Saturday, September 3, 2016
Week: 4
Songs to Remember: La Femme - Hypsoline
Before I went to this mall with my buddies, a couple of the original people who were planning to (not necessarily buddies, just, mutual friends) bailed and didn't go. Had I chose not to go because of that, this impromptu special would not have happened.
Have there been other impromptu specials? Probably, but not as bizarre as this one. What, going to mall is not a bizarre impromptu special? I agree, it's not, but that's not what made this episode a special. I'll get into it.
Well first, left the house at around 12:00 PM. My parents decided to have me and them eat at a restaurant near the mall (not the one near where I live, the usual one where go to the movies and shit, but the one near where I used to live. I havent been there in forever) and then grocery shop at a place right next to there, so when we're finished, my friends would arrive and I'd be right there to tag along. So that's what we did, and I went to the arcade (where we would spend most of our time, or, most of some of my other buddies' time) and met up with Et, Vb, DrewN, and Jk.
We spent some time in this arcade, played some games, etc. After a bit, DrewN, Jk, and I decided to just walk around the mall for a bit. It's actually bigger than the one near my house, considering it has 2 floors, but it wasn't like "big" big. We just browsed some shops for a bit, told each other some jokes, etc. There was a Barnes & Noble Bookstore there, which I haven't been to in a long, long long time. Around 3:00 PM -ish, we stopped actually checking places out, and instead, probably Jk's and DrewN'a idea, 'cause I wasn't aware of it yet, checked girls out.
So we basically scoured the entire mall, not even kidding, the entire mall, going up and down the escalators, essentially stalking some that we've deemed "okay" to go for. "Okay," as in, not with their mom or dad, and not older than, say, 20. Because for some reason, about 75% of the girls there, were with their mom or dad. I'm like "Is it 'Bring your parent to the mall day' or something?" Anyways, it went on for a good bit, and by that I mean, 'till Et and I had to leave to go have dinner with our other buddies, the Discord chat with Ec. Jl, Mc, and Cy. DrewN went for it once, but yeah, he did get rejected. Doesn't matter 'cause, well, we'll never see that girl and her friend ever again. So, nothing to lose really. Also forgot to mention that one of the former KDT co-presidents was at the mall, cameo-ing into the special. She seemed familiar and I didn't recognize her 'till she said hi first. And of course I was really easy recognize due to, me wearing my KDT shirt.
By 6:30 PM or so, Et and I left to go to the restaurant. By left I mean, call my dad. He arrives at at around 6:45 PM, and by the time he drove to the mall to pick us up and drive (and find) directions to the place, it was already 7:20 PM. There was a pretty big line outside, with a waiting list. Our buddies actually finished, considering we arrived so late, and, well, eating by ourselves (ourselves as in, Et and I) would be pretty shit, so we didn't really care about getting seats. We went to this milk tea place right across in the same plaza and got milk tea, that was supposed to be it.
I'd call my dad to pick us up, he'd drop Et hone, I go home, that'd be it. Well, Mc suggested something about "the pipes." "Hey, we're gonna go to the pipes after." Et and I weren't in the mood for waiting in a bootleg-ass restaurant, and although our "curfew" was like, before 9:00 PM and shit, I mean, we never really see each other all that often, ya know? So, might as well go along. "Fuck it."
There was only room for 5 people in Mc's car, and Jl was going to go home anyways, so, it was just me, Mc, Ec, Et, and Cy in the car. I actually didn't recgonize Cy because, I never actually saw him in person before, heh. I was like "Who the fuck did they bring with them?" Little did I know, that was Cy, a buddy of ours that we've known since our Skype group days. Jl and Cy were actually Mc's friends, and we didn't know about them until he added them to our old Skype group chat (which we haven't used in ages after we moved to Curse Voice and now Discord).
So we're in the car, I'm not telling my dad shit because, it was only about 8:00 PM did we leave the plaza, and, considering the line and shit, my dad would be a bit too suspicious about us eating at all. 40 minutes is not enough time to wait for our seats then wait for our food and then indulge on it. So I didn't tell him anything, and, I was expecting to get dropped off back at the plaza by 9 something. For that, it'd be fine since about 2 or so weeks ago, I spent about 3+ hours at that Korean BBQ restaurant for Ek's birthday, and it was around, 10:30 PM or so.
