On my college campus I've roofed a few buildings, wandered locked academic buildings after hours, looked into drains, etc, but basically I'm pretty new to UE. This was my first experience doing something serious. And it was AMAZING.
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After leaving a park in PA last Saturday, we cross the bridge to NJ and decided to drive past the closed paper mill that bf had spotted across the river while driving up. It's abandoned, demolition has been halted pending some legal issues. No one is around except a middle-aged couple in the nearby factory housing. We decide to check it out, even though it's pretty exposed from the road. A door into the factory is standing wide open, it's too tempting not to give it a go. We go into the first room, which is a total mess (broken windows, trash and dirt everywhere, pieces of lumber strewn about) and into a larger warehouse/loading room. It's the first time I realize how absolutely huge this place is. We see a little mirrored dish hanging from the ceiling, think it might be a surveillance camera, but we proceed anyway. We go up two levels of stairs and get a good view of the river and the rest of the factory property, and bf realizes that the tags littering the floor were left over from a machinery auction, which explains why all the equipment still here is beat up or knocked over. We pass by the "Danger: Asbestos" sign and go back down stairs, continuing through the factory. It's extremely dark in places, I thank God that I remembered to bring my mag-lite. We pass some huge cylindrical tanks on the right, and look down the gaping holes in the floor to our left where other tanks had been removed. We look through some windows into courtyards filled with junk (or treasure, depending on how you look at it)- vines, tires, broken machines, cinder blocks, etc. We follow a hallway and end up in the office section of the factory. We can see some computer cables and papers littering old desks. We continue on, and get to the chemical labs. There is some seriously expensive-looking machinery in there, though probably not in working condition. The drawers in the counters are open and filled with this brownish water. Little bottles full of chemicals other agents are everywhere, and there are cases on the floor with more bottles. The counters are covered in dirty glassware--flasks, cylinders, dishes--and tons of papers with a lot of official-looking stuff on them. The floors are covered in broken glass, dirt, and paper, and all the windows are broken out. I take a "hazardous/flammable" sticker and BF takes a flask for souvenirs. We make our way outside, to the rear of the factory, which backs up to the river. There are some standard loading docks and more offices, but we don't explore these as there's a good inch or so of questionable-looking standing water in them. We go back out, climb up a rickety ladder and in through one of the open loading docks. There's water dripping, loudly, which initially gives us a fright, since it sounds like footsteps. Little multi-colored ice crags are had on the cement, so we avoided these as we started looking for the base of the tallest smokestack. We had seen a ladder on it earlier, and knew we had to try to climb it. We finally get to the base of it. The ladder has a cage around it for added safety, and seems very solid and well-kept (no rust, no movement when bf shakes it). We start climbing, it's higher than I expected. Bf gets to the top, no trouble, but my lack of upper body strength means that I start to fizzle out about halfway up. It's probably 100-150 or so feet up, so I'm not surprised. I get to the top a couple minutes after bf, my arms are trembling, weak as jelly, and my heart is pounding from being so high up, but it's so worth it: the view is amazing, especially of the river. We lie on the platform to rest out of sight for a minute, and the butter knife I had in my back pocket slides out and starts to fall. I watch it through it's whole descent--it clangs against the side of the smokestack, bounces off, hits the roof of a lower building, and then bounces to the ground. It takes several seconds, all told. Kinda scary. We start down (so much easier than going up!), BF going first. He sees a cop fly by on the road, no siren. It’s scary because we’re so exposed (bright blue clothes against the tan smokestack - probably not the smartest idea). Halfway down, a cop with sirens blaring goes flying by. Adrenaline = through the roof. I thought we were caught for sure, but he passes the factory and goes down the road. I double my speed going down. 2 guys on 4-wheelers go through the parking lot, but they don’t see us either. We make it down, collect my knife and our souvenirs, another cop goes buy with his siren on, and we beat it back to where our car is parked. Probably the funniest part of the whole experience: when we get back to our car, sweating and hearts pounding, covered in dirt and all scratched up from climbing the ladder, the middle-aged guy comes over and starts talking to us. He thinks that we have been looking at the house down at the end of the row that's for sale, and that we're a young couple looking to buy it. He chats with the BF for several minutes about the bat problem and how the house is a fixer-upper, but a good buy in general. We wish him a good afternoon, get in the car, and jet out there, laughing. So much fun!
Unfortunately, we left our camera in the car, so we got no pics of the inside. I went back on Friday to take pictures, but there were workers there so I couldn't go inside. They didn't seem to mind me taking pictures from the outside, so that's what I did.
But wow. It was definitely an excellent way to lose my UE virginity.
[last edit 3/18/2006 11:02 PM by flibbertigibbet - edited 3 times]
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