For the time being we will rely on the comments system on this blog here to communicate with our many, many fans.

P.S.
We have a ton of new content posted in the gallery, hunt around for it. We also will have news regarding some of our new locations soon. (And you all thought we were dead.)

-C1

I really just wanted this camera to get to know the feel of an SLR before picking up a D70, but it didn’t quite work out that way. My whole life was about to change. It came in a big box. In that box was the ME Super body, a Star-D 80-205mm/4.5, an SMC Pentax 50mm/2, a roll of five year expired Kodak Gold 100 film, and an issue of Beauty/Decay, but that’s not important. The first thing I noticed when I picked up the body was how rugged it felt. I can’t bend or flex any part of this thing, and I’m pretty strong. The body, along with the lenses I got are all made of some kind of metal, probably adamantium. I’d never shot or even handled a film SLR before this.

The first thing I did was load the film. I messed up first try and lost a couple exposures, but got it in the end. To the waterfront! It’s a great place to just hang out and take shots. Then I pressed the shutter button. The diaphragm shrank, the mirror swung upward, and the when the shutter flicked open an image was exposed onto the long-ago-expired film. Let me tell you, that was a feeling. It’s fun just taking the pictures, even without seeing them immediately after.

So then on the way home I walked through the Church Street area. This was a good idea. People are attracted to old film cameras. On my way home I was asked by two different groups of strangers to take their pictures. Lots of girls smiled at me too, even more than normal. This happens often when I take my Pentax for walks. I get asked where the camera stores are, if I’m a photographer, and if I would like to take naked pictures of attractive girls.

I’ve shot five rolls of film so far. The expired roll, two of Kodak UC100, a roll of Plus-X, and a roll of Tri-X that I’ll be picking up shortly. I especially like the way the black and whites came out. Oh this is a UE website? Well let’s just say I’m no longer worried about breaking my camera at a site anymore. More like crackheads should be worried about my camera breaking their face. It’s that sturdy.

THE END

Hello everybody, and sorry about the gap between updates. All of us at NEUEU have been busy with school, moving, and work for awhile so we’ve been only mildly active and mostly by ourselves or only a couple of us getting together.

Today, that mildly active status changed – drastically! A trip out to the far northeast corner of the state yielded me (Deer) and Z1 the following things:

- Lots of fresh air and exercise. We hiked uphill for two plus freakin’ hours!

- We sidestepped around a LOT of moose shit.

- There were really large abandoned things up there.

- The view and place at the end of the long haul was worth it.

- We at least got to see one of the moose responsible for our, quite literal, shitty walk up that goddamn mountain.

- There’s seventy-seven new pictures in the gallery to show for it, as well. Bonus!!

So, check it out, it’s pretty damn cool. After the walk that was endured on the way up, all y’all out there BETTER be at least appreciating that we went as all out as we could to show you this place

DEER!

If there is anything you would like me to concentrate on, let me know via a comment to this entry. I can’t promise that I will make it to every site posted but I will make a best effort attempt to at least see a few.

-C1

On the tip of a friend, I made a trip up to Saint Albans today to check out a place he suggested, that was an old ice packing facility. So I figured, what the hell, he’s good company, game to do it, and I have nothing better to do. Scrounged up a few bucks in bottles, turned in my pennies at Coinstar, and headed on up.

I did not leave disappointed.

Not going to win any accolades for a ‘greatest site EVAR’ or anything, but for Vermont, this is definitely very tangible and a very nice piece of our little talked about and ill fated industrial past.

While we’re on the topic of industrial past, this same friend happens to be a railroad enthusiast. Well…nut better describes it. He planted a bug in my ear, and it goes a little like this;

My friend: “You know, there’s a subway-like rail tunnel that goes right under Burlington.” Me: “HUH?!”

Story he tells me, is that he found a historical account of its existance in a railroad or other related local history text. It was supposedly to have started at the Intervale hill in what is now the Old North End, and have exited the tunnel again at the end of Battery Street near where the current Burlington railyard is, just a little left of the center of downtown.

When the tunnel was later de-comissioned and unused, he tells me the ends were sealed off by detonating explosives to effectively cave in each end of the tunnel.

Hmm.

Not sure about that part…but if the tunnel does exist…one thing is for certain. No matter how it got closed on either end, they wouldn’t have been able to effectively close off the middle without some serious manpower and time to fill it in. Enough to make them probably not want to deal with it. If the tip turns out to be true…ladies and gentlemen, I do believe we have a project on our hands. Patience, and research. This one isn’t sitting out in the open to scout out, (if it even exists at all,) and is going to take some planning and boring-ass bookwork locate.

Anyhow, that’s all for now, folks, please come back again. And again. And again and again.

DEER!

Wash, rinse, repeat. kthx.

