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UER Forum > Archived US: South > Vanna's Drain (Viewed 334 times) RobertB  Location: Skeeterville, TX Gender: Male Maybe I shouldn't be using my real name...  |  |  Vanna's Drain < on 12/1/2007 8:13 PM >   As I mentioned before, I spent Thanksgiving morning not watching football TV nor making plans for joining the crowds at the mall on Friday, but underground in a dark, peaceful drain. I guess it's not the most interesting drain around, but it is huge, and easily accessible. But probably the most interesting thing about the drain is the helpful inscriptions left behind by previous generations of drain explorers. More on those later. First, the drain itself. 1 click to view This picture doesn't show the scale of the drain. It's freakin' huge! I'm about 5'10", and if I raised my arm above my head, I still couldn't touch the top. So it's at least 8 feet, probably more like 10 feet. As you can see, it's also extremely easy to get to -- it's right next to a retail center, and goes underneath a couple of car dealerships. The visibility probably keeps it relatively graffiti-free. Note the slug of concrete that got poured into the creek at some point. It looks like it may have been runoff from the car dealership, which was built after the drain. As I entered the drain, I thought about how cool it was that it was so big. Even better, the water was flowing *into* this drain. And there was a noticeable breeze coming from the other end, meaning that the tunnel likely stayed this large or larger all the way through. This would make a great no-lights exploration... go in a ways, adjust to the darkness, go in again. That's when I realized that I didn't bring my flashlight. Crap. Would I have to go back up to my car, parked at the Waffle House, and chance not being able to get back? Who can save me now? 2 click to view UER, that's who. I just happened to have my UER keychain flashlight in my fanny pack. The expedition will go on! 3 click to view One of the side tunnels, probably added when the car dealerships were built in the mid or late '90s. I think that's the time period -- it was originally an AutoNation USA dealership, which didn't exist before 1996. Note that the trickle of water isn't flowing into the drain, but into the a gap between the pipe and the outer wall of the drain. That's not a Good Thing, structurally speaking. You can see from the watermarks on the walls that when there's enough water to make it out, it sprays all over the place. 4 click to view Another, less troubled curb drain, with a board swept in at some point. 5,6,7 click to view click to view click to view There were a few turns in the drain, which would be the primary danger if you were trying the no-flashlight method. At one of those turns is this nasty piece of reinforcing wire, hanging from the ceiling and sharpened by rusting away to a chest-level point. Fortunately, the drain is large enough that the next heavy rain would wash your body out the other end with no further snags. 8 click to view There weren't any dates on the concrete, but there were a few spots of flowstone that indicated it wasn't new. 9 [pretend you see a picture here] About halfway through, another tunnel joined in from the left, nearly as large as this one. I tried to make a panorama of the spot, but Autostitch can't tell one featureless concrete tube from another, and simply combined all the pictures into a picture of one corner. 10 click to view As I expected, this other tunnel, nearly as large as the main tunnel, came out by the highway. I've seen this tunnel for years and always wanted to check it out. When you look out the car window, you see a sprawling apartment complex with a big hole in front of it. This is the view from inside the hole! The junction is somewhere right in the middle of the apartments. I said before, it's plain, but it's big, dark, and peaceful. Well, kinda peaceful. This side tunnel has great acoustics, and you can hear the sounds of the Interstate through the entire complex. But there are just enough bends to keep the tunnel nice and dark. 11 click to view Nothing much else to the drain, structurally. This is a view approaching the final bend. 12 click to view Right before the end, there's a spot where it appears a segment of the pipe got undercut and washed out entirely. That may be the fate of the segment previously noted, where water is draining into the space around the pipe. Here, they stabilized the pipe -- it looks like they poured a bunch of concrete where the dirt washed out. Then, to prevent standing water, they poured some more on the bottom. 