Infiltration

So, my left ankle is still sore, bah.

Anyway, last weekend I went home, spent the night with a friend (cause I tend to avoid my parents and brother at all costs), went to a party saturday, and on sunday bought an 89 Jeep Cherokee (black, 2 door, rear wheel drive, inline 6 cylinder, 4L, manual transmission - it's beautiful!!)

Got home sunday, ate, slept.

Woke up monday, went to school late. Got home, checked e-mail - nada. Checked UER - and found a message from Micro, entitled 'Atlas Fuck-up', detailing where he'd lost a tripod at Atlas this weekend past. So I grabbed my sweater and a flashlight, and went for a walk. I looked all around the tower for his tripod, but couldn't find it. Then I went into the rolling mills, and worked my way towards East Main st, through the half of the building I hadn't seen before. This place continually leaves me in awe. (Found porn, not just sunshine girls, this time :0)

Anyway, after about 2 hours flashlight started to get dim, and I decided to call it a night, head home, get dinner, and tell Micro that I couldn't find his tripod.

Tuesday morning I checked my messages and micro tells me it's a small, black tripod, and I replied telling him I'd go back during daylight sometime, and have a better chance of finding it.

For ease of explanation, I've included a doctored mapquest image below.
The red target is my house.
The big blue outline, and solid blue bits, are Atlas, and the larger buildings represented.
The top left corner, where it's purple, is my school.
(The red star near the bottom is what mapquest figures is the center of Welland..)

28677.jpg (40 kb, 463x353)

The first thing you should notice, is that Atlas is FUCKING HUGE. It is dozens of city blocks in length. The rail side is almost 2 kilometers long! It's A LOT of ground to cover.

Anyway, tuesday after working at school (we have no classes tuesday, I just went in and starting making a list of everything that was wrong with my car... it's a LONG list.) I walked down Woodlawn, across Niagara (where I usually turn to go home) keep walking, and quickly leave town. This road turns into the 406, and isn't very pedestrian friendly, anyway, the point is I'd never approached Atlas from this direction before, and it showed me some nifty things.

One being the two little buildings (blue dots) northernmost on the map... They are seperated from everything else by a few hundred meters, and lots of garbage. Few of the floodlights work, and I'd never even known the buildings were there. I made a mental note to return to them after looking for the missing tripod while daylight lasted.

I followed the train tracks (I believe they're dissused now, as they only served Atlas.) Until I got to the tower, and again looked all around the base, and checked the stairs. No tripod. Now it was dark. It was also raining again. It had rained on and off all day and was generally miserable. So I was getting damp. At least there was plenty of shelter to walk through before I had to get wet again, to check out the new buildings.

I guess I should also mention that the first visit I took to Atlas, when I posted the photos, Silent Knight asked me about security, and the high resolution remote cameras that they were purported to have. And I said 'what security?' :0)

Well... no cameras INSIDE buildings so far, but somewhere along my 5 minute walk from the big building to the new buildings across all that open ground, I'd caught someone's attention. So I know there is at least one camera covering the grounds. I'm also convinced that it was only pure luck the first time that kept me from catching their attention - or maybe I just didn't spend enough time between buildings.

Anyway, if you look at the map, you'll notice that the new buildings are very close to a road, a road that connects to a highway, and thus sees a steady flow of traffic. What the map doesn't show is that the road curves to get around the Atlas property. So as I got up beside the first of the two buildings I paused, and watched headlights, and motorsound sweep past... and again ... Between me and the road is 70 meters, a barbed wire topped chainlink fence, and some reasnably high vegetation, I couldn't see much of the cars, and they couldn't see me. But I could hear them, and they were steady, and as I was contemplating moving closer to the office building, I saw the headlights pass, I heard the motor... and then the crunch of tires on gravel.

My heart about dropped to my feet, and tried to crawl away! I froze, I know it's clicheed, but I barely dared breath, while I strained to hear anything! After a minute or two, the lights in the office went out.

My mind was on Sk's warning of cameras. I knew there was security onsite, but I thought they only worried about the southern tip of the facility.

Now, I'm reasonably new to UE. I missed Opex, but made Neopex (Thanx PSX, Drie!!) before that I'd only visited something like 3 places in Oakville with Boffo. So I've never really dealt with security before.

Sure, there was the Pines trip during Neopex, when we ran from the mysterious guy with the monopod, who'd somehow driven onto the site... but that was different. There were walls between us. There were places to go and hide, there were OPTIONS!!

So after not hearing anything else, and as I was starting to think about making a run for the fence, I saw the headlights... or rather, I saw the reflection, as they were behind me!!

The image below, is my quickly-done-up-in-MS-paint visual aid for what happened.

The blue arrows are the path the pickup truck followed, the red dot is me, hidden behind a 5 foot square, 2 foot high metal bin of somekind.

The distance from the building foundation to the Quonset Hut is about 20m ... the pickup drove within 15 FEET OF ME... TWICE.

You will also notice that the box is at a fucking unhelpful angle, so that to stay hidden from these guys, I had to (while laying in two inches of cold water, in the dark, with thunderclouds overhead - god it was miserable) sneak back and forth around the corner of the box.

I sat there, head down, wondering if my PDA was going to work after it's unplanned bath, and watching the reflected headlights, and judging by the sound of the pickup's engine, move around the side of the box, while Mr. Security was only feet away.

28684.jpg (7 kb, 512x384)

My heart never beat so fast in my life.

After I couldn't see or hear the truck anymore, I ran for the fence, got onto the tracks and started limping home.

Of course it occured to me only as I walked home, soaked, and aching, and cold, very very cold, that Mr. Security most likely couldn't see anything that wasn't in the beam of his headlights, and I was hidden nearly completely with only two eyes and a black toque visible.

Of course, now that I've had time to relax, and think about it. I want to find out where the camera(s) are. I also wonder if I can get over, or under, or around the fence anywhere closer to those little buildings, and avoid the cameras that way.

I also wonder, after seeing it a half dozen times, if the weird building across the tracks from Atlas is also abandoned? I'll have to find out :0)

Now, before I go, I should add one last thing. I *still* haven't found Micro's tripod.... but I DID lose my small black xenon flashlight, in my mad dash to the fence.... I begin to wonder about this place...

Anyway, I hope everyone is having as interesting a week as I am!! Saturday I'm at school to convince high school kids that they'd be better off at different institutions (more space for me next year), but Sunday ... Sunday I might get out a bit... :0)

Modify Entry

Comments: (use Reply to add a comment)

micro

Re: Nov 1 & 2 - Atlas revisited
<Reply # 1 on 11/8/2004 4:06 AM >

Quote

Hah! I'm pretty sure my tripod's gone for good which is why I went out and bought a new one this weekend. Thanks for looking though. Obviously if I knew you were going to end up lying down in some puddle, then I would've told you not to worry about it.

We had security drive by us a couple of times. Fortunately we were out of their sight. I doubt the cameras are in operation though. They probably just do routine drives around the property which is probably better than having them walk around the place. At least that way you can hear them coming.

And we saw porn all over the place, especially in the locker rooms. Who knew steelworkers were such horndogs?

dagr

location:
Mississauga

Re: Nov 1 & 2 - Atlas revisited
<Reply # 2 on 11/8/2004 5:32 AM >

Quote

Really?
I never saw security until they almost ran into me.

And my first visit I was totally carefree! Wandering around, in broad view of anyone....

Weird.

~ Dagr

Infiltration Forums > Journal Index > Stuff by Dagr > Nov 1 & 2 - Atlas revisited(Viewed 2276 times)

Add a poll to this thread

This thread is in a public category, and can't be made private.