I finished the airframe for The Nerd Magnet today. It's super mean-lookin'. Ken thought it was pretty cool too, and said, "I've got to get a photo of this project." As I was posing, he said that it looked like a weapon and requested that I try not to look like Usama bin Laden. Not sure what that means.
Tonight I went out to Worcester with Rob & Z to investigate a drain that hadn't been explored yet. It was actually a submerged stream, so the water was relatively clear and had lots of fish in it. The ceiling was also pleasently infested with large spiders.
The initial stretch of tunnel was a low courrugated steel arch about 6.5' high and 20' wide which went on straight for a long time. Aside from the fish and the spiders, there wasn't a lot to see. Eventually I spotted light ahead that wasn't from our flashlights and we emerged out into a short stretch of stream that was uncovered. It was in the middle of some atheletic field complex and was only about 50' long. But it was a good exit point and meant that when we turned around to leave, we wouldn't have to traverse the long archway tunnel anymore.
Continuing upstream, the low arch quickly gave way to a 6.5' concrete round with redbrick manhole chambers periodically. the tunnel was much more curvy now and headed out underneath the stadium we saw when we were breifly outside. There was one point where the tunnel transistioned upwards about two feet with a really slippery brick slope/waterslide thing. This was challenging to climb because putting your hands on the available ladder rungs meant putting your hands on the spiders.
It was somewhere above this point where I suddenly saw a giant spider shadow on the wall, and quickly determined that it was coming from my headlamp. looking up and crossing my eyes revealed a really big spider right on my forehead. This was follwed rather quickly by a small yell and my smacking the headlamp off my head and into the skank water. Z inspected my head for further infestation and I picked the nasty headlamp out of the water. Much to my displeasure, I strapped it back onto my head.
For a breif stint the tunnel opened up into a 10' tall x 6' wide blackstone corridor with old rusty pipe hangers on the wall. It was clearly a very very old piece of tunnel, and it seems likely that it was below some building which is why they hadn't replaced it with the newer concrete. Perhaps this is the portion of tunnel that runs beneath the stadium.
After that, the tunnel went back to being a concrete round, though a bit smaller now. This continued for some time and then there were two shape changes in rapid succession. First the tunnel went back to a low arch, though it was made of concrete this time, and then it became a very low rectangular culvert that was very uncomfortable to move in, expecially considering the spider problem.
The combination of extreme discomfort with my being sick and my light starting to get dim led me to draw the line and wait as they continued on about 100'. Seeing nothing of interest, they turned back and we called it a night. Good drain, too bad it's a shrinker.
