2009-09-13 44 -93

Location

In the right-hand lane or shoulder of U.S. Highway 52 southbound between the 80th Street East and Concord Boulevard exits, in Inver Grove Heights Minnesota. This particular geohash is near the junction with Minnesota Trunk Highway 55.

Participants

Brent
Mark

Plans

Having just discovered geohashing via xkcd a week earlier, I awaited an easy to reach location.

Early Sunday morning, or late Saturday night depending on how you look at it, I found that the geohash for the day happened to land right on a stretch of highway I'd driven over the evening before, near my house. I figured this would be an easy one to hit, particularly as my first geohash, and I could pick up a speedracer achievement while I was at it.

Considering that the geohash lied (as close as my trusty TomTom would be able to tell me) on the roadway or the shoulder thereof, I figured if it were safe to pull over and snap some photographs with my cell phone camera I'd do so. Google Maps indicated there was another roadway very nearby, so perhaps I could park on that road and walk through the ditch, perhaps onto the shoulder, and grab my pictures that way. Barring that I'd grab a few photographs while on the move.

Expedition

Achieving the geohash itself was simplicity, I needed only stay in the right-hand lane of Highway 52, and drive along. Acquiring photographic proof and the like took a few more attempts.

Unlike the evening before, the road was fairly busy during the expedition, enough so that I certainly didn't feel it was safe to pull onto the shoulder for anything but an emergency. The curve, incline, and nearby overpass didn't help any, as drivers were likely to be paying attention to most anything other than my 2007 Hyundai Azera, so that part of the plan was right out. Good thing I'd thought through the other possibilities. As I achieved the geohash on my first pass I made good on the speedracer achievement, though didn't capture any proof thereof; not bad for my very first geohash attempt.

Convinced to capture the moment I scouted the nearby roadways to see if I could park there and walk to the geohash. It turns out there was a fence between the roads, and that a distance that looks quite small on a Google Map satellite view sometimes involves water hazards and deep grass. Plus, there was a police station only a few blocks away and the attendant regular police traffic, so I figured it best not to push my luck. This left my only option to be capturing the moment on a subsequent pass through the geohash at speed.

As luck would have it my very next pass through the geohash (there was an intervening attempted pass through thwarted by taking a wrong turn onto Minnesota 55), I captured the evidence I needed -- all the digits of precision on the GPS matched the geohash. Yay! However I wasn't able to take a photo of the GPS receiver at the correct moment and manually regulate my speed well enough to get evidence of the speedracer achievement at the same time. Obviously another pass was called for. Good thing there were a set of exits a mile apart I could loop around on as many times as needed.

On the next pass I set my cruise control, and again captured the GPS receiver display showing me moving at the posted speed limit of 65 MPH, though due to the one second updates on the GPS receiver it never quite showed the exact geohash coordinates. However I believe the displayed coordinate was close enough to extinguish reasonable doubt about having made it through the geohash at the necessary speed.

Finally it was time for a few terrain photos and a mugshot. On passes three and four I captured shots out my front windshield, then through the driver-side window from the opposing northbound lane across a substantial median toward the geohash location itself, but you couldn't really tell due to the motion blur, sunlight blinding the camera, and distance. The sunset was quite beautiful by this point, however its full glory wasn't captured by a cheap cell phone camera. On pass five, or maybe six (I'd lost count by this point) I snapped the best mugshot I was likely to get. As I made my final drive by in the opposing northbound lane headed home, I tried for one more shot of the geohash location, but instead managed to catch a remarkably clear picture of the yellow stripe along my own lane.

Unfortunately I didn't find a way to capture the date, so I guess you'll have to trust me on that one.

Photos

Made it, but not quite up to the speedracer achievement.
This time at speed, but the GPS didn't sample the right moment.
If you retro geohash this one and keep your eyes on the road (as any good driver should), this is pretty much what you'll see too.
Happy to be whizzing by the geohash for the fifth or sixth time.