The Summer Road Trip 2014

I don't know if you've noticed that, outside of the Tournament itself, there hasn't been much "content" going on lately.  Two reasons: first, it's summer, and you are even less inclined than usual to sit still for my rantings.  But also, I have been on Road Trip:

Colorado: I didn't actually do much in Colorado, but Denver was the start and end point, and I arranged my route to go through five new counties, thus completing Colorado east of the Rocky Mountain Front.  The rental car agent, before launching into the tedious threats and brazen lying of the upsell process, asked Mrs.5000 and myself what we were up to.  "We're going to a wedding," we answered, "and then we're splitting up."

Nebraska: We went to a wedding in Sidney, Nebraska, just north of Colorado in the Panhandle.  The bride was, let's see, a first cousin once removed of Mrs.5000.  She and her family were very gracious about welcoming us, and we got to spend a few days with the in-laws.  Actually, Mrs.5000 got to spend quite a bit of time with them -- she calls them "Mom and Dad," not "the in-laws" -- since they stole her away from me and took her back with them to their western Colorado lair.  Whereas I headed off alone, free as a bird, across the uncharted counties of southern Nebraska.

Kansas: I didn't claim any new counties in Kansas, and I never will again.  I've been to all 105 counties in Kansas.  No, really!  I used to live there, you know.  I was a graduate student at a big university, and then a professor at a small university.  During this trip, I visited with my dissertation adviser, and then also with some former students.  I thought it was very nice, if a little surreal, to see my old professor.  Then one of the former students wrote to say that it was very nice, but a little surreal, to see me.  So I guess there's some symmetry there. 

I had a house in Kansas at the foot of the Flint Hills...

Oklahoma: So, with family obligations and visiting disposed of, and four days still on the clock, I considered my options.  Should I head northward toward the Dakotas?  Northwest towards Wyoming?  Or what?  Closely consulting the hashpoints, I discovered a pair in diagonally adjacent graticules, one in southern Oklahoma and one on the outskirts of Fort Worth.  So I headed south across the Sooner State, trying to decide whether I should try to find legendary former blogger Blythe's work and bust in on her.  I didn't, because I was afraid she might be doing serious grown-up administrative stuff that day, but now I kind of regret my timidity.  Oh well.  I got five new Oklahoma counties.

Texas: I'd never been to Dallas and Forth Worth, and they certainly are humungous.  Dallas in particular seems built at 120% of standard scale, with truly epic freeway interchanges that might have been designed by a Popular Mechanics cover artist in 1955.  Also, while I was in Fort Worth, I saw this:

It's Michaelangelo's Torment of Saint Anthony, something he painted as a young and apparently fairly angst-ridden teenager.  It's at Fort Worth's Kimball Museum of Art.  My visit there marked the cultural apex of the trip.  The closest I got to high culture after that was the Amarillo Starbucks.  But my swing across the Lone Star State ultimately bagged me 22 new counties.

New Mexico: Not long after I crossed into New Mexico on I-40, I saw an unlikely sign for Dhillon's Truck Stop and India Buffet. I immediately felt better about the state of the republic, and happily joined a clutch of Sikh, Indian, and Somali truckers at the trough.  It was not fancy, but damn was it good.  I claimed two new New Mexico counties with my mouth just slightly ablaze from spicy tandoori chicken.

Here's the take:

And reports on five geohashing Expeditions, so you know I wasn't just goofing off:

• 2014-07-20 39 -98
• 2014-07-23 33 -96
• 2014-07-23 32 -97
• 2014-07-25 34 -101
• 2014-07-25 35 -102

It was a great vacation, if you like rural landscapes, roads, an emergent style of travel planning, sweltering heat, and cheap motels.  Fortunately, I do.

Why Mrs.5000 Shouldn't Get Me a Birthday Present This Year

I don’t like to use telephones for anything except what they were made for, which is to say text messaging. If I have to, although I really don't like it, I’ll use them to have a remote voice conversation. But that’s it, and for the other esoteric electronic business of Modern Life, I use task-specific tools. This makes me one of the last people still using, for instance, an MP3 player – my “stories” makes it possible for me to be reading at all times, never wasting a speck of attention on time-wasters such as focusing on routine tasks, interacting with the people around me, driving, or spiritual development.

