Minne-OPEx Day 1

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This whole event started when Freak flew in from Alaska. He arrived in Minneapolis on April 30th sometime late that night. MacGuyver had picked him up from the airport and after the two stopped by the hostel to get Freak settled in there, they stopped by my place and we headed out to do some Minneapolis based exploring. After checking a dead lead near my apartment, we headed over to do the famous Satan's Cave along with two other area explorers, Arrow and RCO.

Tunnels filled with human excrement and caves filled with sand and beer cans, some how the magic of the island had worn off around my third trip, this time I was mildly excited. A return to this rather popular attraction is not in my immediate future, at least until the tunnels dry out a bit. After this we head back to my place to drop Arrow off at his car and then go back across town to do the Washburn-Crosby A Mill. This was new ground for my exploring blood. Stairs around and around with a step missing here and there for good measure. Pigeon crap and gaping doorways several stories up were the excitement. From one of these doorways I witnessed a rich bastard in his roomy loft watching his large plasma screen from his bed. Why it wasn't a hot woman getting undressed! The gods must have cursed me to see reality as it truly is, Damn! We continued on, higher and higher up the ruins of this mill that once proved to be the heart of Minneapolis' growth. A metal ladder led up to the roof through a vent in the ceiling. Once emerging on to the roof we were greeted with an awe-inspiring view of the city. But for Macguyver, this wasn't high enough, so he climbed up a narrow ladder to the top platform of a large sign that reads "Gold Medal Flour", everyone else reluctantly followed and shared a mild fear of the lofty perch that we shared with a couple of young pigeon offspring. The sun was beginning to rise and the scene was beautiful, but the nervous feeling in my gut was telling me to get the fuck off of here. The others expressed this same feeling so I headed down with everyone but MacGuyver following, he had to nab a few more shots. We quickly hurried down the ladder and once everyone was off the roof we made our way down the stairs. Racing the sunrise to beat being seen by the rush of morning commuters. As we decended the last leg of our trip down, the lights were coming on around the complex and we quickly disappeared into the morning glow. We returned home and everyone headed their seperate ways.

Day 2-Coming Soon

Day 2 of Minne-OPEx has been pre-empted tonight by this special update.

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Tues. June 15th, 2004

The sun rose and set, I watched both events happen for once. Drove Freak to the Airport this morning and then spent a couple more hours learning how to hack my ancient mp3 player from '98. Slept for a short while before being woken by the phone ringing, grandmother asking about school related stuff. Tried to sleep, had to go pick up some film that was being developed. Birth. School. Work. Death.


Yeah yeah, ok that's the boring shit. Then after I got done with school, a friend and I went out to check a nearby drain. It was a new one for us, we entered the outfall down near the river and began walking deeper into the cool air of the underground. After going about 100 ft or so, the tunnel changed shape and on the left side it actually raised up onto a shelf like platform. A few more feet down from this area was a junction, on the right was just a dropshaft that extended up to a grate dripping water and echoing the noise of traffic overhead. On the Left was a sloping notch in the shelf like structure and this lead up to a small round room with a step iron ladder leading to a manhole and also two more exits from this room. One was a small RCP that would require a skateboard for further exploration, the other was slightly larger, you could do a sort of duck walk through it. It sloped slightly upward and curved around to the right a little. I went in a few feet and was greeted with a warm, musty breeze of stench. It wasn't sewer, I've grown to enjoy that smell, but more like meldewy towels and hot bath water. I didn't hear any noise up ahead, and as far as I could see up the pipe there was nothing out of the ordinary. I decided I'd rejoin my friend still waiting in the round room and continue exploring the main section of the drain. Continuing on we passed up several small side pipes, eventually reaching what we thought was the end of this drain, a dropshaft. We stopped and my fellow explore took some pictures of the water coming down the shaft. I grew restless as I commonly do during photography sessions and went to check out the drop shaft as he began taking some photos of the drain passage we had just came through. I lit up the shaft with my Brinkman LX, or as it is affectionatly referred to, the Portable Sun. I noticed a smaller passage on the right wall that was maybe a foot or two above my head. After some careful climbing I was up in this tunnel and excited to see that it was the familiar bare sandstone of the Twin Cities. It was walking height for 30 to 40 ft then became filled in with sand and required a short crawl to get through to another section that was twice the size of the first area. This area resembled a side passage of the famous Satan's Cave on Nicollet Island. After going through this short passage it opened up into a small man made cave not unlike many of the other sandstone caves dug around the area. It wasn't as big as Satan's cave but since I had never heard of it before I was appropriately pleased at it's discovery. It was a L shaped cave and the passage that linked to the Drain dropshaft was on the long side of the L. I went back to the shaft and called up my friend and he proceeded to hand up his tripod and camera bag, then I gave him a hand getting up into the passage. We spent about 30 mins taking various pictures, meanwhile I discovered a small carving dated 1908 and the initials K.H.M. along side the usual pick ax marks on the walls and ceiling.
It was getting late and we decided to head back home. The long walk out of the drain seemed to take half as long as the trip in and we were greeted with hot humid air at the outfall. climbing back up the bluff to a small hiking trail we were pestered by mosquitos and plants that seemed to have razors cutting into my bare legs. My friend dropped me off and headed home himself. I'll try and get pictures up when he gets them developed. I am also going to try and track this cave down on the Sanborn Maps to see what it's purpose was for and how old it exactly is.