And of course, it's not like I do this all the time, I ain't spending time with friends 'till 10:00 PM every night. And to top it all off, it's a labor day weekend, which just makes it all the more plausible. Anyways, we go to where Mc, Jl, and Cy live in a city about, 15 minutes away from where Et and I live. For my mom, this would be a really bad no-no. For starters, it's late. It's also in a city 15 minutes away, and, we're a group of 5 teenagers packed into a car, with a buddy of ours driving, who got his license, just about, maybe 2 weeks ago.
And I do trust him, he got a good-ass score on his driving test, and I've known him for a long time. However there was one thing I didn't like, which was, texting and driving. Now he wasn't texting while "driving," but, checking messages and sending the occasional text during red lights. Which is fine in some cases but, I'd just prefer for that shit to wait. Might as well take no risks, ya know. We almost missed a stop sign actually, heh, but, we were okay, and the car didn't halt to a jerk-y stop. We were okay, no problems, no crashes, no honking, we were a-okay.
That almost-stop-sign-miss was from Mc looking at something else, not because of the texting, by the way. Around 8:20 PM, we finally reach Cy's house. We parked, went inside to pee, and, just got ready to go to "the pipes." By the way, Cy's house was pretty baller, it was a two-story, and, yeah, heh. And luckily his parents weren't home, they, weren't in the country actually, but his aunt was. In which, we didn't really see her or cause any disturbance or anything.
Just before setting out for "the pipes," we got a flashlight, pretty small and bright, and, we checked our phones' battery lives. We were all sitting pretty low, around 40, 30, 20%, so we had to use our phone flashlights sparingly. "The pipes" was supposedly about a 3-minute walk from Cy's so, we headed out his house and headed for "the pipes." I didn't actually ask Mc what "the pipes" were or was. I just assumed it was like a skate park 'cause ya know, "pipes" and "half-pipes?" It makes sense.
Apparently it was supposed to be really dark too. I figured that Mc meant the path to "the pipes" was dark, so I was like "There's no streetlights on the road there?" There were some dark streets we had to venture through (it was basically a straight line from his house, then a turn or two to get there). On the way there, supposedly, there was an opening through this foresty area. I thought it was just a detour, like a little mini-adventure before we went to "the pipes." So, I naturally went along. It was actually pretty dark and unless we had flashlights, it would've been extremely hard to see.
After crossing the little mini-bridge (like, an actual, 20-foot wooden bridge archway), we were on a dirt-path. To the right of it was a chain-link fence and from that was the local park. Mind you, this was around 8 PM, so it actually was dark. We're continuing to walk, I didn't really care too much about anything at that moment. We stop and Mc points his phone flashlight to this drainage pipe near the bottom of this hiking trail. Try to picture a river in the middle, then on both sides were little steep hills, onto trails. We were on the right side of that.
Again, I thought this was a little detour, the thought hadn't occur to me that "the pipes" meant literally, a drainage pipe. The hill/ ground was kinda steep going into and across the river. It wasn't like a real river, it was like, a stream of still water, about, 5, 7, 10 inches deep. We didn't check. Before going down, we threw some rocks into this ivy, grass covering to see if there was any water under it. We didn't hear splashes, but we were still cautious. And yeah, there was water underneath that grassy covering after we saw a little bit of water from a hole in that covering. We traversed over the river through rocks, like, the ones that I've hiked throughout that park just about a week ago.
And it did feel like I was hiking all over again. After all of us got across, we were left on this side of the foresty area, with a road right next to us mind you. There were houses across the road, and if you were to pass by us in car, seeing us with flashlights, standing next to this forest- area, at 8:30 PM, it would look pretty suspicious. And yeah, there were cars passing by us when we were on that exposed side. We had to duck down and cover our lights when they went by, in fear of alerting the local police and shit.
