days ago I'd taken this bike to a bike shop and they'd tightened my crank up - obviously not very well.

Stuffing the disconnected crank into my bag I continued towards the hash undeterred - since I had cleated shoes I could passably ride with only my right leg. I must have looked like a total idiot to the local New Delhians.

About 5kms later I came across a roadside bike shop and asked them for a hand. They didn't have an allen key (a bike shop with no allen keys) but sent someone to borrow one from someone else and managed to re-attach my left crank to its rightful position on my bike.

The next couple of Ks was fairly uneventful, dodging goats and swimming through dust along a large and busy street towards the hash. Eventually I got to within a hundred metres - my GPS arrow pointed to the inside of what looked like a garden.

I locked up my bike and ran through the gate before anyone could stop me (and they tried too). I still had 30m to go when I reached the back wall, but luckily there was a dirt ramp and a gap in the wire allowing me to get through. Quickly taking a few blurry photos on the hash point on the other side of the gate before the wheels could get stolen off my bike I ran back through the gap in the fence and to my bike. Annoyingly, I'd left my SD card at home so I could only take a couple of photos on internal memory.

Time of hash: 3:15pm
Total time for geohash: 3 hours.