November 08, 2006

We make it our job to act suspicious. Thus, on a misty Sunday morning in October, we loaded our gear in the back of my van, blasted Christian rock on the radio, and took off down the highway towards St. Thomas. I drove red-eyed and groggy, repeatedly trying to smash my car against incoming traffic. And it wasn’t just the radio that made me reckless.

“You shouldn’t be driving,” Martin said. “It could jeopardize the mission.”

“I’m usually awesome at this driving thing,” I reassured him. “It’s just that I spent a restless night with Laura.”

“What were you guys arguing about?” Simon asked.

“Anal sex.” There was silence, and I drove on.

It was raining slightly by the time we reached St. Thomas. I parked the van inconspicuously on a residential street, and we grabbed our ski masks, tripods, camera gear, and grappling hooks from the back.

“There’s nothing going on here,” we said as we waved to the grannies staring at us from their kitchen windows.

We skipped across the train tracks to find our target — the abandoned Alma College for Girls. Things changed at the college in months we’ve been away: the impressive Victorian structure seemed even more desolate in the autumn rain; there was now an abundance of “no trespassing” signs on all the walls; and security was seriously beefed up.

We circled around the building to find all the windows that were once accessible nailed shut.

“And you laughed at me for bringing my grappling hook,” I said, tensing my muscles to make sure it bit into the wall above us.

After climbing over 10 feet of pure exhilaration and vertical wall, we were finally inside. The interior was desolate and beautiful. Martin could hardly hide his enthusiasm. Simon was hungry. I took off all of my clothes. We ran from the top of the building to the bottom taking hundreds of photos and searching for secrets.

Hours later, we returned to our van filled with strange sadness and excitement. For a moment, we felt as though we understood the sorrow of abandoned buildings, and the hollow sound dreams make when they die. And there was nothing we could do about it, except remove our sky masks, unload our gear, and disappear into the quiet normalcy of a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Elsewhere on teh internets: Martin wrote a lovely entry about our adventure and Simon made me look intense.