The Wierdest Place you've been in?

[fyrwrxz]

Okay- so here's how the game evolved: We were sitting around telling war stories and that morphed into Cold War era bomb shelters we've been in and that changed into the vault hallway under Edsel Ford's mansion and that morphed into "weirdest places you've ever been". It's been going on for about a week now at work and it's eye-opening and hilarious sometimes. We've asked perfect strangers, just for fun. We're not talking about Pavement Ends, Arkansas or Road Narrows, Utah. My contributions are: The attic of the El Tovar Hotel (on the south rim of the Grand Canyon), inside of LOX and hydrogen tanks of an Atlas 1, the nose of a B-17 flying 150' off the water over South Otay Lake in So Cal. Get it? Where did you crawl into/out of?

 

[TopRamen]

Not sure if I want to answer, but I've been in some pretty weird places. Maybe tomorrow.

 

[fyrwrxz]

Not sure if I want to answer, but I've been in some pretty weird places. Maybe tomorrow.

Snow cave- you win 347 golden wizard stars-good for a down payment on a wet thumb print attaboy. One to a customer, please!

 

[paul.nortness]

My in laws

 

[dave carver]

My dad was stationed in Japan in the 60's. I was in the Boy Scouts when we went on a camping trip. We discovered some of the WWll underground hideing places they dug in anticipation of our projected invasion. Tunnels with rooms running off, shored up with timbers. Pretty spooky for a bunch of 12 year olds. The Japanese burned out the tunnels not long after that fearing that they might collapse on someone, most likely a wise move on their part.

 

[foamy]

A shooting gallery (a tenament where herion was bought and used, pre-crack) in deepest Newark, NJ.

As an accidental observer, someone with no business being there, the environment, people and goings-on were fairly surreal. The truth is stranger than fiction.

 

[Peartree]

Infiltration tunnel under the DMZ in Korea big enough to drive a Jeep through. I had the feeling that this was what the beginning of Armageddon might look like.

 

[H_Rocket]

Inside a radio transmitter operating at 1.6MW (AN/FPN-45)
Inside a 7' diameter navigation buoy

 

[patelldp]

A shooting gallery (a tenament where herion was bought and used, pre-crack) in deepest Newark, NJ.

As an accidental observer, someone with no business being there, the environment, people and goings-on were fairly surreal. The truth is stranger than fiction.

I was just in Newark last weekend for a Devils game, and your description of "deepest" Newark appears to have crept into "all of" Newark. My wife and I went to a bar after the game (Kilkenny Alehouse) for a drink because we were a little concerned with the goings on outside. On our way back, we walk past a BMW, Infiniti, and a Range Rover that were parallel parked. The guy driving the Infiniti was out of his car with a literal liter of vodka, taking swigs on the side of the street. The BMW driver was doing the same except he was in the car, and the Range Rover had a group of young women drinking, smoking, and other things in there.

Come to find out there was a dance club across the street that was mobbed at the door. Looks like they were just looking to get whatever chemicals they could into their system so they didn't have to buy them inside.

 

[Cl(VII)]

The nuclear reactor at NIST. There are partially unshielded areas of the core for a cold neutron beam to escape. If I remember correctly they aim the beam using a giant aluminum prism which sits on a turrit from a decomishioned battle ship to turn it. The cold neutron beam is cooled by liquid hydrogen, and the walkways are over and around all this stuff. There are lead bricks stacked everywhere, and you can't help but look at your radiation monitoring badge repeatedly.

I am sure the entire thing is very safe, but to a nuclear layperson the whole things looked very haphazard. Science is often that way though...with rare exception, my experience has been the only people with perfectly clean, well lit, orderly labs are doing computational work or the laser folks.

 

[gdiscenza]

Excavated ruins beneath the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem, which date back to 300 BC.

G.D.

 

[K'Tesh]

Inside the display case of the original copy of the Declaration of Independence (you know, the part that retracts underground to protect it from being damaged or stolen).

While the new one was being built in a bronze factory in Oregon, I was able to inspect it (with permission) by a tour guide. Who knows, if they didn't clean it well enough, my fingerprints may still be on it.

I've also been inside a room with two live nuclear bombs. Of course, I wasn't alone, as nuclear weapons protocol requires that two people must be able to observe each other at all times to prevent any tampering.

 

[Getmore]

When I was stationed in Germany I went to a old concentration camp where they burned the Jews in furnaces. I was able to look in them and it was a silent moment thought that how a person could do things like that. From there they took the ashes and placed them in a small hole in the ground with a square brick with a number on it . Very sad place but it was a good experience.

 

[RocketGeekInFL]

In the Necropolis underneath the Catacombs of the Vatican. Walking the streets of the original cemetery that was built on Vatican hill over 2000 years ago. Saw St. Peters tomb and his bones. Through some pretty thick bullet proof glass.

 

[Coop]

I guess I've been in more weird situations than places.


Later!

--Coop

 

[T-Rex]

to me they seem normal because it's all job related....
Inside a steam generator (boiler) for a nuclear power plant.
Inside an electricity generator
Under USS Enterprise while it was in dry dock

 

[Kirk G]

Not sure that it is so weird a physical place, (although I think cave spelunking or touring a cave would really rate up there: Lost River Cavern, Smoke Hole Caverns, etc)...
the weirdest place I found myself in was 25 years ago at a gathering of people right outside the Garden Grove, CA police station. I couldn't figure out why all these young people, bikers, leather jackets, and assorted races were standing around, so I asked someone what it was. I had to ask twice, cause i couldn't believe my ears. It was an open air weekly meeting of Heroin addicts anonymous. I was stunned. All I could think to say was, "Wow...that's cool that you can give each other help!" And i walked away without starring at any of them.