The other key portable electronic device in my life is the “gadget” – a GPS receiver. Not one of those street-map jobbies, mind you – life is dull enough already without taking the fun of navigation out of it – but a sturdy little machine that can tell me exactly where I am on the planet, how fast I’m going, how far I’ve gone, and how far I am as the crow flies from Bozeman, Montana. The gadget serves three vital purposes. First, I use it to track my running mileage. Second, it is an essential tool for geohashing. And thirdly, it lets me see the difference between the direction my vehicle is pointing and the straight-line direction to my destination. This last item may not seem important to you, but for me, well, I was pining for such a device long before the advent of consumer GPS equipment, and can scarcely believe my luck to be able to own one now. So let’s say I use it for “running mileage, geohashing, and spiritual development.”

I wrote about my first gadget when I first bought it back in aught-ten, and it made a major cameo in my niche-famous geohashing primer. It served me stoutly and well for almost three years.

One day early last summer, I went for a run immediately after work. When I got back to the truck, I cooled off for a few minutes – it was a hot day – and then headed for home. Later, I would remember a peculiar thumping sound as I drove off, and realize that it was the gadget, my beloved gadget, rolling from where I had placed in on the truck roof and falling off into the void. By the time I put this together, lamentably, it was two days later, and naturally I never saw the first gadget again.

Mrs.5000, being swell, encouraged me to get a replacement gadget as an early 2013 birthday present. She is very supportive of my running, and even my geohashing, and even my spiritual development for that matter. Plus, I was about to take one of my big sprawling roadtrips, and she knew that to be truly happy on a big sprawling roadtrip, I would need to be practicing spiritual development.

On that road trip, I went on a geohashing expedition in Yellowstone Park in which I kind of scared myself by climbing up a hill that I wasn’t sure I could climb back down. I was pretty jumpy and jittery when I got back to the truck. I assume that is why I didn’t think much, for an hour or two, about the peculiar thumping sound I heard as I drove off. By the time I put two and two together and realized that it was the gadget, my beloved replacement gadget, rolling from where I had placed it on the truck roof and falling off into the void, it was far too late to go back on the remote chance of finding it still waiting for me.

Since then, I have become something of a fanatic about never putting anything on the roof of the truck. On the hood, where you can see it, fine. But never on the roof! No matter how convenient! It is a sanitation that I now follow very strictly.  I've learned my lesson the hard way.

In the short term, there was nothing for it but to hide my shame like a pathetic skulking weasel. I scoured the outfitters of Bozeman, Montana, until I found one that sold the exact same gadget as the one I had just lost, and resolved not to mention the incident until next summer.  (Which is to say, now.) Then, I programmed in the location of Bozeman, Montana. And then, still alive and regadgeted, I went geohashing again.

So that is why Mrs.5000 shouldn’t get me a birthday present this year. She already got my 2014 birthday present back in August 2013, in Bozeman, Montana. She just didn’t know it until now.

Two Things I Stopped Doing, but Have Started Doing Again

#1 - Geohashing

In April 2012, I had a bit of a crisis of faith in geohashing, and that summer -- usually high geohashing season -- I gradually petered out and quit, and became a confirmed ex-geohasher.  Then, about a year ago, I went on a few convenient expeditions, and then structured a big aimless roadtrip around geohashing, and before you could say boo I was back in action. 

Geohashing?

If you don't know me personally, you probably think I am misspelling "geocaching."  No.  Geocaching is a perfectly respectable game where people hide little boxes around the landscape, and then give you coordinates and perhaps clues as to how to find them.  I occasionally do a little geocaching, if I want to go for a walk and need a destination, but I don't especially care for it.  The hide-and-seek aspect makes me feel foolish, possibly because I am pretty bad at it.

Geohashing is the quest not for a hidden box but for a random point, generated daily (and on Friday for the weekends) by a complex formula.  Most days, you check the point in the morning and see that your local "hashpoint" is inaccessible in one of a hundred ways -- in water, in mountains, on a farm or other private property, down a deep canyon, etc.  But sometimes, the hashpoint is accessible, and then you go there, take a picture or two, and write it up for the geohashing wiki.

Could you give us an example?





I've talked about geohashing before, but I bring it up again because frequent voter and commenter Morgan has brought to my attention the Eupeode's Map application.  This is one of a number of websites that will calculate your local hashpoints for you, but it is both very, very good, and makes the concept relatively clear for new geohashers.  Here, for instance, is what the hashpoints looked like last Saturday around my home graticule of Portland, Oregon:

Most of the surrounding hashpoints were in mountains and forests, but the one in Portland itself looked promising!  I zoomed in:

This looked extremely excellent -- right on a footpath in a public park near an industrial area.  Eagerly I programmed my GPS and headed for the point!  However, in this case....

...the lake had swollen with the spring rains, and I was twarted.  But the point is, I had an adventure!  Kind of. 

Hopefully, Niece #4 has better luck today in the parking lot that I sent her to in her home graticule.