Asylunt

You are never going to see the rest of the Minne-OPEx write-up, deal with it!
This isn't UE related, but Oh-fucking-well!

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Thursday, June 16th, 2004

I wonder if this crummy school I go to is worth the money. I already secured a job doing editing on a feature length documentary being shot in Kansas City.
I get a $3000 budget to use to buy myself a Macintosh and a copy of Final Cut Pro. The contract's written so that if I don't get the film editied, then the computer goes back to the producer. Fare deal, I get a editing system and a feature length documentary to throw on my resume'. I'm rushing to finish up my final project for the first quarter. I had planned on shooting it last week, but my voice went out during a certain underground camping trip. I then learn that my fucking school is leasing out the studio intended for student use to Target so they can shoot a fucking commercial there. I guess the crap load of money they make off us sucker students isn't enough. Because of that I have to rewrite my entire script and redo the story boards I had done for the project. Bastards! I now have two days to finish the script and storyboards, shoot, and edit this 15 min. piece. Plenty of time you say, well then you haven't done a 15 min. film worthy of a decent grade, because it's next to impossible. Not that I won't get it done, I will, but I'll be right up on the deadline. Felt like lamenting, pity me not, I'll figure it out.

Asylunt

Friday June 18th, 2004

I woke up late today, I couldn't sleep last night and I needed to get up early this morning to head to school to finish up my final film project, I didn't make it. See they were only open from 10:00 to 1:00 this morning and I woke up around 11:30. Jennifer was to tag along and help me, she doesn't get home till about 1:30am every night, so she was tired and inadvertanly shut the alarm off after it first went off. We got up and decided we wouldn't waste an unusually cool and beautiful day so we went to Mexican town, aka South Minneapolis along Lake St. just east of I-35. Ok so it wasn't a refreshing walk, but we were on a budget and wanted some food so we stopped at Taco Bell. Came back home and ate, then Jennifer got ready for work and left shortly after 2:00 pm. I passed out and had a multitude of dreams involving cats and rotten teeth, don't ask. I woke up, or at least I thought I had awoken. Out of the corner of my eye I see my cat, Annie, pop out of a hovering green portal. Odd I thought, then rolled over and tried getting up. I took a drink out of the glass of water I had sitting on the nightstand, and put on a pair of pants. I began walking around the house and casually cleaning as I went. I did a quick makeshift cleaning of the cat's litterbox, just enough to eliminate the noxious smell of ammonia. I then walk into the living room and trip on one of the cat's toys. Upon closer examination it wasn't one of the catnip filled mice she had, nor on of those plastic balls with the jingle bell inside, but a half chewed up lens shade. I was still a little sleepy and at first was mad, thinking it was from some of my own camera equipment. I had never seen it before in my life, odd I thought, but then I casually threw it into a box of assorted junk I had laying around.

I then sat at the computer and smoked a cigarette while watching Public Television discuss local politics. I figured I should get some chores done, so I started with Laundry. After collecting all my whites in the laundry basket, I headed down to the laundry room. As I was nearing the end of the hall, I noticed the maintenance room door slightly open. I took my laundry and sat it down on one of the washing machines, then quickly pulled my mini-mag out of my pocket(I use it as a keychain, so it's always on me). I opened the maintenance room door slowly and peered down into the darkness. I was expecting there to be some light down below for whoever was working down there, but it was completely dark and I made my way down with only my mini-mag to light the stairs. I closed the door behind me to the point it was at when I first noticed it. The stairs went down about 12 ft, then turned to the right and went down another 4 ft.
At the bottom I noticed a small glowing light on an electrical panel. I scanned my light around the long narrow room full of different types of utility connections and panels. I then heard from upstairs the voice of the landlord and decided I should hide in case he came down the stairs. I retreated behind an old barrel and turned my light off. I continued listening to conversation upstairs between the landlord and what I believe was a utility worker. The worker was a woman, I could tell by her voice, she had said she was all done and that service had been disconnected to unit 106. I had noticed an eviction notice on 106's door the past week. She then asked the landlord to sign off on her work order and that she would be all set. After this I heard the worst noise I could possibly of heard, the door being closed the rest of the way and the deadbolt being locked. I waited till I heard them leave the building, then figured I could just unlock the door from inside and get out to get a larger flashlight, the door would remain unlocked and I could come back to explore at my leisure with a digital camera. When I reached the top of the stairs I noticed there was not knob for the deadbolt, holy shit I thought. I tried awhile longer to get the door unlocked and open, but to no avail. Fuck!

