First thing we noticed ... the shit was fucking slippery! The continuous rain must have coated the sides of the drain with the slippery stuff so we kept sliding into the water, yelling "It's a trap!" ala Admiral Ackbar everytime we felt ourselves slipping toward the water. We finally gave up and took our shoes off and pressed forward in our socks (good idea)
We made it to the end of the tunnel and admired the varied artworks on the walls in the area:
Very nice. We proceeded to head up the famous stairway to the surface that has been climbed so many times. Too bad I forgot those candles, that would have been sweet.
I had to ask Jaques to stay very still for this picture. He was starting to get annoyed with mye and my camera at this point. But hey, the 10 second exposure turned out okay I thought:
We ended up making it to the top. We branched off to the left rather than climbing the wall of slippery rock sans rope aid. We came to this network of shallow tunnels leading to God knows where. This is the assrape tunnel, where you were forced to stick up your ass and run forward to make any ground. Goxkok poses with a sad, sad face and the uncomfortable position he must travel in.
We went through the a crawling tunnel in order to continue and found a styrofoam cup stuck in the cieling from when the tunnel was built (weird) and a marble among other oddities. The crawling got a little old after a while though and we were thoroughly soaked and dirty by the end of it.
The crawl tunnel opened up to more assrape-height tunnels which we followed for a while. They opened occasionally for junctions and manholes but all the ones we tried to lift were sealed shut! Fuck! The tunnel then split off and got too small so we had to fucking crawl and awkwardly walk all the way back.
We made it up the slippery-as-hell incline without the damn rope and started off down the shallow tunnels right under the streets. Car roared by overhead and occasioanlly buses would pass by. The floor was a nice change, it was pretty coloful and NOT SLIPPERY limestone slabs which made our lives very nice. The interior designers that did this deserve a thumbs up.
We followed the maze of shallow tunnels for a long time, checking out many many side tunnels and tons of sealed manholes. We came across a janky but serviceable rope ladder going up to another level so we climbed up and found ourselves in round tube of walking height. We found a storm grate leading to the street above, so I stuck my camera out and took a photo to see where the hell we were:
Okay, so we were under University Avenue near the First Tire. We had come a long fucking ways! We continued on, listening to the cars and people walking above us. Another crawl tunnel took us to a manhole that budged! We sat under it, waiting for the trucks and cars to go by then scraped the manhole over and clambered out, almost running into a guy on a bike who seemed a little surprised and muttered "Oh, shit" to himself and biked off. Jaques then climbed out too as a lone beat up pickup drove by, staring at us and doing a U turn (shit shit!) to drive by us again. Here is the intersection we popped out of:
We check the time (1:50!) And decided to head off to MacDonalds to feast on shitty but amazing food as per tradition. We walked all the way back to the river and hopped in Jaques' car and drove off into the midway for food!
Success!As long as the weather holds out, we're hoping to do a bunch of draining soon. Check back for updates
- GoxKok
2 comments:
Sounds like a blast!
Pretty tight! I like the pictures. You guys are crazy (that's a compliment, by the way).
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