Trip to the abandoned Sideling Hill Tunnel

Last year, Stefan and I explored a ghost town, Centralia, PA. Centralia was a bit disappointing because all of the buildings had been demolished and it wasn’t really as isolated as we thought. But this year's trip was a different story. 

I never get tired of walking down a stretch of abandoned road. It evokes a sort of primal emotion in that I think about the end of things, that all of our mighty human civilization could one day be just as abandoned as this one stretch and it shows you how fragile our civilization is that without maintenance our roads would begin to becomes patches of weeds and overgrown trees.     

This year, Stefan and I visited an abandoned stretch of the Pennsylvania Turnpike and braved the complete darkness of the 1.3 mile long abandoned Sideling Hill tunnel.

I just read the short story “Nightfall” by Isaac Asimov this week. In that story a civilization developed on a planet that orbits 6 suns. On this planet at least one of the suns is always shining. Therefore these people have almost no concept of darkness. They have a level of technology comparable to ours and yet they never even invented the light bulb and only recently developed the candle. Their scientists have theorized that there is soon to be a total eclipse and their world will be filled with darkness for 15 minutes. One of their religions tells a story that when darkness fills the skies you can see stars in the sky, but no one knows if the story is true. On the planet, there was a once a ride at an amusement park. In the ride people where taken into a long tunnel for several minutes and put into complete darkness. This ride had to be shut down as 1 in 10 people were driven irrevocably mad by exposure to the darkness. When astronomers studied the upcoming eclipse they  theorized that the eclipse occurs every 2000 years. And it seems that their civilization has risen and fallen 6 or 7 times and each time it mysteriously collapses after 2000 years. Will the eclipse cause 10% percent of the population to be driven insane? Will their civilization collapse?

Well, you’ll have to read the story to answer those questions, but I will tell you whether 1.3 miles of darkness drove me insane. No, it didn’t, but I had my penlight and my good friend to get me through it. The two of us sang songs into the darkness and played chicken, each one refusing turn on their flashlights on or admit that we couldn’t see in the complete darkness.

And when we’d gotten through the tunnel there was nothing to do but go back, but we didn’t go back the way we came, we explored the building and found our way to the air vents on the top of the tunnel. When the tunnel was used there were two sets of huge turbines on either side of the tunnel that pushed the hot air that collected in the vents out of the tunnel.

 
This shot shows you how big those turbines are.
 

The darkness of the main tunnel was bad enough, walking through more than a mile of this completely dark “attic” was an almost unbearable idea at first. After every few feet there were holes cut into the concrete for the air to flow upwards, so these had to be avoided. And, I’m afraid of heights so from the second I first stepped onto the “attic” and saw one of the holes, I started shaking a little bit. Not to mention the fact that neither of us was 100% sure they were safe. I mean we’d just walked the tunnel and hadn’t seen any signs of structure problems, but the tunnel was completely dark, we hadn’t exactly seen every inch of it. And as we walked we started to realize that the shaft was getting smaller. Suddenly we both had to stoop while walking. Being a short guy I’m not used to having to stoop and so I kept hitting my head on the ceiling. Every step of the way we’d wonder if the next step was safe, but we shined our lights and looked for signs that someone had been up there and there were occasionally empty beer cans or cigarette butts, which proved to us we were the only people crazy enough to make this journey. When we got halfway through the tunnel we saw a brick wall up ahead. This was obviously to separate the area controlled by one set of turbines from the other. For a couple minutes as we walked towards the brick wall we didn’t know if we’d be forced to turn around and walk all the way back the way we’d come. Fortunately there was a small metal door in the center of the brick wall, which had been left open.

By the halfway point, I was no longer scared, I knew with every step we were closer to the end and we had figured out the pattern of the holes in the floor. We started singing again and making jokes. The vent was a tremendous echo chamber so no matter what you sang or said it reverberated all around the tunnel. I had to wonder whether anyone was walking through the main tunnel while we were going through the air vent and I wonder what they made of suddenly hearing “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” vocals and background vocals, coming from an unknown location in the tunnel. Did they guess where we were? Did they think we were nuts?

Eventually we made it through the tunnel. We had faced the heart of darkness or the darkest depth of the darkest darkness and survived unscathed.

Trip to Centralia, PA

My friend Stefan and I took a trip to Centralia, PA, a town that has been largely abandoned since the early 80’s because of a coal mine fire that has been burning underneath the town since the late 70’s.

We read about the town online and got mixed accounts so we didn’t really know what to expect.

We saw pictures of craters and steam rising up out of them online. (Here is one of our own pics).



