History: The Worlds fair in Vancouver, Expo 86 was home to a McDonalds. Nothing special about that…except that this McDonalds was on the water. Basically a barge with a McDonalds on it, but not the familiar red and yellow. This one was styled in keeping with the expo86 theme, of white/silver colors outside. ( shot of the McBarge from shore courtesy of Scruffy )
Once the fair was done, McDonalds made attempts to keep the “McBarge” (as it had come to be called) open. But every prospective placement was rejected by the City of Vancouver. After the many fruitless attempts to relocate it, they eventually gave up. So the mighty McBarge came to be anchored near some Oil refineries in Burnaby. About 400′ from shore, just sitting, such a horrible waste…
Team: several missions, combinations of ; Jester, Pixie, Scarab, and Bladed
Mission Briefs: Having gotten tips from some informants (thanks to Solomon and Hawken22) we began our search. After getting lost and not actually finding it… Jester emailed “Scruffy” that has an expo86 website, and he helped us with directions to where it was. Ironically, on the attempt to find it, we had been within about 50 feet of the place we needed to go, and just didn’t know it… The road in front of McBarge belongs to the Port Authority, and is locked most of the time now it seems. There is an oil refinery on one side of Mcbarge, and some other port business on the other. security is seen patrolling regularly, especially when a vehicle is seen going down there…
It took 3 attempts before actually getting inside. 1st try involved Jester, Pixie, Scarab, and Bladed. This attempt ended in a popped inflatable boat and Pixie in the freezing harbor waters… ( rest in peace McDingy…) Ok, back to the drawing board… A new Inflatable and Jester and Pixie only this time. Gets to the McBarge and they scout it out… as they watch a security patrol from the refinery driving around where the car was parked…
Third time’s the charm. Jester and Scarab headed out for this McMission… So into the inflatable, and McPaddling their asses off to get to the McBarge without McDrowning… Pulling up and hopping out, they did a quick survey of the possible entrances, and discovered someone else had been here since our scouting mission… Due to this fact, they were inside without much trouble.
Now, time to Mc-splore… Lights had to be kept to a minimum due to the windows. The first thing we discovered was how much bigger it was than we thought. Once inside, it seemed gigantic. Lots of open space, all the seating is gone. Bathrooms are everywhere, literally. On each floor there were several separate bathroom areas. Makes sense, given the volume of customers it must have had during expo. Note : Despite what it looks like, Jester DID NOT soil his pants, khaki’s don’t take kindly to sliding down mucky rocks on shorelines …
Kitchens were located in the upper area, with a conveyer to send the food down. Most of the kitchen machinery is gone, but some remains. There are a few walk in freezers as well. There was a cool room with a cage (unlocked) around it’s machines. In the “crew Room” there was nothing but some McTrays scattered about. There is a storage room, with piles of McTrays and other Mcthings as well, but nothing overly Mc-citing… Some large processing machine from “Rabco” was there, not quite sure what it did…
While McWandering, Jester and Scarab got Mcseperated… both heading opposite directions, then wondering where each other had went… Running into each other again, they saw signs of previous destructive visitors; broken walls, graffiti ( though we have to give props to “Crazy Walter” who’s apparently good enough at eating McPussy that the chica had to spray paint that on the wall…). Inside the McOffice was a locked McSafe…
Up to the very top floor, we found a breaker room. All the walls had breakers and such. More than we expected… From there, it was up a Mcladder to the McRoof of McBarge… ( Mcirritating ? ~ Jester ) Feeling that the roof felt a bit softer than he liked, Scarab didn’t venture far, just took some pics and watched a boat go by ( had us wondering if it was headed towards McBarge at first…)
Having seen everything, and taken as many pics as we could ( damn windows limiting our picture taking… ) we headed for the exit. Jester of course was completely lost… good thing Scarab had a sense of direction… One thing, despite the vandalism that has occurred, the place is still in pretty damn good shape. It’s such a waste to be sitting there unused…So back to the boat, and thankfully, it was still inflated, so we McPaddled back for shore, getting a bit of a McScare when a McCar pulled down the road towards where we were, but it turned around and left. Back to shore, with some very clumsy paddling along the way ( boat spinning this way and that ). Very McPleased that we had pulled this off, without any nasty McDrowning or getting McCaught, we made our way to the McCar and McDrove home…