2008-05-31 42 -71

About

This hash is located in South Foxboro, MA in the Boston, Massachusetts graticle. The cache is in the woods bordered by Spruce St, West St, Daniels St, and I-495. Best access is probably through the empty field located at approximately 48 Spruce St.

Nearby restaurants are listed here.

Weather forecast for Foxborough, MA predicts afternoon thunderstorms, wind 20-30 mph.

If the weather is bad, we'll probably retreat to a nearby food place and kick back around a table. However, I plan to bring kites. If the wind is strong and there's no lightning, I'm going to see about flying them from the field to the north. If anyone has a Canon camera from this list, I would love to (nondestructively) mod it to do time-lapse and (perhaps destructively) fly it on a kite. If there is lightning, we'll have to create a Ben Franklin achievement.--Xkcd 14:32, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

NOTE: 48 Spruce St. and environs are Occupied Private Property (which, it should be noted, we are not down with).

Meetup

Two independent groups of about a dozen each missed each other (and each others' signs) by a short time. We each went to separate fields. The 4:30 group went off to Mill St, and the 4:00 group did kite aerial photography at another field. The two groups met up at a Panera totally at random, unexpectedly; until then, they both thought they were the only ones. Pictures forthcoming!

Group 1

Group 1 Pictures
Arriving in a field south of the location, we walked through a field, cautiously disregarding the NO TRESPASSING sign. We encountered two friendly natives (pictured above) hunting for wild asparagus.
Local Glench took the group to a field in Wrentham, MA.
At the field, there was a large mound.
Kite-flying ensued immediately. Randall brought two large kites and several other people brought small aerofoils.
One brave soul (rmo25) agreed to rig his camera to the kite in hopes of getting some aerial shots. (Despite one rough crash landing, the camera survived with minimal damage.) Thanks, rmo25!
Once the kitecam was up, we tried spelling out XKCD in people, the poor remains of the "d" shown above. We also attempted to spell out blog, but alas, Cory Doctorow, flying high above the blogosphere in his balloon, didn't capture us.
Up we go...
Success! X marks the kcd.
The "k" in xkcd. This is a frame from the video; unfortunately, the camera ran out of memory five seconds later. There was a "c" and a "d", too...

After kite-flying, the group headed to a Panera in Plainville, MA, where they met another group of late geohashers!

I made a little montage of the Group 1 kite flying adventures...--rmo25

Would the owner of the raw kite footage be willing to share? I'd like to mess around with it. --Kjones 06:14, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Sure! RAW FOOTAGE (consume at your own risk) --rmo25 13:59, 1 June, 2008 (UTC)

Warning: Said footage is not for the easily dizzied, nauseated, or vertigo'ed. I'll try and pull some good bits out, though. --Kjones 16:21, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Group 2

One geohasher (Chris B) arrived at 4:20 from the RV campground to the north, and must have just missed the first group. He circled the location a few times looking for people (he didn't have a GPS) until 4:30, when five more hashers (Ben, JP, Beau, Greg/Mosher, and [I forget the last person's name, sorry!]), who parked at Mill St. and walked toward the pond, arrived at the location, finding a flower at the hash. Those six met up with three more late hashers (Chris, [I forget], and [I forget]), and moved to the ballpark on Mill Street.

In total, there were nine geohashers in Group 2. At Mill Street, we sat around and talked and threw around a tennis ball. After a bit, the group decided to go out to eat. Beau and Chris B decided to leave the group and head home.

Group 2 Pictures
Walking across the RV campground approaching the location of the hash.
The hash is approximately 300 feet in front of us, into the woods.
At the hash, we found a ladyslipper!
May31geohash4.png

Ben made a map telling other hashers where we were. (We ended up putting up another better quality map 10 minutes later, when the other three hashers showed up. It directed hashers to the same location.)
Group 2 geohashers: Chris, Johanna, and [I forget]
Group 2 geohashers: [I forget] once again, JP, Greg/Mosher, and Beau
Group 2 geohashers: JP again (or half of him), Greg/Mosher, Beau, Ben, and part of Joseph
Group 2 geohashers: Beau, Ben, and Joseph
Group 2 geohashers: Chris B (The man behind the camera)
Could this be a late geohasher!? Aww, it wasn't.

‎

Old Planning-related Stuff

The following people are planning to attend the 4:00pm meetup:

kjones and friends plan to attend.
Randall and Steve (and Pinecone and Lauren) plan to attend. The plan is to reach the geohash and then go walking through the state forest.
Bake and friends plan to attend and bring... something.
Eric plans to attend if the rain isn't too bad.
Sully hopes to be there.
Beau will be there, might bring bike to explore the forest
CA will almost certainly be there, rain or shine. If it does rain, though, are other people still going?
J.P. will not be square.
Glench will be there.

The following people are not planning to attend the 4:00pm meetup:

Ben is unfortunately unable to make this week due to my sisters bday bbq on the cape. And this one was so close to where I grew up too. Waaah.*
John will not be there due to the fact that it's all the way down there, and he's all the way up here.

The following people are somewhat ambiguous as to their plans regarding the 4:00pm meetup:

Daktyls will attend if the cable guy has finished in time.

Other Expeditions

Jose, attempting to access The Spot from the field on Spruce St. at 1:22pm encountered Residents and a No Trespassing sign.

dav0, Hi. I was out walking my dog in my sideyard today when three people (two young men and a young woman) show up in a black SUV asking permission to attend a "nerd convention" in the woods behind my house. They seemed harmlessly friendly enough, so I gave them directions down a path, around my shed, and down another path into the woods where they seemed to want to go. I warned them about the poison ivy, so don't blame me for any itchy side effects. I asked them how they found out about the "party" so that's how I ended up here. Interesting stuff. I'd be curious to find out whether these folks ever found what they were looking for. My address is 20 Birch Brush Road, Shrewsbury MA 01545, but the nearest GeoHashing meet-up location listed here would appear to be in Foxboro, MA, which is a good 45 minutes from here. What gives?

Hi, we're in Foxboro. It sounds like the folks got some garbled coordinates for today and ended up out near your property. The rest of us were here in Foxboro -- we haven't heard from anyone in Shrewsbury, but you can keep an eye here. There will be pictures and stuff as the day goes on. --Xkcd 23:40, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Hello again, I registered, so I guess now I'm an official member. It's pouring rain now here in Shrewsbury, so hopefully you're having better weather in Foxboro today. I wish I took some pictures of the three lost campers who showed up at my house so I could post those too! :-) --Dav0 23:51, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

So, I think that the map tool did give some different coordinates at some point Friday morning. When I first check what today's coordinates would be I believe I saw that point. I also checked the Cape Cod graticule since that's where I was today and it was on land (although not actually on the cape), but when I went back last night and checked it was out in the ocean. Did the DOW price get typed in wrong for a short time on the map's DOW database or something? --Sparkyb 02:18, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

There was a problem -- it's discussed on the talk page somewhere. But on Friday morning the reference implementation gave some wrong coordinates for Saturday. It was fixed by Friday midafternoon, I think. --Xkcd 03:02, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

OK, still no word from the three mystery guests who showed up for the nerd convention in the woods behind my house today. Fess up folks! (don't worry - I am only amused... see [1] for more info. --Dav0 03:10, 1 June 2008 (UTC)


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