I pictured a post apocalyptic looking town with various abandoned building and craters thoughout the town. I also thought that all the roads into the town had been blocked off, so I though we’d have to hike in and out. I thought the only people we’d see would be the 5 residents that Wikipedia said still lived in the town.

Wikipedia also said that a boy had fallen into a sinkhole and had to be rescued by a quick acting uncle. I was skeptical about this account, but we decided to be cautious and bring a full pack with water, food and rope.

The coolest part of the day was walking on a mile long stretch of Highway 61 which has been blocked off due to massive cratering. Walking this road felt like being in Mad Max or the Postman (The novel, I didn’t care for the movie).



However we quickly realized we were over prepared for the day as it was a popular spot for parents to bring their whole family and there was even ample parking in various spots. The reworked stretch of Highway 61 still goes through Centralia.

Also disappointing was that there are no buildings left abandoned except for one right off of Route 61 and the 4 or 5 houses that people still live in. Everything else had been demolished and the remains cleared away. It was hard to tell that a town had every actually been there.

Stefan and I wandered around for most of the afternoon thinking that around every curve we’d hit a clearing and find blocks of abandoned building. Instead the day turned out to be mostly a nature hike.

There are also huge hills of coal in one part of town.




Don’t get me wrong it was still a lot of fun. For instance we were goofing off at the end of the day and I told Stefan to pretend he could repel into the biggest crater.



There are a lot more pictures on photobucket, just click on one of the pictures here and you can click through everything.

A Pivotal Moment...

I almost got into a bad car accident a couple of months ago. I was driving home to Philadelphia from visiting my hometown in New York. I was on I-476 S, so I only had a half-hour left of my trip. I saw the car ahead of me swerve; he lost control and went into the highway divider on the left. The force with which he hit it spun him around and he ended up going back across the highway. I’d slammed on my brakes and I ended up stopping right in front of the car. Luckily no one was right behind me or I probably would have gotten rear-ended.

For a second or two afterwards I thought something along the lines of, “Holy shit! I’m okay.” Then I thought I should get out and see if the driver was okay, but there would soon be a line of cars in back of me and there was space enough on the shoulder to get past the accident so I told myself it was safer to get a ways up the highway so my car wasn’t in the way when the tow-truck and police cars arrived. They didn’t need another car right there blocking traffic, especially when it wasn’t even damaged. But when I got past the accident I realized an entrance ramp was just up ahead so I couldn’t leave my car on an entrance ramp and by the time I got past that the accident seemed so far back. How would I get back over there? I’d have to walk down the highway. Fear had entered in and so I just keep driving, but it was an experience that was impossible to forget.

Why didn’t I get over into the left lane right past the accident, stop the car, and put on my hazards? No one would have been able to drive past the accident on that side. I might have been the first one to stop. I have no way of knowing what kind of injuries the driver suffered. I could have helped him or her. Maybe there were others in the car. I’m no physician, but I could have done something. I’m sure someone else stopped, but I can’t shake the feeling that I let fear cause me to put up a “Someone Else’s Problem field” and I just drove away.

There’s a song by the Mighty Mighty Bosstones whose lyrics I’ve always liked: “I’m not a coward, I’ve just never been tested. I’d like to think that if I was I would pass.” I can’t help but feel like that accident was a test and I can’t help but feel like I failed the test.

You’d think I would have passed. I grew up on comicbooks and read about daring heroes in each issue. One of the best-known comic stories in Spider-man’s origin from Amazing Fantasy 15. When Peter Parker first receives his spider powers he uses them for personal gain. He becomes a wrestler and an entertainer. One night he lets a robber get into an elevator and escape the police when he could have easily stopped him. “Not my problem,” he tells the police officer. But, it was his problem because the following night that same robber hits his Aunt and Uncle’s house and his Uncle Ben is shot and killed when he confronts the robber. This event would forever haunt Spider-man and causes him to devote his life to crime fighting.

I can’t help but feel like that accident was my pivotal moment and like Spider-man I just let it go by without acting and like Spider-man I’ll always regret it. However, this is reality and I’m not superhero, but this experience has begun to shape my character a little bit. I find myself compelled to help people anyway I can as if a lifetime of helping friends move or walking the neighbor’s dog while they’re away will somehow make up for my past shortcomings

But this certainly isn’t penance; I don’t have the true superhero complex. I don’t believe I did an unforgivable thing, which must be made up for through a lifetime devotion to selflessness and suffering. No, I just want to be a better person, I want to be a blessing to those around me and I don’t want to be a victim of my fears.

Wizard Mask 2010

I recently had the privilege of being made into an old evil wizard by Jim LoSasso, a make-up artist for television and movies. What do you all think? By the way the woman in the last picture is my lovely wife, how's that for beauty and the beast?