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 RobertB
    
Location: Skeeterville, TX
Gender: Male
Maybe I shouldn't be using my real name...
 |  |  | Plain Jane Dallas Drain
< on 10/1/2007 9:36 PM >
|  | | | Thinking through it, I realized that I haven't posted any pix of explorations of my own, just snarky comments on other folks' hard work. I've got an honest excuse -- my camera's broke and so am I -- but that just won't cut it. So I'll do what I can: here's a bunch of pictures of a plain jane drain, taken with a crappy phone camera.
The best access to this drain is from the north. Go off a bike trail, through some trees, then follow the draw to the creek. Going back up, it's best from the south, where you climb up a dirt face with the help of some handy roots (bad practice, I know, but they were sturdy enough... this time).
Probably the best of the bunch -- stitched together from five pix by Autostitch, a program so awesome it might make you think the rest of this posting won't suck. Wrong.
Somewhere along the way, I picked up a friend. He confided in me that he was a bit afraid of spiders, though, so I suggested he stay home in the weeds.
Great, a generic round drain. You've never seen one of those, right? Ya, right.
Remember that scene from The Empire Strikes Back? "The ground's awfully wet in this cave... what was that?"
This was my first time exploring this drain with a flashlight, but I've been in it several times with nothing -- go forward until you can't see, wait for dark adaptation to kick in, lather, rinse, repeat. It's great for this technique because the pipe immediately curves and goes up steeply, so you're out of daylight quick, reducing the risk of losing your visual purple by glancing back.
Of course, you can't see the little details when you're doing it raccoon-style. There were several of these holes in the ceiling that look like they're structurally tied to the road above. I'd like to know more about how that works, especially since the road above is a (heavy, rumbling) bus route.
I'd always had to stop when the water got too deep to avoid. But thanks to my flashlight -- and even more thanks to Mellon_Collie for teaching me to get my feet wet -- I was able to press on. This big box wrench (1" sockets) was under the water. It made a cool clunk when I moved it around. I'm such a newbie.
I encountered a stretch where it looked as though someone had built a level walkway, and sealed the edges with caulk. How strange! A bit further down, though, I found what really happened. A large quantity of something got poured into the drain, settled in a level spot, and hardened -- about three or four inches deep. But conditions being less than ideal, the stuff breaks away in flat sheets. It's eroding away. For now, though, it makes the going flatter, but wetter, and with less vertical clearance.
I saw two pipes with date markings. One wasn't very clear, but looked to say "00" -- as in, 2000, which I knew was bogus. This one was better -- "80", as in 1980, when the office buildings in the area were being built.
There were plenty of street drains, but this is the best picture I was able to get. Yeah, lame. But you can see that it was added after the tunnels were first built. I'd gotten to an area that underwent massive reconstruction when Central Expressway was rebuilt from 1992 to 1999.
Probably the worst picture of the set, but it shows the vault at the end of the explorable section. The walkable pipe ends at a square vault with a manhole cover and a side tunnel to a large street drain. The drain would have been perfect for determining my location... except that it was completely covered over by dirt fill. Some of the fill had fallen into the side tunnel and hadn't washed away... there were raccoon tracks there. I think the vault was covered up during the Central Expressway reconstruction, which would have put me somewhere under the frontage road, or possibly under Coit Road, which was also rebuilt.
Upstream, the tunnel narrowed by a good foot and a half. Further exploration would have been possible, but only with knee guards. Not having packed any, I figured it was time to go home.
View from the south. Remember, down on the north, up on the south.
Total one-way journey -- at least 2000 feet. Definitely a baby drain by this board's standards, but a pretty cool deal for me. But yeah, the pictures are about what you'd expect from a freebie camera phone and a Wal-Mart 6v flashlight.
J'ai toujours fait une prière à Dieu, qui est fort courte.
La voici: "Mon Dieu, rendez nos ennemis bien ridicules!"
Dieu m'a exaucé. |
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Mellon_Collie
Location: Utah'ish
Gender: Male
Chingblot.
| |  |  | Re: Plain Jane Dallas Drain
<Reply # 1 on 10/1/2007 11:21 PM >
| | | | Nice pictures (curiosity inducing), write up, and drain!
I think the moral of the story here is: Go in drains!!!  +
[last edit 10/1/2007 11:21 PM by Mellon_Collie - edited 1 times]
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Happiedaze
  
Location: Galveston Area, TX
Gender: Female
| |  | | Re: Plain Jane Dallas Drain
<Reply # 2 on 10/2/2007 2:07 AM >
| | | | I've never been much of a drain fan, but I have to admit your story along with the pictures have me intrigued. I'll try anything twice.
'Our plans are all laid out,
take all these unmarked roads,
we blaze the trails to places no one goes, yeah!' -Rise Against |
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istakebroad
Location: Arkansas
Gender: Male
| |  | | | Re: Plain Jane Dallas Drain
<Reply # 3 on 10/2/2007 3:04 AM >
| | | | I think those are good for a camera phone... thanks for the captions and loved the subject title.
War is an intergalactic language. We're all fluent, but some of us speak it natively. |
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BUDSKi
Location: St Louis
Gender: Male
| | | Re: Plain Jane Dallas Drain
<Reply # 4 on 10/2/2007 6:34 AM >
| | | | oddly i never really looked at tunnels in dallas when i grew up.. and i had one in my backyard.
-BUDSKi |
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SilentSearch
Location: Cowtown
Gender: Male
My rebellion against the santa cursor! HoHoHo
| | !
<Reply # 5 on 10/8/2007 2:53 AM >
| | | | Now let's see what you do when you get a decent camera, flashlight and rubber boots! Lookin' forward to those posts.
Official UE Safety officer and rescue specialist. |
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