Sunday, November 11, 2007

Nicollet Island IV

Its been a while. Have you noticed that it seems like I'm saying that every time I post after I've been exploring? Anyways though, a few days ago Scout asked me to go back to Satan's Cave with him so he could show it to a friend who was interested, and I said that'd be awesome.

[fast forward to the weekend]

We met in a parking lot next to the Hennepin Ave. Bridge in the late afternoon at the back of Scout's unmarked white
Econoline van, and I got introduced to Kanskje. From there, we had to do a bit of calling around to let someone know where to find us if we never came back, then down we went. We used an entrance on the side of the Island, trying to make sure we didn't get seen by any of the people out in the 60+ heatwave we had, damn Americans trying to be fit and healthy. After we crawled through the collapsed "room", under the sewer, and into the tunnel, we decided to just head for the "cave", all the side tunnels were were pretty wet, and we were already going to have to walk through allot of black sewer sludge as it was.


Kanskje behind a fire-hydrant pipe


Scout and Kanskje in the brick water-main tunnel that roughly runs-around the north half of the island


Flow-stone at the base of a hydrant


Math

There isn't really a whole lot to see in the brick tunnels, except for some very interesting white fluffy looking mold that we passed by pretty quickly.

We made it all the way to the "cave", took a look at the tags and carvings, met a few bats sleeping upside-down in niches on the walls, but didn't stay too long. The air this time was particularly bad, the worst I've ever had down there yet, really thick and lacking real oxygen. It got to the point that Scout and I were really starting to notice it, so we decided to book before we got to take a look at the shrine again. We ended up going straight for the manhole that opens into the middle of the field.

I popped it without anyone seeing us, about and hour and a half after we went down. Just as soon as we slid the cover back in place, a police car pulled up about 60 yards away. I'm pretty sure they never saw us, but we got out of there pretty quick. We took our time getting back to the parking lot, and split up.


The river was like glass

It's fun exploring with awesome new people, so hopefully, we'll all go do something like this again soon, but somewhere besides Nicollet Island. Its kinda starting to get old now, and conditions down there don't seem likely to get better to soon, so its time to find somewhere new, maybe a grain elevator, we'll see...


Me on top of a light tower next to the Hennepin Ave. Bridge


Preacher or dictator?


rise!


Making a point


Meh?

2 comments:

Goxkok said...

The NI stuff looks really cool, Ive never been down there before.

Also, sweet new look to the site! nice job

Anonymous said...

Euler's formula:
eˆ(iX) = cosX + isinX

by using taylor polynomials to approximate at a(sub 0) = π, we get:

eˆiπ = -1.