2010-12-31 49 12

In a ~~field~~ white void near Schwetzendorf, 10km northwest of Regensburg.

dawidi

Normally, I wouldn't have been able to go hashing today. I expected to stay at the office in the afternoon, waiting for a replacement harddrive to be delivered for one of our servers. But when I got to work, the disk had already arrived and was humming away. So I left the office not too long after everyone else and headed towards the hash.

The town had given up clearing the bike lanes very early this winter, and where they weren't intentionally used to store the piles of snow from the roads, they were mostly full of ice. But it had gotten noticeably warmer than the day before, and the main roads were almost ice-free, so I could cycle amongst the cars instead. The smaller country road leading out of town and uphill towards Tremmelhausen was rather well cleared and showed a cut through several distinct layers of snow to its sides.

There were a few cross-country ski-walkers on the fields, and one mountain-bike rider who overtook me and raced hands-free into the valley at about three times the speed I would have thought reasonable, considering that road had still a lot of ice on it. After a more careful descent, I passed Schwetzendorf and parked my bike at a roadside mast about 200m from the coordinates. Interestingly, this was the exact spot where Tomcat's bike chain came apart during the 2009-07-14 49 11 expedition.

A few cars drove past, its drivers giving me puzzled looks for stopping in the middle of nowhere, then I stomped into the snowy field (I had worn rubber boots and ski pants to work, anticipating this) towards the coordinates, which I found marked by the crossing of three bunnies' tracks. I took the usual pictures, this time including a rather old-school-ish paper printout of the coordinates, then stomped back towards the road as it was getting noticeably darker by the minute.

The way back, downhill and across the river, didn't hold any more surprises - the cycleways were unusable here as well, but the cars treated me respectfully on the main road. I got home in time for dinner at my parents' place, some board games and then watching the new year's fireworks.