Wednesday, May 23. It was the tenth day of Laura living with me, and things weren’t getting any better, crying and fighting all the time, sitting around with nothing to do but watch old episodes of Red Green, or on a particularly lucky day, some obscure French film from the library. I rather enjoyed these things when I could still have another life. There were times where I was happy around her, while there was still a place to hide, but that was getting closer and closer to impossible, sharing a studio apartment downtown, never being able to get more than a few feet apart, and not even being able to plan much when she’s always there seeing who I talk to and about what. There was no doubting it, this would be my last time exploring, one last plan that I’d made “before”, a chance to go back out one last time with some of the people who started it all for me. It was supposed to be a weekend trip out to the Catskills or something, but with things getting even worse for me I was willing to accept a poorly planned out, rainy Wednesday morning; nothing else had ever gone as planned, why should the finale? The last two places, appropriately enough, were to be the first two: Laundry Machinery and Densmore to end it where it all began.
We got to Laundry Machinery in a pouring rain, just like it had rained all spring long, flooding the place until it grew moss and algae. Brendan had brought waders for us to get into the flooded tunnels, but they came in handy much earlier than expected!
Unfortunately, when we thought we had steam tunnels, all we actually found was a foul, flooded basement.
The “tunnels” just got smaller and smaller, and led approximately nowhere. Oh, and they had 4-foot pits in them under the rotten water, so we all managed to find at least one during the explore and come out of it a stinky mess.
If there was any positive, it was that the sewer at Densmore couldn’t possibly smell any worse than we already did on the ride there! Only problem was, Densmore was blocked off by a brand new 12 foot steel wall. No way I was getting over that.
So we finished the morning at Norton’s cave instead, despite all of us not really caring to go back there. Just like my whole exploring career to that point really — almost make it, then flump! right back into the pile of shit. The “cave” is basically just a half mile of straight line this:
And this is where I thought it would all end. One last look into the world of adventure Laura was tearing me away from into our private little domestic hell.
I finally escaped on Sunday, hopefully to return to my own normal life not too long from now. One thing I can be certain of is this won’t be my last time exploring anymore.