I went back down the stairs and began poking around the room, I was hoping to find a connection to Utility Tunnels, a Minneapolis version of the famous network that lies in St. Paul. That's what I was hoping for, I did find utility tunnels, but they were more adjusted for a cat to explore than me. A small opening lead out of the north side of the building, carrying cables and some small pipes. There was maybe a 2.5' x 3' area for me to squeeze through, I figured this might be my only way out without getting someone to contact the landlord. The small tunnels were damp, and smelled terrible and appeared to get smaller up ahead. Great, what a fucking wonderful day this had turned into. The Taco Bell had began it's work and I felt like shit, and like shitting as well. And above all, I had a fucking educational film on the use of shot structure in film and video to complete.
I crawl ahead a few more feet and found the narrow tunnel actually bottlenecked slightly, then opened up into a small vault room. Getting passed the squeeze wasn't easy, but after contorting my body, I made it. Inside the vault room was a slight tangle of cables and pvc conduit. I always find it amusing that the utility infrastructure of a major city is no more organized than the tangle of wires behind my computer or entertainment center. There was a modern looking step iron ladder leading up to a vault hatch, with light bleeding around the edges and at the bottom of the vault the cables disappeared into various pipes along the walls. I climbed the ladder to the hatch only to find it locked from the top, again Fuck! Then I notice the hinges on the hatch, they could probably be fudged with and possibly the hatch could be pushed open just enough for me to get out. The hatch would pivot on the padlock point, and I could probably get out without destroying the hatch completely. Now I just needed something like a flat head screw driver to pop the hinge pins out. There was nothing in the vault room and I went back through the tunnel to the buildings mech room to search for somehting to use. I found a few metal slugs, but they were much too thick for the hinge pins. I grabbed up an old measuring tape, thinking I could use the thin metal tape to pop the pins. There wasn't really much else, you'd think there'd be a screwdriver or something, but nada. So I head back through the tunnel using my steadily dimming mini-mag. Once in the vault room I noticed the daylight getting weaker, I didn't have my watch, but I figured it to be close to 9:00pm. I climb back up the ladder and try using the measuring tape, I worked at it for approx. 20 mins, and got a little lead way on one of the pins. The problem was that the measuring tape was brittle and kept breaking off in pieces and then after a certain point it just wasn't strong enough to get any leverage on the pin. I break for a few minutes and then tried to think of some other way. I pulled out my wallet and try various credit cards and I.D.'s, none worked. I was getting frustrated at this part, I had just about resorted to pounding on the Mech room door anytime I heard someone go by, when I found something I had forgot I even owned. Deep in one of the pockets of my wallet was a metal guitar pick I had once stolen from my music teacher during highschool. It was a highly polished piece of stainless steel, and although slightly flexible, it was pretty strong. I started working on the hinge pins again and after about 45 mins of work, I finally got both pins pulled out almost all the way. To get them out fully, I needed to release some of the tension on them, I put my back into it and pushed slightly against the hatch. One of the pins fell out on it's own, The other required a little tugging, but soon joined it's partner on the floor of the vault. I was excited and had a sense of accomplishment as I slowly raised the heavy hatch up. I recognized where I was instantly, I was in the front lawn of my building. I pushed the hatch up as far as I could. The gap got to be about 9 inches before the locking mechanism stopped it from going further. I attempted to get out but quickly got stuck in a painful position, I pulled my self back in, and tried a different angle, this time it worked and I was free. Yeah, know what really sucks though, I didn't have my fucking apartment keys, just my car keys that were on the mini-mag! So I sat out front for a bit waiting for someone to come home, then I decided I would check the back door, I waited for about 10 mins and was about to go back around front and buzz one of my neighbors when the girl that lives next door pulls up and lets me in. I was filthy and explained to her that I had been working on my motorcycle and had taken the toolbox inside with my keys in it and came back out to make sure I had gotten everything, then realised I was locked out, she was drunk so I bet she cared less about my story, but anyway I was back to doing my laundry around 10:30 pm and then took the time to write this for you all while waiting for it to wash.

Hope you enjoyed my mishap.

Asylunt