Ispat Inland Steel - CHICAGO URBAN EXPLORATION

After a near miss rendezvous, close to Logan's Rhombus, we set out toward
the Steel plant. "You take the Skyway, we'll take the Highway, and we'll
be there before ya....", or so the old jingle goes. At the outskirts of
Chicagoland, looming out of the last refuge for the big shouldered, are
many large and unexplainable pieces of landscape. The further out, the
bigger and weirder they become.

When the backdrops became about as Brobdingnagian as one could hope, we
made our arrival. We dispensed with some cursory reconnaissance, and hid
our vessel such that it couldn't be seen from the nearby road. It was a
little freaky with the Skyway right overhead, as we could hear all the
cars whizzing past. Still, we were out of their minds as much as their
sight.

Superfly (on-the-wall), Megan, and I took in the surroundings, and tried to
divine a way to the other side of the fence. We had resolved to hit the
buildings at the entrance last for simplicity's sake. I was contemplating
pulling up part of the fence and going under it, but that's almost never
necessary. We simply walked "around" it, and then made towards some of
the more whacked out places.

Megan explained that Furywork had visited earlier in the week, and had
climbed up some rickety ladders in the large concrete monolith. Passing
that up, we go into a strange silo type building. It had sort of an evil
barn feeling to it, and a neat ventilation shaft but was otherwise not
that special. Outside on the right we pass by a crumbled structure, that
was something like a radiator writ large. All the while we are getting
closer to the interesting buildings. The scary looking places that our
mothers told us to stay away from.

We eyed a little gravelly road that had tracks that were somewhat
fresh looking. We could tell they were fresh partly because the tire ruts,
and partly because there wasn't any flora growing in the track. There's
another explanation that I didn't want to contemplate too much, that the
stuff the road is made of might just be too toxic. Never minding that my
mother warned me about such places, I looked both ways crossed the track
and made with a little haste to some refuge underneath a structure that
looked like it could have come out of one of Rube Goldberg's nightmares.
Crossing over right behind me, Superfly just heard me in time to look out
for some abstraction on the ground. For good measure, he ran into it
anyway. Luckily it was one of the least tetanus supplied rusted out traps
awaiting us. After a few moments our eyes adjusted to the darker
atmosphere. It was something like the underside of a peer made of I beams
and jagged pipes.

We wound our ways through a short series of nannies and crooks into a
canyon-like area between two halves of the same building. You could tell
that it was a little dusty here, because of the crepuscular rays that were
shining through inviting us to climb a set of stairs. Superfly tested
them slowly, they turned out to be nothing near as flimsy as they looked.
I came up to join him. We investigated the level a little and Megan came
up with us.

The wind picked up a might bit and the otherwise quiet place started to
make little creaks and sounds. It seemed to me like a Frankenstein
wind chime, with unrhythmic bangs and boings coming from here and
there. It was a little freaky because from our vantage point, we couldn't
see anything much but the various bits and pieces of the building we were
on that were threatening to stick us if we let our guard down. The door
to the "electrical room" was open, and still had power as there was a
light on. This led us to believe that it's not entirely disused.

We dropped back down, around the back of the buildings and out into the
open a little, along a back access road. There were some piles of gravel
here, and a closed up structure. The door was bore a sign that warned of
PCBs and other nasties inside, and was boarded up pretty well. That was
enough to disinterest us.

Going towards the entrance, there was a building foundation lacking a
building to cover it. Filled with water, it is the Cess Pool Victoria,
and provides rank water for all the local monsters. Don't get too close
to the crumbling edge if you decide to go for a drink! We briefly went
into the cement monolith building, and saw what there was to see on the
ground floor, deciding not to repeat Furywork's climbing feat this time
around.

Back on the other side of the fence we checked out old #4, and another
engine. The controls were all trashed, and rusted out. If Casey Jones
had an evil twin, he'd be have been driving one of these around.
The emergency building station was open, so we sauntered in despite the no
access signs. (We aren't employees after all.) The emergency station was
fairly typical, despite some cool lockers and a few things. I didn't
bring my swimming goggles, so we skipped out on the basement tour and set
out for home.

DANGERS
Asbestos, tripping, falling, rusty collapsing floors and steps, tetanus, PCBs and Ispat Inland security, (maybe).