2009-09-27 48 2

Sun 27 Sep 2009 in 48,2: 48.9587011, 2.3435791 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox

Location

By a tennis court @ Universite Paris 13 Nord - Campus Villetaneuse

Participants

• Xore
• NeThuS
• thepiguy
• srs0

Planning

NeThuS will be in Paris sunday evening and will attempt to get to the hashpoing for 21:00

Xore will take the metro to Saint-Denis, Universite (~20:00p) and walk to the point. 21:00

Expedition

Xore

I spent a fine afternoon at the Louvre, finishing it off with a nice dinner at a restaurant nearby. Leaving at 19:30, i hopped on the metro located conveniently across the street and made my way to Saint-Denis around ~20:05. I waited for a moment in case other geohashers also planned to show up here @ 20:00, but nobody showed up by the time I got a satellite fix, so I took off. Distance to the hashpoing was approximately 2km

I followed my GPS's directional arrow and found my way on a major route that ran along next to a train track. I knew the hashpoint was on the other side of the tracks, so i doubled back looking for the crossing that showed up on my poorly drawn map, but was unable to do so. While backtracking, I encountered more of the sketchy sort of neighborhood I ran into on my last geohashing expedition, and after no luck finding a crossing to the south, left in search of a crossing further north (ie, the one i was originally supposed to take. The lesson is this: I am not a cartographer).

This turned out more successful, and i found my way to within ~70m or so of the hashpoint, which was surrounded by walls. I circled around the property and finally located thepiguy and srs0 who seemed to have been there for a while already. The time was ~20:55

Apparently, the hashpoint was inside a compound that was now closed, and I took a picture of myself and Wump outside the gate, waiting with thepiguy and srs0 for NeThuS to show up. We waited until about 21:30, then took off. As I made a quick detour through some bushes, a mysterious car pulled up next to thepiguy and srs0 who were waiting on the sidewalk. Who was it? NeThuS!

NeThuS

I spent the weekend in The Ardennes, starting from Friday afternoon before the coordinates for the weekend were known. No internet around, so no chance to get the coordinates. Sunday afternoon I attended a family reunion on my way to Paris, still no access to the internet.

Further on the way to Paris I pulled over at 4 different gas-stations on the highway, hoping to find a hotspot. The hotspots were either not present, to low on signal strength wherever on-site I tried, or full strength but not actually working even if I wanted to pay for it. A vending machine that was selling 3G USB modems was not working either. Bad luck :(

I lost too much time searching for Internet, and on top of that there was a huge traffic-jam on the A1 highway to Paris. It was already 21:00 when I arrived at my office-building in Paris, so getting there on time was no longer possible. nevertheless, looked up the coordinates and couldn't believe my eyes: only 4 km from the office!

Jumped in the car and drove as fast as legally permitted to the hashpoint. 200m from the hashpoint, I crossed 3 people walking away without paying much attention. 100 meters later, I Arrived as close as possible to the hashpoint: more or less unreachable, and nobody around.

A quick thought: The 3 guys I saw were white and looked like tourists, where this quarter is mostly inhabited by black people and absolutely not touristic neither safe at night. that had to be them! I turned my car, catched them up and asked: excuse me, but are you from the Internet?

Images

(May take a while)