Last night I went on an adventure
And it ended abruptly
This is the sight that greeted us as we walked into a recently abandoned engine block manufacturing facility near Indianapolis.
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This was my first explore with a DSLR at hand (a Nikon D3200 with 35mm f/1.8 lens), and I was super happy with the pictures it took. Most of these shots were in absolute darkness and the camera caught more information than I could even with a flashlight.
Some of the only graffiti we found in the location:
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We climbed around the exterior a bit before heading inside. I didn't have a tripod, so my non-flash pictures were limited to my ability to prop my camera on something.
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REMOVED Please do not post points of entry
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The main attraction:
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An assembly arm thing. There were a few of theses throughout the factory floor, super cool.
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We crossed a small courtyard to get to an older factory building.
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My favorite shot:
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From the roof we could see that we had only explored maybe a quarter of the whole factory, so as we descended, we had the full intension of exploring the rest of the location. I had gone first down the stairs, and made a bit faster pace than anyone else. Once I reached the bottom, I found myself right next to an open garage door, and when I looked outside I saw an innocent flashing red light. I decided to go check it out, so I left the building and walked about 10 feet outside only to find that the red light was just a blinking "high voltage" box thing. As I read the sign on it I heard an odd sound, a rhythmic clicking coming from my left, so I shine the light over and see two german shepherds, trotting about 20 feet from me.
I freak out, I run back inside hoping they didn't see me. I was with four people, one other person saw them, the other two were still mucking around on the stairs. I come sprinting inside. I'm panicking, my friend who saw them is panicking, my other two friends are confused about why we're panicking. I basically haul all of them back up the stairs and wait to see if the dogs are following. No sign of it, but that was too close. We decide that we need to get out of their territory as soon as possible, so we snake through the interior of the factory, and make it back to our original entrance point. In between us and the barbed wire fence we have to hop is about a football field and a quarter of open grass, all too dark to see in. We look out across the abyss, and see the silhouette of the dogs running along the fence.
At this point, I have a knife out, my friend has a knife out, my other friend has a moderately large stick, and my fourth friend has his bare hands and crossed fingers. We start making our way towards the fence, figuring that they were running laps around the perimeter of the property. We're about halfway to the fence, trying our best to walk calmly, when we see them run right in front of our POE again. We all crouch down in the grass as they disappear from sight.
Mentally, at this point, I am fully ready to stab a dog.
In self defense of course, but it's a dog stab dog world out there.
We make a break for our exit after some time passes without seeing them and all hop over successfully. High fives all around. Yay we didn't get mauled by guard dogs. We're walking along the road parallel to the fence, heading back for the car, when I hear the same familiar trotting from earlier.
The difference: it's much closer this time. The dogs come from behind us, outside the fence, on our side of the fence, right next to us, at a leisurely pace. They pass us harmlessly and one squats down to take a shit as we all come to the same realization:
They're just regular neighborhood pooches.
They got in through a small hole in the fence right next to where we hopped over. And here I was, thinking I was about to contract rabies and bleed out in the middle of a grass field outside an abandoned engine factory.
What a night.
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