Anyway, geohashing is a fine pastime, and everyone should be doing it.

#2 - The Bible Blog

MichaelReadstheBible never really came back from Christmas Break 2009, but it staggered along in dribs and drabs to fall 2011 before I put it in mothballs altogether.  But last Monday, it rose back to life phoenix-like, or perhaps zombie-like, right where it left off at Jeremiah 26.  There's another post today. 

How can I be sure that it's really back, on the strength of two measly posts?  Fair question!  But I really want it to be back, hence sticking my neck out publicly here.  A Monday publication date may mean that I skip some Mondays here at IAT, but I bet you can cope with that.

The 2013 Summer Driveabout Recap

The problem with road-tripping out of Portland, Oregon, City of Roses, is that you are kind of boxed in by geography.   You can't drive very far west without stalling out in the surf; and north, there are two large cities and then the end of the world.  South is OK, but you still end up kind of pinched against the Pacific Coast.

You'd expect the best direction for expansive road travel to be east, right?  But there's trouble that way, too.  After about 200 miles driving east, the terrain suddenly gets very bumpy indeed.  Much past Pendleton, Oregon, and it turns into what is basically an impenetrable wilderness.  There's Hell's Canyon, which is both the deepest and the most badass canyon in the world -- look it up! -- and then ridge after ridge after ridge of crazy jagged mountains.  If you look at a road map of Idaho sometime,  you'll see that there is the panhandle bit where people live, and the Snake River plain bit where people live, and then  the area I marked in blue, below, which has a couple of twisty, tenuous roads driven through it at great expense so that they can pretend that the state has some sort of logical unity.  Basically what I did on this trip is drive a great big circle around the wild lands.

Not that I knew that when I started out.  I didn't even really decide on "East" until a couple hours before I left.  Once I was on the road, I let myself be guided by things like potentially doable geohashing expeditions (the circles on the map -- green indicates success, red indicates failure); counties that needed collecting; whim; offhand suggestions from friends; and of course a general sense that I would need to eventually get home again.  Oh, and the little feet symbols are places I went running -- I got one new state (Montana) and a new Oregon County (Umatilla) for my respective running-in-place collections.

The geohashing expeditions are #128 - #136, indexed here.

The new counties were 14 in number, five in Idaho and nine in Montana.  That makes 21 for the year, with the possibility of several more coming down the pike, so that's good.  Montana, let me add, was right purty.

And you'll never believe who I ran into in southeast Washington!  The Avatar!

Yeah, I found him on U.S. 12, just east of its intersection with State Road 261!  He seems like he's really enjoying the scenery, and getting lots of exercise.  I didn't run with him, but when I ran that night in Milton-Freewater, Oregon, he continued along towards Washington 127 and points east.

I'd tell you about the museums and the fine dining and the must-see attractions, but it really wasn't that kind of vacation.

There is no post today

For I am on my annual driveabout.

There has, somewhat to my surprise, been geohashing!

Plus meticulous tracking of exercise and fresh air!

Goat is my co-pilot.

The Castle5000 Garden Sculpture

In last week's Geohashing Primer, I emphasized that since the hashpoint is randomly selected, you can't expect to find anything there.

Let's modify that, though: you can't expect to find anything there... except what's there. For instance, on our historical hashing of the Brookings, Oregon graticule last December -- the first time, I don't mind telling you, that anyone had hashed Brookings -- we happened on a field of scrap concrete and rebar!

Mrs.5000, for reasons that I was sure would become clear in the fullness of time, set about gathering the "best" of the twisted rebar.

...and behold, a few weeks ago, she constructed a garden sculpture.

It's a much needed focal feature in our backyard.

The lizard, a gift from Ma&Pa5000, seems pretty comfortable in his new rebar home.

So, there's another reason to take up geohashing. With geocacheing, you know what you'll find: the box. With geohashing, you never know what's going to happen. You'll probably end up with a garden feature or something.

What We Did Last Tuesday: A Geohashing Primer

So last week I was attempting to boast of a great feat of geohashing daring-do, although the message might have been lost in my amateurish attempt to channel James Joyce and in all of the parochial geographic references. Basically, I drove around the region all weekend, occasionally leaping out of the truck to tromp around in the underbrush. So doing, I successfully hit 6 out of 6 "hashpoints" (see below), a rare achievement indeed.

But to top things off, I went and did another impossible thing (albeit not before breakfast) two days later. Before I direct you to the gory details, though, perhaps I ought to explain to the puzzled among you how this "geohashing" thing works.

