it’s days like these that i love my life.

i almost wasn’t looking forward to this tour, because there were going to be so many people around, and i thought it was going to annoy me. brian had a crew coming, the tv kids were supposed to come, ninj from infiltration.org…there were alot more people there this time around. waited around while russell did his whole tour guide thing with the rest of the people, then once inside we sorta took off. we had a few set missions…try the 2nd far staircase into the tower, and the 2nd basement.

first was the 2nd staircase. we had heard it was blocked off at one point. it wasn’t. at least it wasn’t blocked off any farther up than the other staircases – 5th floor chain link gate to protect the clocks et al. so…i can’t remember the real sequential order of things, but i’ll do my best. up stairs on that end of the building, we found the glass walkway for that set of windows. less glass around the path, so…i said i’d try to cross it next time, if we go alone with russell’s permission instead of a tour. explored the floors around there, i lost everyone else, but that’s cool. ended up finding a set of metal stairs that went up to a sort of sub floor. and brian and adrienne were up there. so i went up there (and got asbestos dirt falling on my head, cuz they were taking the next set of stairs up)…”room” full of machinery and metal stuff. next flight up, same sort of thing – machinery and whatnot. there was a space to move into another part, so we did. i think there was a corridor there, because we split up again. adr and i ended up finding a big mostly empty, very dark room. we had flashlights this time, so we went in. shined the lights on the wall – lots of scary alien paintings like the one in the women’s lounge on the main concourse. that was sorta creepy. there were other machine things up there, and then a set of steps. went over there…and found the maintence catwalks between the real roof of the terminal, and the concourses false ceiling. went and got brian cuz i knew he’d love that, so i think 5 or 6 of us went through the catwalks, and down to a set of lower catwalks, before heading back. the cool thing was you could see through the ceiling where all the old light fixtures used to be, so we could see the concourse below, and other people on the tour. hope they couldn’t see/hear us hahah. adr and i left that room, and i think we went exploring on whatever floor we were on. i think it turned out that it was the 2nd floor, which i hadn’t explored last time cuz i couldn’t get the door open until right before we left. we found rooms that were fairly modern…at least they weren’t originally decorated when the terminal opened. had gaudy 70s wall paper. gross. there was a bathroom with toilet and shower, with awful shiny silver and gold wallpaper…we figured that it was where the crack addict lived when he owned the terminal. brian confirmed it when we showed him and his friend james the area. the toilet actually had been used…it was gross. there was another room that had a wall of mirrors.

not sure if we found anything else noteworthy on that part of the expedition. oh adr and i found another set of stairs, the “covered in paper” staircase, which took us to the 4th floor, and roof. showed adrienne some other parts in the tower, and finally went to the main concourse. went to the kitchen then into the first basement.

we had lost brian and his crew, so we decided to go down to the 2nd basement on our own. wasn’t all that much down there. there was a storage type cage that had rusted cans of paint…including one in the magnificent “institutional green”…lol. there was a bolted door that had a hole in the bottom of it for whatever reason. looking through the hole there was a whole nother part of the basement we hadn’t found access too. makes sense, but we had no idea where any stairs were that led to that basement. went back up as brian and crew were entering the kitchen. he’s like “you went down there already didn’t you” lol. we left there, since i had said there wasn’t much down there. wandered the main concourse a bit, trying to find another staircase that must exist to the basement, and by then the 2nd tour (which no one knew about) was coming in. i remembered that there was an open window, with a broken gate in the 2nd basement, so brian wanted to go see. went back down to the 2nd basement with everyone. he went through the window, so i went through the window. we ended up going into a window further down, and left everyone back in the first part of the 2nd basement. we were in some kind of power room, lots of levers and machines and stuff. there were 3 steps up to double irons doors, that of course, we had to go through. it went to a big long corridor with other rooms. another power room with big machine things in it. went the other way, and came upon the long lost main staircase from the train level to the main concourse. i think it was around there that we found some really bizzare stuff. there was a big mostly empty room, with a collapsed shelving unit that held lots and lots of magazines on ceramics…ceramic molds, jars of paints (for the ceramics i presume)…then even more bizzare there was a tipped over metal drum type thing full of reels of kodak film – like the kind you’d show through a projector… not frame by frame pictures, or 35mm roles of film. alot of them were torn apart with tape strewn everywhere. the boxes were labled but it didn’t give much clue to what was on the tapes. but…it was just weird. i think that’s the room where brian found the old scale. we saw james out the window, on the street underpass, so we told him how to get where we were, and he joined us after a while. the others who we left in the 2nd basement called brian, who told them there was no way we were leaving any time soon hahah. so they came and joined us as well. went further down the 2nd basement corridor, and there was another set of stairs that went to steam tunnel type structures. not so much a tunnel, but it housed big pipes and ducts and things. adr and i went down the stairs but didn’t stick around down there. then i recognized the writing that was on the wall… i had seen it through the hole in the door of the kitchen’s 2nd basement. so we actually ended up on the other side of the bolted door. haha

out the broken windows we went to the street underpass. that scared me more than most of the rest of the building, because so much of the ceiling had fallen down, and there was shit everywhere. went into the building, through a window of course, on the other side of the street, between the street and the tracks. looked around in there, and on that side of the street for a while. there was a ramp that went underground that we can’t really figure out what it is for – it didn’t seem like it was an entrance to the underground parking ramp, because it wasn’t in a place that cars would access. it was flooded. someone had built a raft out of old tires and wood. weird. james went on it, and was going to go further into the tunnel, but the submerged car and van made it look like not so good of an idea. we’ll have to go back with inflatable rafts hahah. jk..maybe.

hung out there for a while, and then we realized we might be locked in. no idea if russell and the 2nd tour had left yet, no idea how to get out other than jumping fences and i was having none of that. i figured if russell locked us in then he probably set the alarm, and we’d trip the alarm as soon as we got back in the concourse. we slowly headed back in from the street. found a staircase we had to detour up. it ended up going to a blocked off door, we should have sent one person up to scout it before all 6 or 7 of us went up. weird thing was, there was some kind of tank laying on the stairs. like a helium type tank, but it had no nozzle at the top, so it looked like a bomb. which reminds me, one of the rooms in the basement had old civil defense safety kit drums *joygasm*. hahah. sooo yeah…headed back in to the 2nd basement, through the windows back to the kitchen’s 2nd basement, and back up through the kitchen to the main entrance. where russell and a few stragglers from the 2nd tour were haha. it was funny, we suddenly appear out of no where, all filthy, acting like it’s no big thing.

things i can’t remember where they were…at some point we found rooms with big mechanical switch board type things. way friggen cool. adr said it was on one of the tower floors, not a basement level. somewhere in the basement brian and i found christmas stuff… tinsel and crap. and brian found another pin outside in the rubble. i forgot to give him back the pin he found last time that literally has my name on it.

i feel like there’s so much i forgot. brian – if anything seems wrong, location wise, let me know. if you map it out, i want a copy.

can’t wait to go back 🙂

oh yeah, i took along 6 rolls of film, thinking i’d use 2 maybe 3…totally not expecting to go and find where we went and found. gave one to james, and ended up using the other 5…way before we were finished. i guess next time i need to take 10 haha

*edit #87432598* it was so windy today. we were almost blowing away outside. it made all kinds of scary creepy noises inside. lots of good places to lock people in, in an episode of Fear hehe.