Fri, Dec 30th, 2005
posted by MutantMandias
I was driving around, looking for some ruin, and I see a couple of interesting things next to a bridge over some train tracks; A delapidated building on one side and some weird overgrown steps leading down from the other side of the bridge.
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I spent about 10 minutes walking around at site A, but they wasn't really anything photogenic. It was neat looking, in that the ground was clearly the interior wooden flooring of an old building,
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I crossed the bridge, and happened to be lucky enough to see the act of decommissioning a rail line, with a tractor pulling a device which actually ripped the rails off of the ground, so I took some pictures of that for a few minutes.
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Then I continued across the bridge, and walked along the property line of site B, walking past a police car at the stop light. It was all fenced up, most of it having a woden fence on the outside of the chain fence. There was a large faded sign which read Aloca Recycling Center.
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After I turned the corner, I passed a couple of gated entries and I could see that there were a number of cars parked at the back of the property, so there must be some renovation or something. By the time I got to the end of the fence, I was sure that some people were pretty determined to not have any visitors. Even with the 5 or 6 apparently in-use cars in there, the fenced gates were chained and padlocked. So I wrote the place off as maybe being reclaimed, or maybe to look at again in the future if these people ever abandon it. As I and was heading back toward my starting point, I would stop at some gaps in the fence and take a picture of the ruined building.
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Along the final long section of 6 foot high wooden fence, I occassionally held my camera up over the edge and randomly snapped a picture.
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Then, as I crossed the bridge, there happened to be two trains passing in opposite directions. I am not a trainophile, really, but there is some picture that I want to take of moving trains. Unfortunately, I don't quite know what that picture looks like, so I am occassionally forced to stand like an idiot taking pictures of moving trains. Hopefully, one of these days, I look at a picture and say, "Oh, that's it. Sweet!" and then I can move on with my life. I spent about 5 to 10 minutes on the bridge taking shots of the two trains, as well, as a couple of the overgrown stairs. They were long trains, moving rather slowly, which I appreciated, since I was trying to keep the train focused while the ground looked to be in motion.
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I finished getting the last of the different possible time exposures that I could think of to try, so I reached down for my bag to put my camera away. I looked down the street and saw two sketchy looking guys walking my way. I would normally have put my camera in the bag right then, but I didn't really feel like letting these two guys come up on me while I was kneeling on the ground with my bag open and lenses visable, so I just hooked my bag on my shoulder, over the camera, and started walking back toward my car.
As I was walking, I thought I heard "hey," but wasn't sure. After a few more feet, I definately heard "HEY!" so I turned my head back while still walking. In these situations, my first thought is always, "These guys are going to be a pain in the ass, and want me to give them something." Then, my second thought is, "Maybe I'm over-reacting. Maybe I dropped something and they're just trying to be helpful." But I thought back in my head, and knew I hadn't, so after I saw them over my shoulder, still just apparently casually walking my way, not waving at me or anything, I figured that either the voice I had heard was not them talking to me, or they were just trying to get my attention to ask for something, and weren't really expecting me to respond.
So I reached the part of the hand rail that I had climbed over before, and thought about just walking to the end of the bridge, but I figured this would give me a little lead time on them. Either they would walk to the end of the bridge, in which case I would be way out of their reach, or they would jump it too, in which case I would have a real reason to think they were up to no good.
I was very ungraceful, balancing my bag and camera on my shoulder, and had to step up, then step back down, then step up again to make sure I had my balance right, so it took me a good 10 seconds to amble over the fence.
I walked the 30 feet or so to the road to get to the entrance where I had pulled in. As I did, I heard from behind me, "I wanna ask you somethin'." I glanced back and said, "No thanks," and kept on going, which I have found to be the best policy.
At this point, I was worried. My car was actually back towards them, visible from the bridge. They could be at it first by jumping the hand rail a little further back than I had. And the car was rather secluded from view. I had images in my head of a gun being pulled on me.
I looked back and saw that they weren't behind me, and then I looked toward the car and saw that they were still standing on the bridge as close to my car as they could be without jumping over the hand rail and down to the pavement.
I felt there were enough people within shouting distance that I could walk to my car safely. If they started to jump the fence, I could still get away, but I figured I would have to talk to them in any case. At this point, I still felt threatened, and that they were just two scuzballs intent on harassing me.
As I approached my car, this is the conversation:
Guy: What are you doing?
Me: I'm taking pictures
Guy: That's private property
Me: I'm just taking pictures
Guy: Then why did you run away?
Me: Wha? I didn't...
(I realized then that they might have perceived me as avoiding them. I was, but only because I thought they were thugs, so I explained this)
Me: I didn't want to be harrassed by two guys I didn't know.
Guy: What?
Me: I didn't want to talk to two strangers on the street.
Guy: It's posted no tresspassing
Me: I didn't cross any property lines
Guy: Well, you don't just do that. You wanna take pictures, you come in and you ask.
(I think I actually perked up at this. Stupidly, I thought, "Great! What lucK!")
Me: May I?
Guy: What?
Me: May I come in and take pictures?
Guy: Under no circumstances! This is a government facility.
Me: (crestfallen) Okay.
Guy: Well... You'll probably be hearing from someone. We've got your car tag.
Me: Okay. Thank you.
And I got in my car and drove out of the lot. I passed them walking back to their "government facility," but I decided not to wave.
And, by the way, how can it be private property AND a government facility?
Apparently they are really intent on not having anyone see what is going on there.