2012-08-19 47 8

Location

A forest near Wilisberg, which is a hamlet near Zofingen

Participants

Plans

Take 10:30 train to Olten
Proceed to Zofingen
Walk the rest
Celebrate hashversary

Expedition

Work had been abundant during the last month, and little time had been free in Calamus's life, which led to a strong decrease in expeditions. But there was a day Calamus was looking forward to; a day for which he had forbidden anything to keep him from geohashing. He had vowed to himself that, no matter how difficult the point of this day was going to be, he would have it. It was the day precisely one year after Calamus's very first expedition, his first hashversary. And now, this day had come.

The point was by no means going to be difficult to reach; it was located in a forest, just a few metres off the street. The only minor downside to the point was was that it was quite a distance away from the next town, and as Calamus didn't drive and taking a bike with himself in the train would have cost him double, this meant a nontrivial walk was required. But this was not a day to be fussy, so Calamus changed into his geochashing gear. He almost felt a slight trace of reverence as he donned the more than slightly frayed sandals and tucked his GPS and camera into the pockets of his shorts. This gear was practically quite unsuitable for expeditions, but Calamus had been accustomed to it.

He arrived at the station an hour earlier than he had planned to see that his lament to an allotment garden had been turned into a theatre play. Shrugging, he caught the train to Olten and proceeded to Zofingen. He had been to the Argovian town located close to the Lucerne border before once, and like with most people of his age, this meant it had been for the annual Heitere Open Air festival. To keep a long story short, he and a friend had failed to get a reservation and, for lack of box office tickets, they had listened from outside. To the crowd which easily drowned any music. This had been a year ago, and a week ago this year's festival had passed without any of them having time to attend.

The quiet version of Zofingen was a nice change. The town seemed unpopulated except for a few obese tourists photographing manhole covers and a group of alphorn players wearing Bernese looking uniforms and conversing in French for reasons unknown. Calamus left the town. A little further, he passed the festival meadow, which sat on a hill overlooking the town and still looked pretty trampled. He made a mental note to buy tickets the next time.

It was already noon when Calamus reached the next village, which was located in another graticule. There appeared to be no direct forest trail further, so he had to take a car road to the next village, which was unpleasant due to there being no trees and the temperature amounting about to double the maximum value Calamus deemed bearable. However, another wooded mountain trail led him further from there.

Just when he started to feel a slight hunger, Calamus passed a richly filled provision station and took a big bowl of freshly picked blueberries, leaving a little more money than suggested by the owner in order to honour the extraordinary quality.

A little later he reached the hashpoint and documented it, then examined some intrestingly-shaped blackberries growing at the spot. When he turned around, his trusty GPS receiver surprised him with a nice big blueberry muffin with a lighted candle on it. Or maybe Calamus had bought it at the station and was trying to have at least some kind of jubilee ceremony despite his being alone. Anyway, he took some time to think back about the wunderful expeditions he had had so far and wondered what was yet to come.