2024-01-24 -37 144

Location

Participants

Expedition 1:

Felix Dance
James
Gretel

Expedition 2:

John

Expedition 3:

Steve
Lachie
Ed
BarbaraTables
Patrick

Plans

Expedition

Expedition 1 (Felix, James and Gretel)

Expedition 2 (John)

Expedition 3 (Steve etc)

Early this morning, I woke up and, like the mobile phone addicted person I am, grabbed for the phone to see what, if anything, exciting had happened over night. Well, on the Geohashing Discord, excitement had reigned in the form of a brand new Melburnian geohasher on the scene, who had burst in with enthusiastic questions galore, moments before today's coordinates were announced.

What luck for them that said coordinates were emminently achievable - on a football oval in Essendon, an inner northwest suburb of Melbourne.

What luck for me that after 15 years of geohashing, the stated promise of geohashing - meeting random strangers at random coordinates - might actually, for the first time, be fulfilled.

Lachie and Ed started an expedition plan that would see us get to the point at some time after 6pm. The random stranger - welcome, BarbaraTables! - was aiming for similar. The odds were looking good.

In my micro planning, I discovered that Hope St continues west through Brunswick much further than I'd imagined, and has its own cute little bridge over Citylink. I reached the rendezvous at rendezvous o'clock, and met Patrick for the first time. This geohash was truly over-delivering on the meeting fellow geohashers front!

Lachie arrived shortly after, while Ed did not. This gave us the chance to witness a car committing three traffic offences simultaneously: speeding, overtaking through double white lines, while looking at his phone.

Soon Lachie led the procession northwest, picking a flattish route through a hilly suburb, on account of his bike having 25 fewer gear combinations than mine.

We reached the point without difficulty and Lachie manifested a picnic, near to where a family was playing catch. They got the hint and shifted their game over a bit.

There were beers, there were chips, there was a picnic blanket. Hopefully sufficient for a picnic achievement.

Moments later, the eaglerly awaited Mx Tables arrived and there began a long discussion of all things geohashy, computer gamey, xkcdish and...well, really, those three topics covered most of it.

Eventually the balmy evening turned a shade less balmy, and our fivesome disintegrated. Somehow I became expedition leader for the return trip for Patrick and Ed, which I delegated to Google. Further subdivisions took place until this member arrived home and started writing this report up.