Weekly Adventure

This week is coming to an end and I do not really know what to blog about. Thus, I thought I would relate one of the events that occurred during this week. This particular occurrence happened on Monday. I was working in the shop at around four-fifty in the afternoon when I got a call from one the kids in the youth group I help lead. Basically, they wanted to know if I could take them and a couple of the other kids “exploring.” By exploring I mean walking through the storm tunnels under Joplin around the Main Street area. Well, I am always up for new things, most of the time, and I told them that after I got off of work at five I would come and pick them up. They were hanging out at the church all by themselves for whatever reason, and I had to go over there to get them. After loading up we headed down Main Street to around Fifth Street where the entrance was to be found in an alley behind the first row of buildings. After parking, the kids showed me where exactly the opening was, and it looked like at one time the area had been fenced off, but someone had clipped the fence and rolled it back. Anyway, we jumped down into the place where the entrance was, and proceeded into the gaping dark hole. For the most part the tunnel was pretty clean and dry, but it became cramped as soon as we were inside. Well, at least for me being six foot it was pretty hindering. Thus, I was doubled over for the first few minutes or so, but the passage eventually widened and the ceiling rose to the point in which I could stand up straight. I thought it would continue at the same dimensions for the rest of the way through, unfortunately, I was wrong. After about another ten minutes the tunnel size started to decrease, and remained the same for most of the rest of the way. The entire time we were traveling two of the kids were pretty nervous because they happened to be girls, but for the most part I think they did pretty well. Every now and then we would hear the scraping and scurrying of animals, but we never saw any. At one point we came across a fairly large object some distance from us in which we could not perceive what it was exactly. We thought it could have been an animal because the kids thought they saw it move. I thought it was a guy sleeping in a blanket at first, and proceeded to call out to them. However, there was no noise or response being made. So, I had to go ahead of everyone and see what it was in order for us to keep moving. As I got closer I realized it was a huge log sitting off to the side of the tunnel. This was really kind of funny at the time because we had sat for a good fifteen minutes discussing whether we should continue forward for fear that it was some wild beast that would maim us all. Eventually, after an hour and a half we made it through to the end. Indeed, it was a pretty interesting time.