Explorers,
It was brought to my attention that I failed to introduce myself when I first hopped into the Great Lakes region, so I'm going to do that now.
My name is Eric. I am a 20 year old junior at Georgia Tech, though I am taking the fall semester off to spend some time at home in Arlington Heights. I love to travel and have moved around with my family quite a bit. I've lived in California, Brussels, California again, Pittsburgh, and now Chicago / Atlanta.
I had my first encounter with urbex in Pittsburgh, where I found the abandoned mansion of a glass magnate a couple miles from my neighborhood. It was boarded up pretty well, but I found a weak point in one of the third story windows (putting all those rock climbing lessons from CA to good use). The mansion was packed with belongings -- everything from personal letters to children's toys. The detached garage even had two deteriorating cars in it! As I'm sure you can imagine, I was immediately hooked and spent a
lot of time sifting through all the relics.
Pittsburgh is also where I discovered photography, which I've pursued relentlessly since. It is mostly a hobby, but over the past 2 or 3 years I've managed to make some money doing it as well. Here is my site if you want to take a look at some of my work:
http://www.ericmrabe.com/ I would love to make a career out of it, but it seems like the market is shrinking on the daily. Anyway, back to exploring:
After the mansion I managed to hit a couple of junkyards and old construction sites before we moved to Chicago, but they were mediocre locations at best. That bummed me out, but my luck turned around once I got to Atlanta. I found an abandoned prison, a partially constructed Hyatt, and a really cool train repair site.
Surprisingly, I've only taken my camera with me on one of these adventures -- the prison. I made a post about it, but it was in Atlanta so you won't see it in the Great Lakes threads.
Sadly, I haven't gone anywhere in the Great Lakes area yet, so I have nothing to show you. I'm working really hard to change that so hopefully I will have some beautiful pictures to show in near the future. I have way too much free time this semester and am always down to explore, so feel free to PM me if you want to go find some caves, rooftops, or anything in between.
I look forward to getting to know some of you and making some awesome IL memories!
If you are still reading this, I applaud your patience
All the best,
Eric
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