 

[rbelknap]

Probably not as weird as some others in this thread, but I ended up in the backroom/repair workshop for space mountain once. Our car made a left turn instead of a right to go up the ramp after being loaded on. The cast members in the back were surprised to see 4 high school students riding in on the car they were told to inspect, or something. They walked us back out and we got in another car. We thought it was pretty cool to get a peek behind the curtain at the time.

 

[Andy Greene]

Not weird but kinda cool, x father in law had a suite at the then Ice Palace in Tampa where the Lightning play, after games I figured out a way downstairs to the locker rooms. We would sit in on the coaches press conferences after the games and even ask questions then make our way to the locker room and talk with the players- gots lots of good autographed sticks and gear, the players thought it was funny I had gotten away with it for darn near 3 seasons. Plenty of times busting azz out on the ice after the game in tennis shoes too Been in more funky attics/crawl spaces- and awkward place to work than I care to think, being only 5ft 5 I get all the small spots ............

 

[tightwad]

In lava tube, on a Hawian island, in a chamber surrounded by hundreds of human skulls stacked in top of each other and standing on a pile of bones!

 

[Kirk G]

In lava tube, on a Hawian island, in a chamber surrounded by hundreds of human skulls stacked in top of each other and standing on a pile of bones!

Oh, that's a good one, TW.... I had forgotten the Thurston Lava Tube... that was a very interesting tunnel to walk. I should have listed that up front!
(And the chamber with hundreds of human skulls is NOT in the Thurston Lava Tube, by the way.)

 

[Scotty Dog]

One cool place was lava tubes/caves in (I think) Flagstaff,AZ.
Ive been in my wifes head,that was SCARY!!!!!!

 

[Zeus-cat]

Inside a decommissioned nuclear reactor at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. The Air Force Institute of Technology used the reactor building for classrooms. Repurposing taken pretty darn far.

Walking through the bomb bay of a B-17 in flight. The walkway is about 4 inches wide.

The burial chamber of the Giza pyramid.

 

[Fuse Eh!]

In one of the Maritime provinces there is a twisting narrow road that winds along the coast until you reach what has every appearance of being "the point of no return". When we visited there a number of years ago there were a number of vehicles edged off to the side of the road that looked as if they had simply been abandoned where they died. The whole area had a look of severe desolation, and the few dwellings scattered about made Appalachian hill-billy cabins look like mansions in comparison. We only saw a couple of people in their yards, but even they were reminiscent of the type of folk featured in "Deliverance". To this day the mere memory of the place and the people gives me the creeps!:y:

 

[chadrog]

Carny camp, when the annual festival came through town a few years ago. As scary as you'd imagine.

 

[Worsaer]

Weird and undesirable - inside a garbage truck, along with 20 tons of rubbish. (Maggots would drop to the floor like zombie paratroopers, and would inexplicably all crawl in unison in the same direction across the shop floor.)

 

[hornet driver]

Back in the day--college--A couple of my frat bros and I went to and old hospital. It was going to be demolished in a few weeks and had been abandoned for years. The area was fenced off and the building was in disrepair. We climbed the fence and entered through a broken window. On a side note--we had a couple before we got there--anyway, This place really gave me the creeps. Rats running around with other assorted wildlife. Broken glass everywhere and a lot of old stuff left around. Mind you, we did this at night. The real creeper was going into the old kitchen area and the freezers. They smelled musky and there were still meat hooks in the steel and there were old beat up knives and cleavers in some of the drawers--stained--. I think we hung around for about an hour and that was enough. Between the sounds we heard and the sounds we thought we heard, we had enough --------outside of that ,the only place that I really hated was our basement at my parents house--it was finished but with the lights out---ain't goin down there !! there was just something waiting down there---

 

[Zeus-cat]

In one of the Maritime provinces there is a twisting narrow road that winds along the coast until you reach what has every appearance of being "the point of no return". When we visited there a number of years ago there were a number of vehicles edged off to the side of the road that looked as if they had simply been abandoned where they died. The whole area had a look of severe desolation, and the few dwellings scattered about made Appalachian hill-billy cabins look like mansions in comparison. We only saw a couple of people in their yards, but even they were reminiscent of the type of folk featured in "Deliverance". To this day the mere memory of the place and the people gives me the creeps!:y:

OK, you need to tell me where this place is. My wife has started planning our vacation this year and we are headed to the Maritimes!

 

[Darian Rachal]

Back in 1991 I was down in La Paz, Mexico for a total eclipse of the sun. A couple of the guys and I caught a cab to go into town. The driver started down some road heading out in the country and we ended up in a bar with a bunch of hotel rooms connected. We went in, had a drink, listened to the band a little while, then some women came out and stood across the bar room from us. It was a bit 'scary', so we left a tip, and told the driver to take us into town. The rest of the evening was not quite as eventful.

 

[TopRamen]

I guess it would have to be Treetops Outspan in Kenya in 1986. It's a Hotel Treehouse in the Jungle. Baboons and Monkeys climb all over it. There are Bars on the Windows, but they manage to stick their little Paws through them and knock things over or pull things out through them.
I was going down a Spiral Staircase there and came Face to Face with a Large angry Baboon, who showed me his Teeth. I backed away back up the Stairs and he left me alone.
As far as "Weird" that would be about the Weirdest for me.