Sometimes blogging at work has its positives... like discovering am explorer sits at the desk right next to me! We decided to take the first Sunday of spring and go to the drains and play with some fire and glow sticks. Explorers in their natural habitat: Garrett the fire god: Incendio! Now entering RGB color space What else are you supposed to do when you find a dead mau5 while you're exploring? Eventually we just smashed the glowsticks and went Jackson Pollock on the place.
The subway seems like it always was and always will be here. It's been abandoned for 55 years now, and while a piece here and there gets filled in sometimes, it's unlikely to ever see another train, or really any reuse other than the de facto graffiti gallery it's become. Every year since 1994, the Concrete Discussion Group has come here on or near Groundhog day to explore the tunnel and eat Dinosaur Barbeque. This year was the 20th, and, I'm starting to think, last time we celebrate the eventual end of winter and start of another exploring season. There…
The best and weirdest ideas begin with beer, specifically the consumption of it in the outdoors. (like this:) Not that any of you didn't know that I'm not normal, but with some liquid inspiration and the right friends, even something as strange as a weekend bike trip to Niagara Falls makes perfect sense, and less than 24 hours later we were off riding into the night, basically in search of the unknown, to go sleep in a cave. After 55 miles or so, we found the cave entrance, and in the morning it was time to explore. From all we…
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…
So, after going with Shane to those caves, and getting shaken down for every little bit of information I had about underground Rochester, he finally held up his end of the deal: taking me draining in Buffalo. I already knew exactly what I wanted. I'd even been to the entrance of it once, when the water was too high. It took some convincing to go here instead of Lockport but once I showed him what I thought I knew, he was all about it. Right from the entrance Scajaquada is an epic drain: instead of an outfall, and going upstream…
Even though it hadn't been the best of times for the group, I still managed to get a real explorer in town. Which is an unusual enough opportunity for me I never quite know what to make of it -- an explorer with experience, talent, and a car willing to take a weekday afternoon and explore with me is certainly enough to miss class for! It seemed like quite a waste, but she only wanted to see graffiti, so we went back to the easiest and most colorful places I knew. Cobbs Hill water towers: I thought this little one…