Sven

Yes you know you are!

http://www.qwerf.com/?p=58

If I can make the time writing it the least you can do is bore yourself with it.

Protoman-swe

I love urban exploring, old bomb shelters, factories and military installations.

Its really interesting then reading up on them and trying to find out what it was all for and why they decided they didn't need it anymore.

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machowner

interesting, its cool to find stuff like that.

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Ferris Bueller

I wish I still had the footage that me and a groop of my hoodlum friends from high school took way back when. In Tampa, right at Cleveland St. and MacDill Ave., there is funny looking trapezoidal building thats about 8-9' tall, with vent pipes coming out of the top that are curved over 180° at the ends. There is also a huge metal door as the only entrance. The building is made of brick and concrete and there is a big lock and chain on the door.

We used to hang out there and drink and smoke cigarettes back then and we always wondered what was inside. We never saw anyone around there, so we figured nobody would notice if we tried to break in. We tried breaking the lock/chains with bolt cutters, but they didnt make a dent. So one of my buddies stole a cutting torch from his dad's machine shop and we cut our way through the chain, opened the door and descended into the abyss.

After going down about 15 feet of vertical stairs, we came into a large chamber (probably 20' x 25') with five doors. Behind three of the doors were rooms filled with metal bedframes, and behind the fourth was a room about 15' by 15' filled with metal shelf-racks. The fifth door was locked by chain and lock, so again we cut our way through. behind the door was a tunnel that ran about 3 blocks, with minor changes in elevation via 2-3 stairs, obviously to give clearance to pipes or sewers. It gradually ascended until we figured we were just below street level. At the end we found a ladder that led to a split metal door, like the kind you would see for a basement elevator that comes up to receive deliveries. It was only about 6' up, and we couldnt budge it, so one of my buddies went outside and tracked down where it was. Turns out it was in the middle of a sidewalk and had been covered by concrete (he could hear us banging on the metal doors with our flashlights.

So we came to the conclusion that it was an old bomb shelter. Pretty cool in itself. We were going to go back in the next day, but when we went back, there was a fresh lock and chain on the door, and the door had been completely welded shut. Obviously, whoever's bomb shelter it was didnt want us going in there. I used to have the footage that I took with my camcorder, but I've since lost it. The building is still there if anyone ever gets to tampa and wants to see it.

Another really cool place to go is the steam tunnels underneath the University of Colorado. They smell really bad, but you can access any building on campus from down there and actually get into the boiler room under Boulder High School down the hill from the campus. Unfortunately, after some stupid individual made that public on the interwebs, boulder PD started arresting people for venturing down there, so if you do manage to get in and wander around, make sure you've got a quick escape route planned.

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|TG-6th|Ferris Bueller

machowner

Cool Ferris, that sounds like a really interesting building, wish you still had the video of it though, that would have been cool to watch. Wonder why there were so many bed frames.

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Ferris Bueller

The only thing we could think of is that MacDill AFB is straight up the road about 4 miles. Perhaps the beds were for the VIPs and their families from the base or something.

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|TG-6th|Ferris Bueller

Tonk

anyone else got any other urban exploration stories? i cant think of any i have off the top of my head at the moment

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Long Bow

Not so much an urban but I did venture into an old mine once.

It was of course in the middle of no where but the interesting part was that in the 50-60's there was a paved section of road leading to it. So in the middle of dense forest with nothing around for miles and miles, no hydro, no homes etc. is an old dilapitated paved road weaving through the forest.

There was some core samples still stacked out side (picture several foot long "tubes" of rock). The entrance was just a hole in the side of a hill, about 1.5x the size of a double door. We were there in the early summer and the entrance was about 100' straight into the hill but there was about a foot of water spaned the distance in. The water was so frigid it hurt but we had no choice but to walk in with sandals as none of us had boots high enough to clear the water. While walking into the mine we found out that a large community of bats called this place home. They had a wonderfull game they like to play called "I'm going to hit you in the face.... ha ha just joking!" Seriously they would fly straight at our faces and about 6" away would do complete 180 deg turn and fly off, only to come back and do it again and again. Finally we made it out of the water and not soon enough, the pain was almost un-bareble by the end. The bats had given up on their little game at this point as well. We came to a three way fork in the mine. The whole area was pinkish color as there was tonns of Feldsbar (sp?) everywhere with slashes of other rocks and minerals in dark greys and whites. Straight ahead lead a short distance to an upward sloping tunnel that was partially colapsed and a small amount of daylight could be seen about 20' up. We then went down the left branch which gradually curved around. Along the way there were small bats clingin upside down to the walls and ceiling sleeping soundly. The walls sparkled from the layers of mica and quartz. This branch ended in a small chamber with nothing in it. Finally we went down the right branch that curved off on an angle finishing in a much larger chamber. While we travelled down this branch the bats again started their game of face flybys. We entered the large chamber and again found nothing but brocken rocks and bats. We all turned off our headlamps and flashlights. Let me tell you it is the blackest black I have ever experinced. Go into your room at night, turn off all sources of light down to the power LED's. Close the drapes or blinds and put your head under your pillow. It was darker then that. You could not see your fingers up to the point of poking my self in the eye. Blacker then black and a little freaky. Anyway we had seen as much as we could safely and returned to the damn water torture walk out of there.

All in all a really intersting experince but again not urban.

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