Yesterday, we embarked upon our last local adventure before our big trip north. The target was Henryton hospital. I have to confess to making the same mistake again –perception wise anyway (see previous post). My sister, asked me tonight, after hearing this story, how many of my nine exploring lives have I used up. I have to say I’m getting up there, hence the title of this entry. In all fairness, this time, I tried to make our entry easier — not harder — this shows I am learning from my mistakes. But I’m still verging on what could be called a disaster waiting to happen. I think it originates with my with perception/assumption struggle. I just need to learn to get it right on the right day at the right time. Yesterday I got it wrong. I should have taken the hard entry. Yesterday was not meant to be a picnic day. I read it wrong — as it turned out — very wrong.

I first visited Henryton hospital close to a year ago. It was my first hospital. I remember being very excited. I had researched the place and read about how to enter. A year ago I was very thorough about my research but alas I’ve become a bit gung-ho lately. I have also, (since the first visit) been given permission to roam (well not exactly roam, I think I’m supposed to contact them and have a supervised visit) Henryton so yesterday I was completely unfazed by the parking/entry debate.  My intentions were to do what I had done a year ago and I did just that only this time parking was even easier.

The first visit, contrary to advice, we parked at the front gates on Henryton Rd and left the car there for the day, rather than park much farther away and hike along the train tracks. Everything went smoothly and we didn’t get into any trouble. I remember thinking to myself after we’d left: paranoid kids, why do they think they have to walk so far—just park at the gate and walk in. Also please keep in mind I’m old and the trek along the tracks didn’t excite me in the least.

So, I ask you dear reader, isn’t it only natural a year later that I will repeat my behavior and seek to park at the closest possible point to where I eventually want to be? Of course it is. But yesterday there was an added bonus. The gate to Henryton’s winding, overgrown driveway was open! So I did the obvious — I drove in. I mean, really, who wouldn’t? I turned to my exploring partner and said, “Ohh look the gates have been broken since I was last here, cool huh, we don’t have to walk,” and so in we drove, down the eerie, twisted road.

We spent a fun and somewhat comfortable (the car and it’s heater were never more than 200 ft. away) 6-7 hours photographing Henryton. When it came time to leave I imagined we would drive right out of those gates with the same ease we drove in. I was wrong. When we reached the gates they were closed and padlocked with a very heavy chain. Henryton had us! We were stuck, it was almost dark, my cell phone was almost dead and I was wondering just how serious this latest screw up of mine might turn out to be.

To be continued….

Several posts ago I mentioned my interest in how we perceive things. I was hopeful we were cured of falling for false perceptions after our little door episode at Rosewood – the door that opened, the one we assumed we needed to crawl through because it had a missing panel. Perhaps the thread I’m returning to is really about assumptions and not perceptions, or perhaps the two are intrinsically linked or are one and the same. I’m not really sure. All I know is we did it again. And what we did once again is really, really dumb, and we’re both really NOT dumb.

We returned to the scene of the crime today, so to speak. Not because we wanted to go back but because last visit we missed out on exterior shots of the hospital, (we accidently stayed inside until it became dark, we have a habit of losing track of time) and because neither of us are particularly happy with our interior shots. They’re very blah. They’re fine in the context of a story-- but who knows who reads our stories, probably no one -- so as stand alone photos they don’t really have much to say, and they certainly would never move anyone in any way.  Who cares about a bunch of disused medical equipment that still looks as though it could be in use—the shots are just very boring. So we went back today to try and salvage a gallery for this place.

Now this is where it gets funny. On our first visit to this site we parked miles away from the entrance and dutifully searched for a hole in the outlying fence. As “urban explorers” we are self-convinced we're breaking the law, albeit in a round about sort of way and eventually we found a small hole and squeezed under and became very muddy in the process. Today, because we didn’t feel as though we were doing anything wrong, we parked at the front gates and walked in through the entrance. Duh! Why didn’t we do this two weeks ago? I have no answer.

While we were getting our gear out of the trunk a woman walked out of the gates of this “no trespassing” property with her dog, a gorgeous old Golden Retriever. She says “hi” we say “hi,” we say “what a gorgeous dog”…blah blah. Not two minutes later another woman walks through the gates with three little white fluffy dogs in tow. Same thing, we exchange the regular pleasantries, her dogs are so cute we offer to take them home, she laughs. We laugh. She loads the dogs into her car and drives off. She smiles and laughs. I don’t want to laugh. I want to shoot myself, or at least have my head examined. This is not funny. We’re not breaking into anything -- we’re visiting a bloody dog park.

Two weeks ago we snuck around like 007 senior and junior-- I’m senior and explorer 2 is junior. After this episode I’m convinced I need to be demoted. What are we thinking? Although to be fair it really is what am I thinking, I’m the one supposed to know what I’m doing (at the moment I’m being taught to use the word we so I’m practicing here). But in this case I think I should take full responsibility and say “I.” I’m crazy. I assume, perceive whatever the correct word is that because I’m doing something I shouldn’t be doing I need to make it as hard as it can possibly be. It doesn’t need to be. I just need to bring the dog!

I found this first little guy, actually really big guy, at a massive power plant a couple of months ago. He's been sitting around doing nothing because he can't really be posted in my "serious" galleries (and he freaks my fellow explorer out). And then it struck me, while I was cleaning off my desktop and he was about to end his life in the trash, I could add a Santa hat to his previous eye job and he'd be all ready for the holidays. I came across a friend for him at the VA hospital -- so now they can have a holiday party of sorts.