Some Definitions

To start with: as you know, there is an abstract grid of lines draped o'er the globe for purposes of navigation and for locating stuff. Degrees of latitude indicate relative position north and south, and degrees of longitude indicate position east and west. As you may well have forgotten, these degrees are subdivided, like hours of time, into sixty minutes('), and those minutes into sixty seconds("). So a landmark -- Ayers Rock, let's say -- can be located at 25° 20' 44" S 131° 2' 1" E. (Actually, that's just one little spot on the immensity of Ayers Rock, but you get the idea.)

Finally, as you probably never knew in the first place, the square rectangular roughly rectangular (usually) portions of the Earth's spherical surface (phew!) that are bounded by latitude and longitude lines are called graticules. Here's an example from my customized geohashin' map of Oregon, showing in black lines the graticules bounded by the local lines of latitude (44 N, 45N, 46N) and longitude (121W, 122W, 123W, 124W).


Hashpoints

Every day, a random set of coordinates is generated for geohashers. How is not important, except in that (a) it is truly random and (b) the random number generator is seeded by the date and the opening value of the Dow Jones Industrial index. This latter is also not important, except in that -- because the American stock market is closed on weekends and on American holidays -- you get the coordinates for Saturdays, Sundays, and American holidays a day or two in advance, instead of at 9:30 Eastern Time on the day of.

These coordinates locate a "hashpoint" for that day within your graticule. The coordinates are in the same relative position within each of the world's bazillion graticules (with a few asterisks tacked on here for the equator and so on, for those of you who groove on spherical geometry). So, a given day's hashpoints might be distributed like so here in northwest Oregon:

...except that hashpoints are literal points, not big areas like those orange circles would imply.

OK, Random Locations. So What?

Well, the goal of course is to try to GET to the random locations. "Why?" you might well ask, and it's a fair question, and all I can say is that if you are asking it than geohashing is probably not for you. I can only assure you that there is a very limited number of people living among you who do not ask "Why?" but rather say "Oh my god, where do I sign up?" (One "signs up," as it were, here.)

You will quickly discover, though, that more often than not you will not actually be able to get to your local hashpoint. This is not because Obama is taking away your freedom(?), but rather because most places are simply not accessible. This will vary depending on where you live -- indeed, one of the cool things about being a geohasher is that the daily checking of the hashpoints teaches you a lot about the composition of the landscape you live in -- but in the Portland, Oregon graticule, for instance, we get a lot of hashpoints that fall in practicably impenetrable forests, in cropland, and in people's houses or backyards. We also get a fair number that fall in lakes and rivers, which doesn't rule out a successful expedition but which brings up the need for a boat or strong swimming skills.

If you've determined that a hashpoint is potentially accessible, then off you go! If you are a social type, you might try to get to the hashpoint at the same time as other people (although with only a few hundred active geohashers worldwide, your odds aren't good). As this is a game played by confirmed dorks, however, there are plenty of merit badges available for various ways of reaching the point (by bike! without crossing your own path! at the legal speed limit! in fancy dress! etc.!).

For a while, I was content to use online aerial imagery and my surveying skillz to find hashpoints. We have so much forest cover in the Beaver State, though, that eventually I felt the need for a GPS gadget. This was not a trivial expense, but it has quickly become one of my favorite toys ever.

There are unfortunately some real barriers to entry to the hobby. The main one is that, to really be participating, you need to write up your adventures on the geohashing wiki. That's kind of time consuming, and forces you to learn wiki coding. But it's kind of fun, too.

Frequently Asked Question That Reveals That the Person Asking the Question is Wrestling with the Concept

Q: So what do you find at the hashpoint?

A: Nothing, of course. It's a random point, so unless someone else got to the hashpoint earlier in the day and left something for you to find, you will just find the location, wherever it is, as it is. Here's the hashpoint I'm about to tell you about:

Nothing to find. If you want to find something on your adventures, then you need to talk to the geocacheing people. There's a lot more of them, but their hobby is kind of... I don't know... cut and dried for my taste.

What We Did Last Tuesday

So when I woke up and checked the hashpoint in the morning, as one does, I saw that it was waaaay in the very southeast of the graticules (in the northern and western hemispheres, anyway). Which made me immediately look at the North Lincoln City graticule. Here's the North Lincoln City graticule on my geohashin' map:

It is well over 99.9% ocean. But last Tuesday -- 2010-08-31, as we call in on Planet Geohashing -- the hashpoint fell on the tiny, tiny sliver of land at its extreme southeast. So obviously Mrs.5000 and I took the afternoon off work and went out adventuring.

Here's the writeup: http://wiki.xkcd.com/geohashing/2010-08-31_45_-124

It's a story with a happy ending:

OK, I'm sure you're convinced. See you at the hashpoints!