#13: [27-Jun-24]

#12: [11-Jun-23]

#11: [24-Jun-17]

#10: [13-Aug-16]

#9: [28-Dec-15]

#7: [11-Aug-10]

#6: [08-Sep-09]

#5: [28-Sep-07]

#3: [06-Aug-06]

#2: [28-Apr-06]

#1: [02-Jun-01]

#8: [23-Dec-10] (incomplete)

24-Mar-2007 -- This turned out to be one of my least enjoyable confluence visits - a major letdown compared to the spectacular [50,14] that I'd visited the previous day. For starters, the weather was miserable - about 3 degrees Celsius, overcast, misty and drizzling, with snow on the ground in several places. Also, the confluence point was rather bland - on a bland hillside in a bland pine forest in a rather bland rural area of the Czech Republic.

To reach the confluence point, I parked beside the paved road east of the tiny village of Bezdékov, and hiked southwards along a dirt road. Eventually, I had to leave the road, and hike through the forest for a few hundred meters before reaching the confluence point. I ended up hiking about 2 km each way.

When I reached the confluence point, I found that it had already been marked - apparently by the same group who left the marker at [50,14]. Also, the weather conditions combined with the forest location made the GPS reception somewhat less stable than usual, and I had to do an unusually long 'confluence dance' to get 'all zeros'. Occasionally my GPS receiver briefly read 'all zeros', but then it would change again when I set it down to photograph it. Eventually I had to settle for a photo with one digit off.

As I hiked back to my car, I had a big scare - I realized that my rental car's keys weren't in my pocket! I figured that I'd probably lost them sometime during my hike, and I spent the whole rest of the hike wondering what I was going to do once I got back to the car. I figured I was going to have to hike the ~1km to Bezdékov, find someone there who spoke English (good luck!), borrow their phone, and call up the rental car company, asking them to send out a locksmith to this strange location in the middle of nowhere.

How long was I going to have to wait before a locksmith arrived? And how was I going to explain why I'd parked my car in such a strange place, and how I could have lost the keys? Imagine how relieved I was when I got back to the car, and discovered that the doors were unlocked, with the keys still inside (lying on the seat). Anyone walking by could have taken the car if they'd wanted to. Fortunately, I was parked in such a remote location (and on such a lousy day) that probably noone had walked by the car while I was gone.