The first thing we see inside is square RCP, kinda plain, but different. There was only a few inches of water, but it was moving fast. We proceeded on a bit to find the drain changed. It changed from boring RCP to freaking awesome stone and support beam things on the ceiling. There were also spiders in this part. Lots of big, shiny, scary spiders. I wanted to go on but T1 was a wimp and didn’t want to go past the spiders. If only we knew what we were getting into…

So we climbed out of the drain and decided to look on the other side of the highway for an outfall. Earlier that day I’d seen some kind of concrete in the woods over there, but I hadn’t checked it out. Eventually we found an ~5 foot tall corrugated metal pipe outfall. This could be it. So we went in there. This lead to an older metal pipe, that lead to an even OLDER metal pipe(sketchy like crazy). That lead to the same kind of square RCP we’d entered from the other side. There was a big tree branch lodged at the tunnel change.

After going through this square RCP we ran into the same kind of stone/steel bar reinforced type we’d seen on the other side. It was in pretty bad shape. The entrance to this area had a lot of foam, a log, and the sides had been washed out pretty bad. Up ahead were some cool stairs and across our way, but still passable, was a big log.
That’s when we saw it. A strap of something sticking out of the foam. At first we thought it was a belt or something. When we found it to be a backpack, I was afraid it was full of kittens. But instead it was filled with a 44 magnum, a colt 45, and two clips. We sat down and discussed what we should do. We determined the best course of action to be getting the backpack into T1’s jeep and taking it to the police station.

So, I put on the backpack-o’-guns and we rode our bikes back to the dorm where T1’s jeep was. He had a plastic bag handy so we put the bag in that and drove to the police station. I just walked up to the counter and said “we found guns” and proceeded to give a short explanation of where/why. They brought us in and questioned us separately after taking the guns from the jeep. The detective that I talked with was really nice. They were concerned with exactly where we found them, and why we were there. I had taken lots of pictures in there, and of the guns when we found them. So I gave him my CF cards. I think I did the right thing by not lying and making up some BS story for why we were there. I told the detective about our UE group, what we do, and even where we’ve done it. He was totally human and said we’d be fine, even though I mentioned an active site.

One of the officers was concerned about us not having small space training. He asked us what kind of gear we used, if we used rope, and stuff like that. None of us do, and he said they didn’t recommend us doing stuff like that. I totally understand his concern. We took this officer back to our entrances and showed him about where we though the guns were found. We didn’t actually go in though. After that they let us go home. But not ten minutes after I got back, the detective called and said he was done with my CF cards. I went down to the station to pick them up. He said he couldn’t get the odd numbered images. The odds were raws. My camera writes a nice raw and a low res shitty jpeg every time I hit the shutter. I’d offered to help de-raw them, but I guess they were cool with 25 quality 640×480 jpegs. I’m calling the station in two days to see what they’ve found out about the guns. Supposedly there was a double murder very close to that drain a few years ago.

Pictures here.

http://www.neueu.org/gallery/v/vermont/burlington/drains/guns/20060425/

I’ve just upgraded the forum software to the latest version and have fixed the “Find All Posts By…” feature under everyone’s profiles.

I have also added more items to the avatar gallery if you cannot come up with one on your own.

So… Head on over to the forums and discuss amongst your selves!

Number TWO

We now have a CafePress store that sells a growing variety of items, so help support our site and buy something cool.

-C1

We decided to head off to Claremont and check out some of the old mills and stuff around there. First we scouted out behind a building that looked as if it was being used for storage. First we saw a board ripped off a window, but kept looking. This lead us to find a big, heavy, free-sliding door. In we went. We were in a single massive room with some old looking equipment stored here and there. Closer inspection revealed this old equipment was really some nice antiques. An old cash register, a REALLY old TV, radio, stuff like that. If we didn’t conform to such high moral standards we could have made a pretty penny on ebay. Then I saw the motion sensors. There were two on the wall right next to the antiques. One had an LED that wasn’t doing anything while the other had no indicators of any kind. We took these as signs to leave. No authorities appeared, but we didn’t want to chance it and stayed out.

Then we hit up a tunnel leading to a room with some cool machinery in it, probably having something to do with an old mill. After that we proceeded to check out the foundation of some previously large structure across the river. There were some rooms left with old soda and beer bottles in them, old enough to not be considered garbage. I ran into a nice cement drainage tunnel that I had a liking for, I don’t know why I was the only one who explored it. Right down the hill from where we were was the leftovers of a building and a still-intact smokestack. In the basement of the building we found a little tunnel full of water that lead to a boring room. Not really worth wading through as much water as I did. The smoke stack had step irons in it. It was possible to get into, but the entrances were places I wasn’t sure I could get back out of.

Then we went home, or maybe I’m just tired of writing.