For reasons lost in obscurity left behind in the early '70s, we called it sewerhopping, something me and a couple of buddies "invented". I can still pull manhole lids off with my fingers (one finger in each hand goes into the little hole, tense and lift). We started in the pipe behind the house in Dayton, Ohio. It was 5' in diameter. The game was to put a marker by each manhole, usually a rolled up piece of paper stuck in one of the holes. Then.. .we went topside and tried to find it. No compass. No tape. Simply never occurred to us. Dead reckoning. Waisted many an hour of my youth perusing that pipe. Rain was not a huge deal as we could always clime up to street level at a manhole, and push the lid if we had to. It never was a serious problem. The pipe did neck down the further up it got. It always had water flowing in it. I think we found the source, but don't recall now.
The real risk, and one I was oblivious to, and never experienced, was some idiot dumping gas or other solvents into the storm sewer. Later, one of my high schools buddies dumped several gallons of gasoline in the storm sewer (such innocent time), in the process of fixing his Volkswagon. The result was a 3 block long pipe bomb that blew lids off manholes, and made quite a noise.
Later, I built a periscope that would fit through the holes in the manhole covers. It was crude and everything was backwards, but it worked. Version II had a mirror on a flexible hinge so when a car ran over it, we could just bend it back.
It turns out that part of the Miami Erie Canal fed into the Miami river and long ago was covered and covered into a storm sewer. You gain access to the old canal by boat. It's a bit scary, as there are giant metal shutters over the opening to prevent back flooding in case of high water. You can canoe in about 1/4 mile then it breaks into three large walking passages. Brick walls in places, concrete in otheres, as I recall. One stretch about 30' long, (the wall was warm there) was covered with cockroaches. In another stretch, there were 30 or so Coy swimming in the water.
After exploring for several hours we canoed to discover that a fellow had started fishing over the opening. An elderly guy. We came shooting out, and asked which way to Cincinnati. He stared fore a second, and then just pointed down stream.
Oh Yah, during heavy rains the culvert behind the house would fill to about a foot from the top of the pipe. We would pop the closes manhole and drop into the pipe and ride out to the creek. It was maybe 60'.
Maybe Television and computer games ARE good things. My kids never tried anything that stupid.
Rob..
At 04:51 PM 1/22/2008, jerryat...@aol.com wrote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------- Visit our website: http://texascavers.com To unsubscribe, e-mail: texascavers-unsubscr...@texascavers.com For additional commands, e-mail: texascavers-h...@texascavers.comTunnel vision is costing lives
