2024-09-28 53 8

Location

A pasture in Oberhausen near the small Hunte port Iprump.

Participants

Beardygrade
A colleague of Beardygrade as Drag-along.

Plans

Beardygrade decided to reach this geohash as soon as it got posted, because it would be easily accessible. Since there was a lunch meeting planned with the colleague and another former colleague, he would be in the center of Oldenburg anyway and figured it would be possible to reach the hash on time. By dropping some hints regarding the origin and nature of geohashing he made the colleague curious enough to make him want to join the expedition.

Expedition

Everything was dominated by the "Kramermarkts-Umzug" - the opening parade of the annual fair in Oldenburg. It consists of various marching bands, dancing troupes, and a lot of decorated trailers with festive people throwing candy. As a consequence, along the complete path of this parade people are gathering on both sides of the street and security guards are trying to keep the road clear.

One of the members of the lunch meeting was trapped on the wrong side of the parade and had to wait for a gap between the trailers before she could squeeze herself through the crowd and cross the street.

Lunch was fine and biographical information was exchanged as it tends to happen when people meet again after some years. It got 15:30 and later. Suddenly the food court started to get more and more crowded with families transporting balloons and bags full of candy, indicating the end of the parade.

Beardygrade and his colleague then got on their bicycles and slowly navigated through the crowds of pedestrians. Only when they reached the outskirts of Oldenburg, they were able to gear up and the rest of the way was without any incident. But shortly before arriving at the coordinates, they were reminded of the parade by acoustical signals indicating party music. At 16:45 they reached the edge of the pasture on which the geohash was located. Fortunately, the curious cows were contained on the neighbouring patch and there was no manure on the pasture that was to be traversed on foot.

On the way back they encountered the source of the party music. A trailer emanating these sounds was parked on the Embankment of the river Hunte next to the tiny port of Iprump. Since this vehicle wasn't decorated in any discernable way it is to be assumed that it served the pure purpose of providing a mobile shelter for people intending to imbibe alcoholic beverages and broadcasting an unsolicited mix of easily predictable beats, harmonies and lyrics.

It turned out that the small road along the Hunte towards Oldenburg was still blocked due to the (de)construction of the highway bridge. The rest of the journey was without any notable incident.