2010-11-18 59 17

Thu 18 Nov 2010 in 59,17: 59.7131611, 17.9354438 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox

Location

At the border between "Uppsala län" and "Stockholms län". Outside Knivsta.

Participants

• Vswe

Plans

Not sure if I will try to reach it or not. It's about 30km there and about the same amount back. I will have to be back(at school) at noon and I plan to reach it by foot. Luckily my P.E. lesson later in the day is just about theory.

Expedition

Through the city

Left home at 00:36 after eating a "breakfast" and packing the last stuff. I followed my pre-planned rout and the streets was totally empty. Well, I saw a bus when I crossed a bridge but not so much more. When I reached the central parts of the city the activity increased a bit, people were either walking home after visiting the bar or were still at the bar drinking and doing "bar-stuff". "Bar-stuff" is mostly smoking. I continued my walk and left the city behind me after leaving an industry area behind me as the last outpost.

Darkness

With the city behind me I pretty fast turned into a road without street lights. I were already carrying a flashlight but it wasn't enough anymore, I picked out a headlight from my bag. The headlight and flashlight did together lit my surroundings enough for me to see anything and also enough for me to be seen by cars. I followed the same road for hours passing houses by and by. I also passed under a highway and four cars drove by, but that's it. Nothing more happened during this time but I still enjoyed it.

Where's the road?

After about five hours from home I were supposed to reach a larger road than the one I walked on. My GPS said that it was very near and all of a sudden I had passed it, according to the GPS that is. I didn't passed any road though, this confused me but I continued. After a while I suddenly reached it but it was pretty far from where It were supposed to be according to the GPS. I'm pretty sure the road hadn't moved by itself so I guess the GPS was wrong. At the intersection I stopped to pee and take something to eat. It was still pitch dark when I continued towards the hash.

Printed Google maps

After crossing the intersection I had to be more careful. All other places I had walked on during the night I had already visited at least once before in my life. Now I were in unknown land. I had my GPS and two printouts from Google maps but due to the darkness It was still very difficult. My flashlight had ran out of batteries, I replaced it with my bicycle light and the headlight were still working but I still didn't saw much. The only coordinate I had was the actual hashpoint, no other points in the near area to navigate with but with some minor problems I actually reached the small road I were looking for. It was so small that cars and other motor vehicles wasn't allowed to drive on it. I were now about 2km from the hash.

Vswe vs Mother nature

After walking over a kilometer it was time to head into the forest, it was completely dark and I didn't saw much of it. It seems like a crazy decision to try to walk the last 700 meters to the hash but it's also a kinda crazy decision to head out half an hour after midnight to try to reach a coordinate in the middle of a forest and then walk by foot for about six hours just to reach "nothing". I had come this far so there wasn't actually an option to head back now so I went into the completely dark forest to reach my spot. The forest was a combination of big rocks, dense vegetation and water. It was completely wet in the forest, small lakes and swamps had been temporary created by the melting snow but this time it wouldn't stop me. My shoes got wet just after a few minutes and just turned wetter since I had to walked in deeper and deeper swamps(I tried to avoid the small lakes). No alligators were there to be seen but who would become whose bitch, Vswe or Mother nature. I finally reached the geohash and it felt great, I took some pictures and then headed back the 700 meters to the small road.

Time trial

When I reached the small road again it had become light, it was too cloudy to see the sun but it were there. There wasn't actually a sunset really but I were on the hashpoint during it. I now realized I had forgot to take the time it took to walk the 1.4km through the forest into the calculations. I were more than an hour behind the time schedule. I told my GPS to show ETA at destination and it showed a bit after noon. This was to late for me though, I had to be at school at noon. I increased my walking speed and ran a bit, the ETA decreased to about 11:30, how great! But as I continued onto a bigger road the ETA increased the more I walked. Since the road didn't went in the right direction(had to walk around a part of the forest) my speed to the target was much slower than my actual walking speed. The ETA was now about 14:30. Terrible! This was really a time trial, when the road straightened up I were able to push the ETA down to about 12:30 and I felt I were able to do this. The ETA was sometimes down at 11:20 but it went up and down all the time and my legs and feet got more and more tired. Since my feet were wet and I had walked for about nine hours they started to hurt more and more. The ETA became harder and harder to keep down and in the end I had to give up.

Resting

I called my mum and asked her if she could pick me up by car and drive me the last way to school. She arrived half an hour later and at this time I had walked for about 10 hours a total distance of 45.79 kilometers, it was very nice to rest in the car. Back at school I changed my cloths and found out that my feet didn't looked like before(see the image) but I were happy and felt great.

Tracklog

Tracklog Remember to click "Next" to see the rest of the tracklog.

Photos

Soon to come

Achievements

Vswe earned the Walk geohash Achievement by reaching the (59, 17) geohash on 2010-11-18 on foot, travelling a distance of 45.79km.

Vswe earned the Drowned Rat Geohash Honourable Mention by reaching the (59, 17) geohash on 2010-11-18 despite being partially wet from fighting his way through swamps.

Vswe earned the Land geohash achievement by reaching the (59, 17) geohash on 2010-11-18.

Template:Mnimb geohash Maybe I just feel like things are much worse than they are just because I'm new at geohashing but I think this was something special at least(note on MNIMB).