Krall took HyperViper and Grebin in his car while a new Barrie2600 attendee named Jay had volunteered use of his van and allowed Asher, Beast Angel and myself to mooch space in it. The trip took about two hours and was tedious to say the least, but oh how we wanted to see this site, so we pushed on.
Krall eventually led us into and back out of Orangeville, onto a long stretch of dirt road which did not do good things to Jay's van. We puttered about these sideroads for some time before Krall finally pulled over and told us, "we should have been there by now."
We didn't panic (entirely), we just turned around, left the sideroads for the tender mercies of paved streets, but soon re-entered the land of serpentine dirt roads for another romp through the wonderful world of nothingness. Krall's modest family sedan was able to move on the unpaved surface much faster than Jay's larger, more shaky vehicle, and we managed to lose him completely more than once. Finally, with morale at an all-time low, half an hour since arriving in the "general area" and still with no clue where the place was, Beast Angel and Jay made the executive decision to call the search off. Asher and I, being the ridiculous fanatics that we are, were unenthused to say the least but could not in good conscience insist that Jay continue to push through such miserable conditions (a dirt road in the rain at midnight), so we agreed. We waited for Krall to find us and, once he showed up, told him that we were calling it a night. He was disappointed and insisted that the radar station was nearby, right over the next hill, in the opposite direction we'd been headed. This was scarcely enough to convince us in the context of the night to that point so we turned off at the next intersection, which Krall went straight through.
We stopped at a nearby donut place in Orangeville and had some extremely bad coffees, which were nonetheless refreshing after being on the road for almost three hours for basically no payoff. Asher and I were a bit miffed about the fact that all our equipment was in Krall's car, so we would have to make contact with him before we could turn around and go home, but we had no way of doing so except through Asher's cell-phone, which Grebin had the number for but had so far been silent.
My greatest fear at this point was that Krall would come back and tell us they found the site nearby but we'd have no way of getting there, and have to turn around for home after coming so far. It seems I must have tempted fate, because when Asher's phone finally rang, Grebin told her they were at the site and would come meet us.
After Krall, HyperViper and Grebin arrived, we had a bit of a dilemma. Jay was our only ride home but there was no way he was going to the radar station first. Beast Angel worked in the morning. Krall had to be home soon and couldn't drive us back out to Barrie. Essentially there was a big mish-mash of conflicting circumstances leading to us having no idea what to do but finally, hinging a decision on the only thing we knew to be certain at that point -- that there was no way we were going home without seeing the radar site -- Asher and I insisted that Jay and Beast Angel strand us in Orangeville. We would find a way home one way or another.
Jay and Beast Angel bid us farewell and headed back, leaving the five of us to head for our destination.
All this is pretty much unrelated to the radar site itself but it was, you have to agree, a rather grating situation for all involved. That makes it your problem.
At any rate, we headed out to the field, parked, and headed in. We completely failed to notice the numerous "NO TRESPASSING" signs scattered around but, had they caught our attention, we'd have respectfully heeded them.
Naturally.
As it was, the front door was wide open.

Inside, we first explored the areas off of the corridor on the first floor. Here we found a utility room with a storage room branching off of it, full of (shockingly) unbroken fluorescent light tubes. There was another unlocked room that was almost entirely empty, but did have a ventilation shaft that Grebin felt might allow access to the locked room on the other side of the wall. It didn't.
Then it was back to the ubercrunchy lobby and up the crunchy staircase to the second floor, which was slightly less crunchy. In fact the room we entered was quite nice and relatively unmolested, which couldn't be said for the room adjacent to it. This room had a large window to outside which had been entirely knocked out and its floor was covered in papers of all sorts. Binders, folders, diagrams, journals, manuals, logs -- it was a treasure trove of 1980's-era technical thingummies! I've already expressed my fears that, freed from its cabinet, this material may not survive the winter, but I plan on contacting Transport Ontario to see if any of it has copies in the public domain. Let's not rule out a return visit for a salvage mission just yet, either...
Also in this room were several filing cabinets, a whiteboard, and a makeshift kitchen crammed into a corner with some condiments still on the shelves.

For their next trick, Krall and HyperViper showed us to the other end of the second floor, where a set of large blue metal doors were labeled "DANGER" and "ANTENNA TOWER". Are there any sweeter words? Well, maybe "HIGH VOLTAGE", but I'm sure it was there somewhere if we'd looked long enough.
We entered the tower and began climbing the long, squiral iron grate staircase which went up about five stories. The top of the staircase opened to the night sky and we were being rained on as we went. The tower offered much to see but we only ever caught a glimpse of it due chiefly to our flashlights' inability to light the whole thing at once.
Once we reached the roof, we puttered about in the rain for a few seconds, I snapped a couple of photos and we headed back down the tower, to where it was (relatively) warm. When we got back into the main room of the second floor I tried to put in my second roll of film but managed to both expose the film and break my camera. Instead we finished off a disposable camera Grebin had some family photos on.

Next it was back to the first floor with us, to work on the extremely solid metal doors Krall and HyperViper had no luck with in the past. Asher busted some mad "pry-the-screws-holding-the-deadbolt-frame-loose-from-inside-the-door" technique and, when added to some general kung fu, we soon had access to the room that Grebin and HyperViper had been so valiantly trying to break down the door to earlier. Here we saw a turbine in a cage and a scary clamp on the wall that was used at one point to hold compressed gas canisters but looked like a horrible torture device. At the other end of the corridor, Grebin managed to be less destructive than usual when he slid back a deadbolt to allow us access to a large, mostly empty room that I myself did not even get to see, as everyone who entered it ran out coughing and complaining that it stung their eyes. I have no idea why this is. It may just have been sealed for so long that the air went a bit rancid. When we let the door close, it locked again, and it occurs to me now that if we hadn't been holding the door while there were people in there they may well have been locked in. That would have been no fun. Where were our ventilators on this trip, anyway?
The bad bad air spilled out into the corridor a bit and caused chest-stinging fun for all involved, except for HyperViper who denied noticing anything. Maybe we're all just paranoid, or maybe he'll be the first to die of ebola, or whatever it was. At any rate, we'd been in the building for some time now, we knew for a fact that it had power and quite possible working security, and we had been clanging around like mad, so it was decided that we would do well to take off at this point. We left two locked rooms unopened and in complete mystery in so doing, so a return visit is by no means out of the question.
That was pretty much that. A miserable trip leading into a very cool excursion. I don't regret a thing.
By the way, we did get home. Krall drove us. He's such a nice guy. On the way, he showed us a weird weather station thingie and an insane millionaire's welded-shut bomb shelter.
So. Remember to see the photo gallery, all the cool kids are doing it.
- FlameOut