20 (out of sequence, sorry) click to view In fact, at some point the city went through and did some maintenance throughout the pipe. This "X", from somewhere along the middle, shows a gap of two or three inches. I saw those all along the pipe, but this one showed what happened next. See the fill material? It was added after the X was painted. But you'll also see that it's mostly gone. In fact, this was the only gap that still had any filler left at all -- the rest had all washed out. I wonder how long it will be until we hear about this drain in the news, when a sinkhole swallows several cars in the apartment complex parking lot. 13 click to view I got kind of excited when I came out and saw that the round drain was paired up with an equally large square drain! 19 (oops) click to view Alas, the square drain is merely a short, muddy tunnel to a drain area for the parking lot. Check out the tree growing right there in the drain. 14 click to view Check out this dam, just upstream from the drain exit. At first, I thought it must have been kids, but looking at it again I think it has to be beavers. I like damming up a creek, but that's just too many rocks interwoven with branches and mud to be the work of a bored kid (or a kid at heart like me). I didn't know that beavers would move rocks, but I guess, why not? 16 (15 was the same thing, just centered) click to view A horseapple, Osage Orange, or Bois D'Arc (pronounced "boh-dark" if you don't speak French) fruit. Note that the creekbed here is concrete with big rocks embedded in it. 17 click to view Just a bit downstream, on the other side of the creek, was this intriguing feature. Easily accessible if you go through this drain first... not sure what it would take to get there if you started in the neighborhood. I'd probably take the long way to avoid suspicion. 18 click to view A plover, or "kildeer" is what I was told as a kid. They lay their eggs right in the middle of your yard, and if a cat or other predator gets close, they run off to the side and act like they've got a broken wing. That strategy is utterly ineffective against lawnmowers, unfortunately. 21 click to view When they built the car dealerships, they plugged up several drains that led to whatever was there before. This one was particularly short. When I shined the light in it, I could hear rustling leaves. But there weren't any leaves. It was ROACHES, scurrying away from the light. I quit shining the light. 22 click to view This abandoned tunnel was much more interesting. It was completely dry, and plenty big enough to fit a person crawling on hands and knees. And it was just the right height to climb into. So I did. 23, 24, 25 click to view click to view click to view Sure enough, it was pretty much dry all the way, with only an occasional small puddle. Oddly, though, the puddles weren't nasty looking/smelling at all, though I didn't taste to find out their biochemical makeup. I crawled all the way to where the pipe narrowed to one that you could only navigate by slithering on your belly. 26, 27 click to view click to view And look who I found slithering up out of the depths! (You know, I don't think I'm going to bother with the identity-masking thing. Anyone who wants to figure out my Secret Identity need only follow my website link. If the Dixie Chicks' lawyers can find me, I'm sure anyone can.) Now for the sideshow, and the reason I've titled this thread "Vanna's Drain". click to view click to view click to view click to view click to view Apparently, this series of instructions was written by someone who thought that the prospect of gettin' it on with Vanna White, co-host of Wheel Of Fortune, would be enough to lead an unsuspecting spelunker to his doom, or at least to his minor disappointment. This helps place the age of the drain. Vanna White was born in 1957, and when I watched the show in the mid '80s, I suppose she would have been a valid outlet for my teenage lust. By the '90s, she would be in her late 30s -- still sexy, but probably not at the top of the randy-teenager A-list. And while *I* can certainly appreciate her sex appeal as she celebrates her 50th birthday, I don't think the current crop of taggers even know her name. click to view click to view click to view "I do not understand (something)! I don't think I ever will!" Thus reads the angst-ridden statement of some poor soul. The problem is, I can't tell *what* it is he doesn't understand. However, I think the word is "women". And I'm right there with him. click to view click to view A couple more