Adventure Log

Whew. Another update. Pictures will be coming, just not at the minute, as I'll explain in two seconds.

So I was sitting around in class, looking up random internets on my laptop, when I heard this awful clanking noise emanating from my cooling vent. It sounded like a screw had gotten loose inside and was stuck in the fan like a rock in butter.

I took out my handy-dandy jeweler's tools, and unscrewed my laptop case. I couldn't see the screw, but I could still hear it clinking around, so I took my laptop and gave it a pretty vigorous baby-shaking. Nothing fell out, so I reassembled the casing and pressed the power button. But it didn't turn on, not even after I pressed the stupid thing 40 times. Whoops.

Jon took a look at it that night, but he just shrugged and told me to buy a new computer. So I did, and now I'm typing on my brand-new touchscreen Tablet PC, which is a pretty sweet machine. Half the cost of my old laptop, but 3 times the RAM, speed, and hard drive space. The touchscreen is pretty cool too - I can finally draw directly instead of scanning all my pictures in.

The only downsides are the weird keyboard layout and the difficulty with writing on the screen. Sometimes the text-recognition program doesn't work very well - my lol's become (01's. Other than the few nitpicky things, it's an awesome computer. I'm sure I'll get used to it.

Anyways, adventures this week: A couple of the engineers suited up in formal wear (ties, dress shirts, skirts and dresses) and went to The WestEnd. It was a good night, but Nik and I were craving some adventure, so we decided to climb CNH. Lisa, Laura and Julianna tagged along with us. The night got off to a good start - we were running around, hiding from each other, and generally just playing around like drunk students will do. Things sorta went sour when we tried to explore Quarter's. The manager spotted us and called security. Nik and I had the presence of mind to RUN, but the girls weren't so smart and ended up getting cornered by the Mac 5-0, who kicked them off campus.

Nik and I saw the whole incident from the roof of CNH, and met up with the girls back at WestEnd. Julianna and Laura both went in for more drinks, but Lisa tagged along with us. We decided to go to the old trainyard, a couple blocks down east. It was dark and misty, and the trains cast long shadows on the ground, setting the atmosphere for an amazing night.

We hoisted ourselves up onto a long, trailing set of grain cars. I never realized how tall trains were. The one we climbed was nearly two stories, and about 30 cars long. We walked the entire length of the train, jumping across gaps between cars while keeping an eye out for the warehouse workers. It was cold and wet, but we were in adventure mode, so the weather didn't bother us much.

We explored the trainyard a little more and found a watchtower, about 80 feet tall. A single ladder went up all the way to the top, where we could see a small platform and a spotlight. The ladder had some sort of metal barrier on it, but we bypassed this by climbing the framing. We scaled our way to the top and sat 80 feet above the ground, in the strong wind, on a dangerously swaying tower.

On our way down, Nik dropped his knife and his cell phone. The cell fell all 80 feet onto hard gravel, while the knife narrowly missed my head by two feet. Fearing the worst, we climbed down quickly, jumping down rungs two at a time. Nik found his cell phone, and turned it on - only to find that it worked perfectly, without any damage at all. Just to note: Sony Ericssons are INDESTRUCTIBLE.

We went to the nearby golf course and told a couple ghost stories. We also played with the hole flags. We kept walking and walking, until we hit a road, and realized how far we'd actually come. We began at WestEnd, and ended up at Aberdeen and Longwood, about 5km away from our starting point. It took us a freaking hour to walk back, in the cold mist, at 4 a.m, and we ended up sleeping for a bit on a sidewalk. Amazing night.

It didn't end there though. This morning, I got up at noon and met Nik at his house. We walked down to the school and got on a totally random bus. We spent the entire day drifting from one bus to another, stopping at malls and stores and restaurants. There were a lot of interesting shops, and a lot of interesting people - crazy candy lady, one-arm man, and black sand man. I saw a lot of Hamilton I haven't seen before, and we'll definitely do it again soon.

It's 2 a.m. and I'm exhausted. Pictures coming soon, and I'll tidy this up sometime. Night.