2015-04-25 37 -122

Location

In an office building in Walnut Creek, California.

Participants

Plans

I recognized that I was unlikely to secure access to the roof, meaning any geohash here would require entering the building. Entering an office building on the weekend is usually a nontrivial task, but this particular building has a gym on the ground floor, of the 24 Hour Fitness chain. True to its name, this location's hours of operation were listed as "24 hours a day" online. I did not deem it worth it to attempt GPS usage indoors, so on Google Earth I scouted that the hashpoint was 80 feet from a particular outdoor staircase and calculated this as 32 steps.

Expedition

The gym offers free passes via online application, intended for prospective customers. My utter lack of interest in becoming a member of a gym in another city, however, in no way prohibited me from acquiring one, although they did mandate the provision of contact information. So armed, I drove to the nearest BART station, which system brought me to the city block adjacent to that of the geohash. (On the way back, I determined that the building containing the geohash is, in fact, visible from the train platform.)

I counted my steps from the stairs to the floor-to-ceiling windows at the part of the gym full of weight machines, then headed to the main entrance to redeem my free pass. Doing so involved what's probably the most detailed explanation of geohashing I've given to a new acquaintance, a friendly guy who welcomed me to the facility and professed an interest in IT. I headed around to where I had left off counting steps and continued picking my way through the weight machines, but at about 28 I ran into a wall.

I searched for a way around the wall, hoping it wasn't the back of the gym, and found a tiled passage some distance to the right. The hashpoint, to the best of my reckoning, was within the restroom. Fortunately for me, it was the men's restroom, so I entered and paced back to the geohash. (Had the restroom containing my goal not been designated in accord with my gender, I suspect I would have waited around agitatedly, verified the position a bit more carefully, and finally given up.)

I then left and returned home the same way I had traveled out. My main regret is failing to think the schedule through well enough to be there at 4 PM.