After my amazing trip to Providence, and the flurry of bans and blocks and deleted “friends” that brought on, I spent most of the next month afraid to explore again, abandoning my idea of a new place every week and canceling what would have been my grand finale meet, realizing that despite my best efforts no one would show up. I was surprised enough to even have a chance to explore again that of course I took it when an explorer I hadn’t seen in over a year invited me for a very sudden trip to Gary, Indiana, which I’d at least been told was a wonderland of abandonment.
Going on the trip at all was ill-advised at best, considering I have to move in a week (the house I live in has problems typically reserved for abandoned buildings, like leaning downhill badly enough that a bowling ball dropped in the living room will enter every room on its way to the kitchen!) and have no idea where I’m going yet, but it’s not like I’d have this opportunity again, and it’s only a weekend, so off we went, spending a seemingly endless night on I-90, finally getting to Gary just before sunrise.
Our first destination was Union Station, formerly Gary’s rail station when there were still more trains here than the South Shore Line commuter rail, and there was still a city here, besides rotting husks of buildings and the insipid hum of a steel mill.
This place was nothing if not trashed and burned out, but that’s the way I like to explore things, with nature (and human nature) having taken the building far beyond what it once was.
What do you think, are these stairs safe?
I want to play a game.