examples of the suburban underground art scene. I wonder if the low rider was the work of the same artist who painted the car in the other nearby drain? click to view click to view click to view click to view click to view click to view You have to appreciate the penmanship (spraymanship? canmanship?) of the taggers of the late '80s. That's got to be the time. When else would an obscene reference to the movie "Top Gun", starring a pre-meltdown Tom Cruise, have made sense? How long has it been since 7 digits were all it took to dial a phone number in the Metroplex? And it was back in the late '80s when INXS had a string of hits that defined and/or reflected '80s music. I think the INXS reference pretty much definitively dates the tag, just like knowing who INXS is definitively dates me. 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. Happiedaze  Location: Galveston Area, TX Gender: Female  |  |  |  Re: Vanna's Drain <Reply # 1 on 12/1/2007 10:44 PM >   Wow.. awesome stuff! I'm no big draning fan, but I could see this as being one I'd like to start with. I was thinking exactly what you said before I read it. That Vanna is old now, references to Top Gun dates that tagging and I was thinking late 80's as well because of the phone number and the 'Daniel Rules'. No one really says that anymore. #9 is my favorite picture. (Haha) Glad you had the UER light to save you. It's saved me a few times as well. 'Our plans are all laid out, take all these unmarked roads, we blaze the trails to places no one goes, yeah!' -Rise Against micro  Gender: Male Slowly I turned  |  Re: Vanna's Drain <Reply # 2 on 12/1/2007 11:42 PM >   Nice write-up. Old suburban graffiti is always worth a laugh. Try not to rely on those UER lights too much though, and be careful in some of those small pipes that aren't well ventilated or don't have water going through them. The air might not always be so good. Marost  Location: St Louis Gender: Male  |  Re: Vanna's Drain <Reply # 3 on 12/2/2007 12:53 AM >   Posted by RobertB click to view Did you try calling that number?!?!?! RobertB  Location: Skeeterville, TX Gender: Male Maybe I shouldn't be using my real name...  |  |  Re: Vanna's Drain <Reply # 4 on 12/2/2007 2:17 AM >   Posted by micro Nice write-up. Old suburban graffiti is always worth a laugh. Try not to rely on those UER lights too much though, and be careful in some of those small pipes that aren't well ventilated or don't have water going through them. The air might not always be so good. Thanks! You're right about enclosed spaces, of course -- I always try to keep in mind that the human nose can't tell the difference between a rotten egg and a toxic level of H2S. 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. RobertB  Location: Skeeterville, TX Gender: Male Maybe I shouldn't be using my real name...  |  |  Re: Vanna's Drain <Reply # 5 on 12/2/2007 2:20 AM >   Posted by Marost Did you try calling that number?!?!?! Nah, I don't swing that way. 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. RobertB  Location: Skeeterville, TX Gender: Male Maybe I shouldn't be using my real name...  |  |  Re: Vanna's Drain <Reply # 6 on 12/3/2007 8:46 PM >   Found a couple of pictures of the opening. I forgot that I started out without the memory card in the camera -- didn't realize that until I started taking pictures and got "out of memory" when I filled the camera's internal memory. Me <> Prepared. Fortunately, I had a memory card in my fanny pack, next to the UER light. Not because I'm ready for anything... but because I'm a pack rat. click to view click to view Plain, huh. Well, I likes it. 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. Mellon_Collie  Location: Utah'ish Gender: Male Chingblot.  |  |  |  Re: Vanna's Drain <Reply # 7 on 12/4/2007 12:27 AM >   Posted by RobertB ...Plain, huh. Well, I likes it. It looks homely and inviting to me... Xylene  Location: Atlanta Gender: Male  |  Re: Vanna's Drain <Reply # 8 on 12/4/2007 1:19 AM >   Nice photo essay! I'm glad you posted this, because I'm supposed to go draining this weekend, and I haven't been since I was a kid X UER Forum > Archived US: South > Vanna's Drain (Viewed 334 times) All content and images copyright © 2002-2024 UER.CA and respective creators. Graphical Design by Crossfire. To contact webmaster, or click to email with problems or other questions about this site: UER CONTACT View Terms of Service | View Privacy Policy | Server colocation provided by Beanfield This page was generated for you in 136 milliseconds. Since June 23, 2002, a total of 739969880 pages have been generated.