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Astro Usually naked
Location: The Delta Quadrant Gender: Male Total Likes: 791 likes
Resistance is Futile
| | | Re: Ever been locked in? < Reply # 1 on 5/6/2015 5:16 PM > | Reply with Quote
| | | MAMU IV: Johnson City Drain - Part II: Old SectionApril 6, 2012
After we finished playing in Splash country, everyone was pretty exhausted from a long day of exploring so everyone was walking out. At a certain point in the drain it forks. Knowing which fork took us to Splash Country, we had chosen that one. But Craig had told us of some really awesome steam pipes that were at the end of the tunnel in old section. This piqued my interest so I said I wanted to go. Craig said it was entirely worth seeing but it was a bit of a rigorous trek. I took this to mean I should definitely go. Out of the 14 of us who were in the drain that night, only 3 of us wanted to venture into old section. So as the three amigos, Eschaton, Adventuredog (AD) and I set off to go find these steam pipes. Old section got its namesake due to the fact that since Splash Country had been opened up, this section had been blocked off from water flow into the larger areas. As a result there was a large amount of sediment buildup in the tunnels, with varying amounts of water in them as well. Eschaton was wearing a pair of chest waders that he been tied off around his waste and AD had a pair of properly fitting thigh waders. Of course I am still just wearing a shirt, some laced knickers and a pair of Adidas running shoes. Something we quickly learned was just how much better the traction and spacing was on the soles of my running shoes than it was on the bottom of the waders.
Within minutes of sludging through the mud and buildup, we come across a large pipe, running laterally through the drain tunnel. The diameter of this pipe much have been about 2 feet and it was about a foot and a half from the sludge, in height. There was not reasonable way to get around this. You were either going to risk falling off of it or risk falling under it. I had chosen to go over it, so I handed AD my bag and got over it with very little issue. He handed me my stuff and then I took his so he could climb over. When he came down, he landed pretty hard, breaking what little surface tension there was of the muddy substance, and he sunk into it to his knees. I handed his bag to him, to sling over his back, and we locked arm-in-hands to I could pull him out. Since the surface area on my shoes was better, I never sunk. Eschaton decided he was going to go under this large, lateral pipe. This was his first mistake. As he went under it the mud underneath him almost completely gave way and within fractions of a second he had lost balance and sunk nearly waste deep, plunging his camera bag into the muddy slosh that had been disturbed from under the pipe. Together, AD and I locked arm-in-hand with Eschaton and pulled him out. After checking his camera and finding it to be (thankfully) dry, we pursued further. We went through several phases of mud and gunk. I was knee high in thin mud and thigh high in muddy water. With every step further we could see the black oily sludge well up and plume into the water, from deep under the mud layers as we agitated it. Despite doing everything we could, there was no way to avoid walking directly in it, even when we did balance on the side of the concrete for a few feet at a time. We fell many more times each, sometimes catching each other and other times pulling each other out from the places we sunk into it. It's hard to imagine that this trek only took us an hour, because Jesus' 40 days and nights in the desert probably seem as long. But finally we got to an area that was muddy but only up to our ankles. The pipe had opened up to a room. In the room were lots of 2x4 framing pieces and various boards. It was a vault of some sort, I guess. This is the point where we realized we were almost at the end. We looked up in one part and could see a square of concrete above us had been cut out. The hold was only about 2 feet by 2 feet. But we couldn't see the sky above us. Instead, we saw what looked like a tin ceiling of a warehouse. We acknowledged this but kept going. We had steam pipes that were calling us and we were going to find them. We reached the end, over a bit of a hill in the vault and realized that...there were no steam pipes. Maybe we were lost? time to call Craig. Luckily, we had phone signal in this pipe. Craig was baffled, there was no way we had gone the wrong way he had said. There was only one way to go and they take you right too them. What we had failed to immediately realize at the time was that every bit of masonry in this section of the drain/vault...was new. Brand new. They'd been covered up. We just traveled all that way to find out...they'd been covered recently. We then began to mentally prepare ourselves for the fact we had to make that long journey back up the drain, to leave. Then one of us suggested maybe another way out. That hole in that building had been leaking water out of it, and it went to the surface, so why not? AD went up first and said "Who is the ne...HEY! There is a LADDER up here!!" He lowered it down and I went up, followed by Eschaton. It really was just a warehouse and from the looks of it, it was where the workers were getting down into the vault in order to lay the bricks that had covered our steam pipes. Deciding that this was likely out best place to exit, instead of walking all the way back through the tunnels, we began getting ready to leave. Eschaton walked to the front of the building to check on the door and AD was pulling the ladder out of the hole. I realized that I was pantsless and this might not bode well with the locals, especially on Good Friday. Taking off my shoes and putting on my pants, I asked AD if I could borrow the extra, dry boots he had and I was putting them on when Eschaton walks up and says that front door can't be open due to it being a dead-bolt locked and unlocked with a key on both sides. Fucking hell. If we can't get out of this building it means we have to go back through the pipe. Suddenly and with no warning the whole building begins to rumble and shake. We can't hear each other and then a horn blares throughout the entire building as the windows on the one side begin to light up brightly. Soon it looks like Daylight in the warehouse and then the light is gone, but the rumbling continues at the train roared by us, with what much have been mere feet between it and the building. The train was so close would could hear the metal scraping on the tracks as it flew by. We went to the back of this building and found a few sets of double-doors. Each one had been padlocked, but none of them had bene padlocked correctly, leaving the latches completely open and the doors held only by a timber across the inside of it. Lifting this board, we instantly were able to flutter down the stairs outside into the real world. Then we had a whole new task: where were we? None of us are from Tennessee, never mind Johnson City and we somehow needed to find AD's car. We wandered aimlessly for a while to try and get our bearings. At one in the morning, all 10 of the people who live in JC were out and we either ran into the same cop car 5 times or they were making circles to look at us. I can't blame anyone for staring at us, though. I was the most normal looking one with jeans and a jacket on (since you couldn't see how muddy my legs were underneath). The guys were covered in mud, wearing waders and we were speaking crazy talk about the underground. We looked like drunk hobos, to be certain. Finally, we found the car and all piled in. The guys took almost everything off, because it was saturated and we made our way to the Lewis' to join the rest of the 20-something people in the nightly party. It was a disappointing yet rewarding night, that was when I sealed my friendship solidly with two guys who have become some of the best friends I could ask for. Despite the lack of steam pipes, it was a great way to end one of the greatest nights of my life, with unforgettable comradery.
| [02:33:56] <Valkyre> Astro your whole life is ruled by the sentence ' life is better without clothes on' [22:16:00] <DSomms> it was normal until astro got here Astro: Patron Saint of Drains |
| DescentOnARope
Location: Long Island, New York Gender: Male Total Likes: 662 likes
| | | Re: Ever been locked in? < Reply # 3 on 5/6/2015 6:42 PM > | Reply with Quote
| | | Entirely the result of our own unpreparedness. I was exploring an abandoned hospital with three friends, and near the end of the trip, two of them left. I stayed inside with another to look for another part of the building. Now, we never expected to go inside that day, so we didn't have flashlights or anything. Until now we'd been just barely getting by on lights from the phones of... the two who left. This was a problem, because the way out was through the freaking sub-basement. After a few minutes of debating, we finally decided that the only way we were getting out was to suck it up and descend through two levels of basements. We held onto each other and very slowly made our way down two staircases, a hallway, and through a boiler room in the pitch black. The abridged version is here, starting at 11:00. https://www.youtub...atch?v=qKpa3zmQ67g
[last edit 5/6/2015 6:44 PM by DescentOnARope - edited 1 times]
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