2024-10-13 39 -76
| Sun 13 Oct 2024 in 39,-76: 39.0049865, -76.8765568 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox |
Location
A very tiny patch of trees, bisected by a foot path, in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Participants
Expedition
I knew I'd already be on the east side of town for some personal business around 11am, and the hash would be just too close to pass on. So the night before, I charged my camera and "GPS", and in the morning hit the road right on time.
After wrapping up the to-do, I made for the state line along Rhode Island Avenue. Traffic was light enough that I could split at a couple reds and made good time heading northbound. I took a few turns through roads I hadn't seen since I graduated college, dodged a few traffic jams, and hit the BWash parkway. An awful spot of gridlock and a little shoulder-riding later and I pulled into Greenbelt. The strange concentric-spiral design of the New Deal experiment gave me a little trouble finding the precise location and I had to double back, but I arrived and parked the bike just across the street from the hash.
Upon stopping, a couple things became readily apparent:
- The valve cover gasket I had installed had torn, burst, or otherwise become non-integrous at some point after my departure. Great gouts of white-gray smoke poured off the still-hot engine as the leaking oil was deprived of the cooling airflow that had hidden it from me while on the move. This is only mildly not-good for a motorcycle.
- I'd forgotten my phone. This is pretty not-good for purposes of gathering evidence.
- The aforementioned white-gray smoke and the high temperature of the exhaust pipes I'd mounted my onboard camera right by had done a number on the battery life of said camera... and, as I'd find out shortly, also the general well-being of said camera. I was down to the last few scraps of battery. This is very not-good for purposes of gathering evidence.
After verifying the engine was not about to explode, I briskly walked across the street to get the hash before something else broke. I *thought* I'd gotten a separate video clip of me crossing the street and walking around for a good two or three minutes in the patch of trees to pinpoint the hash... but I didn't. Something about the condensed oil or searing heat did not agree with my little gopro knockoff, and so the only relevant footage I have of this is a 33 second clip showing mostly undergrowth and a partially-in-focus GPS watch showing how close I got (four feet! allegedly), and, for a few upsetting frames, a jumpscare of me just beginning to grin at the camera before it gives up the ghost.
Blissfully unaware of how little I'd gotten, I swapped the battery in the camera and turned for home... but that part is beyond the scope of this section.
Photos
The last frame recovered from the camera....
The closest the GPS read to the hash.
The full 33-second clip.