Because it was trespassing, a bit, as the park closes at sun-down, and doing something like checking out a drainage pipe near the side of a road with a forest-y area would not be suitable for people our age, in this neighborhood, at this time of hour. So we're checking out this drainage pipe, we're trying to see, what was at the end of it. Was it even a drainage pipe? Ya know, "urban exploring." Didn't learn about that term and hobby 'till, today when I searched it up. We were shining our lights into it, we were trying to zoom in with our cameras, etc.
We found that it did curve, and so, the only real way to find out was to go in. Mc and Cy had actually planned to go to the pipes about a few days ago, but they didn't actually get this far because the trail here was actually pretty spooky with just the two of them. Ec went in first, taking small precautions, making sure not to step in the water that was on the bottom of the pipe, all the while we were ducking when cars drove by and hiding our lights. I picked the wrong day to wear my KDT shirt because it was so easy to spot, in case we were reported to local authorities and shit. "Asian male, wearing a black and white baseball raglan, with KDT written on the front and with Korean characters and a large number "58" on the back." We went in in like a line, our feet spread across, almost like a split (but not split, just, our feet wide apart) so as not to step in the water.
The water was about, 3 inches deep, so it wasn't that bad, but of course, who would want to get their feet wet? And Et and Ec were both wearing sandals. We headed in, there's graffiti everywhere in there. We went past the curve, only to see that it did continue on with another curve. We didn't actually head that that far, because of the simple fact of the unknown, for us teenage boys anyways. Plausible things that could've happened that would spook us would be, finding a homeless person living in there. Or, a gang coming in through the entrance of the pipe, finding us and we'd have to run. Or, people could've alerted the local authorities and shit and track us in the pipe, notify our parents and uh, we'd be fucked.
And a bunch of other things and we didn't wanna risk it. We were about in the middle of the straight pipe after the first curve. We decided to take some pictures and then get the fuck outta there. There was no signal, our batteries were low, and we were in a fucking drainage pipe. It wasn't confirmed to be a drainage, drainage pipe, until a car drove by while we were in it, with the car riding over the man-hole that made a large noise within the pipe. So yeah, it was a storm-drain pipe.
After we took some pictures, we got the fuck outta there. Headed out, walked back to Cy's house. The neighborhood seemed pretty nice for some Halloween fun times, so, maybe we'll come back during that time of year. But for right now, it was time to head back home. Cy went to his house, which was, right there. Mc drove me, Et, and Ec back to our respective homes, with him dropping me off at that restaurant that we "ate" at. It ended up being past 9:00 PM, in which my dad called twice, one at 9:30 PM, in which I replied "about 30 more minutes" and at 10:00 PM, in which we were almost at the plaza, so I told my dad to just start coming over here.
10 something PM, my dad arrives, I get in the car coming from that milk tea place, my dad didn't really care too much considering he had to stay awake for a while to pick me up. He just wanted to sleep, didn't ask too much questions, and yeah, that was it. The Discord buddies and I played a game of League before signing off. It's 12:47 AM right now, and, I just finally finished this post. What an episode turned impromptu special, am I right? From an arcade at the mall, to the mall, to trying to pick up chicks at the mall, to bailing a restaurant dinner to go to a friend's city 15 minutes away, driven by our friend, with our friends, to go to one of their houses, and walk and venture through a trail and into a drainage pipe. Yeah, I didn't see that coming either, heh.
And two things caught on to me. One, was that while we were in the pipe, it reminded me a lot of the movie "As Above So Below." And two, I didn't realize I was night-timing. I was with my buddies, at night, doing shit for the fun of it. Not every day you explore a drainage pipe at night with your friends. I was like "You know what? This is actually what it's all about. School, school, and more school, why not throw in some urban exploration into it? Live a little, take some risks." Yes there are limits to the "taking risks" reason, but I'm smart enough to know where the baseline is, and exploring a drainage pipe is definitely not one of the worst things you can do.
I realized the importance of being able to drive, so you can stay out late like this, and, well, drive your buddies around. This wouldn't have been possible if Mc didn't have his license. I look for excitement in life, I look for new shit, I got new shit. And now, I can say that I've added hiking and urban exploration into my "things I now want to do more often" list. Make that three, with "trying to pick up chicks at malls."
So when are we going to Paris and exploring those catacombs, huh? It's 12:59 AM, Saturday night, labor day weekend, see ya.
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