This entry was going to be entitled WALL-E and waste because I collapsed on the couch and watched WALL-E, the movie, the evening after exploring the hard to get into VA hospital. While I was watching WALL_E I couldn’t stop thinking about all the unnecessary waste we encountered. I see it all the time, everywhere I explore, but I don’t usually watch a movie about waste afterward. I could just see WALL_E buzzing about the building we explored and neatly compacting everything inside it. But as the week has progressed and stuff happens and work is crazy and all of a sudden it just hits you -- work and the weekend collide -- and there’s this sound. Let me explain.

The entire time we were inside the main hospital building a smoke alarm detector with a dying battery taunted us—beep, long pause, beep, long pause, beep, long pause, beep etc. It seemed as though every time we entered another floor it sounded. We both wondered at one point if it was a motion sensor and we were going to get busted. I convinced my exploring partner it was just a smoke detector but I have a feeling she didn’t believe me.  So, Monday morning I get to work and we have a dying smoke detector---beep, long pause, beep, long pause -- you get the idea. I though ohh no I’m being stalked by a sound. Today is Wednesday and the smoke detector is still in its last throes—sound synchronicity.

But there’s more. Back to work and weekends. Presently we’re moving offices. After twenty-three years in the same building (a very old building) a large university department is on the move. I can’t even begin to explain the chaos. I won’t even try. My boss and I had an appointment yesterday and we were stuck in traffic, so we got talking. I rattled off a list of things I would like from our present office (we’re not allowed to take anything to the new building -- I did not ask her for the dying smoke alarm) I need bookshelves, desperately, really desperately, I think I actually need enough to outfit a library, but I’d be happy with one or two and a filing cabinet or two.

My boss is a sweetheart and said, “I’d love to let you have them but everything is state surplus. We can’t take anything.” And then it hit me. I saw our current building like I see my weekend buildings – further evidence of synchronicity -- full of “state surplus,” “federal surplus.” I have another term for it “insane surplus.”  Now in all honesty, because I’m trying to be good like my fellow explorer and be more factual with my stories (although, personally, I think I am very factual I just add and omit a little more than she does), our building will probably be cleaned out because I know of a center within the university chomping at the bit for our building. BUT, I can just see it as I saw the VA hospital.

The VA hospital is heartbreakingly full of useful items “federal surplus,” particularly furniture. I live in a town full of nonprofits crying out for this stuff. We have so many homeless, the VA hospital has beds, and the VA hospital has seriously useable stuff. It’s rotting. It will look like Forest Haven one day. Why? If there is anyone out there, alive, who can explain bureaucracy to me – please explain. Who invented all this bullshit? It is something I will never understand until the day I die. We have so much, we throw it away, we create more, and everyday we are one day closer to needing WALL-E. Makes you think doesn’t it. Well it makes me think. I can only hope it does you too.

Lately, we’ve been really lucky entry wise. I’m not sure if it’s my age or because I’m a photographer first and a pseudo “urban explorer” second but I like an easy entry. I like to park within comfortable walking distance — fifty steps is nice — I know I can pop back to the car for lunch. I can turn the car heater on, now the weather has changed, and warm up while I have lunch.  I can clean up a bit before I eat. I like comfortable exploring it makes the day more like a picnic.

Now don’t get me wrong I will take on the tough ones with the best of them. I just don’t deliberately look for them.  I’ve shimmied my way up a tree trunk as wide as a fireman’s pole in order to hang a fire ladder out of a second story window for my companions to climb (they’re old too). I’d still love a video of that one. I’ve climbed what I estimate to be at least a seventy-five foot coal chute, which at the time felt like a one million mile coal chute. And I’ve dragged my equipment to the top of a two hundred foot bluff and felt decidedly sorry for myself upon breathlessly reaching the top, yet full of thanks for having the sense to quit smoking two years ago. I’ve been ripped apart by blackberry bush vines with voracious appetites for human flesh— so I’ve had some experiences and I think it’s fair to say I can predict how I will feel the next day — really, really sorry for myself.  The day following these non-picnic escapades I awake moaning, not just because I’m not in my twenties anymore, but also because I hurt. I accept all this graciously, or rather I pretend to, but this week there is no gracious about it, I am really annoyed with my body for behaving like it’s old.  I didn’t do anything this week to deserve how I felt the next day!

Sure, it took us two hours to get in, which annoys me to say the least. In all honesty I start sulking after the first hour; I become more brazen and just storm all over the grounds (where I’m not meant to be) complaining about the lack of entry points—I’m not used to being foiled and I don’t take well to it. I’ve had one non-entry out of thirty-one locations and I don’t want to make a habit out of it. I didn’t want Saturday’s adventure to be two out of thirty-two.

But! But! I did not do anything ridiculously strenuous or suicidal (which I have been known to do for a good shot). Saturday was a run of the mill basement entry.  It was a low, actually very low, maybe only three feet high basement. Now in hindsight, trying to describe it, maybe it wasn’t even a basement. It was the underbelly of the building. It held pipes and other stuff that hospitals need to function. I know now what it was. It was the hellish bowels of a once functioning edifice. It contained a cruel maze of pipes that attacked my skull (I have a sore head too). It pretended to be a basement to lure us in.  We couldn’t crawl through the underbelly hellish pipe maze—it was too muddy —so we hunched.  It was hunch or crawl through unpleasant looking mud. You can see why hunching won. My body can’t. My body doesn’t see or understand what my eyes see that make my mind force my body to do things that will hurt the next the day. Mind over body every time — ha, I wished — how much more peaceful my life would be if that were the truth. But, anyway, back to age and entry and PAIN.

We have an exploring trip planned in a few weeks— six places in five consecutive days—complete insanity. What did I learn from this week’s pain? Pain I can only attribute to hunching —I am old and I need to get in shape. I have 26 days. I’m worried.