When I was about 13 or 14 years old, my friend Christian and I planned a “secret mission” to infiltrate the Burger King warehouse that was located at the end of my street. Since we were into the whole ninja thing at the time, we thought the best way to test our “skills” would be to sneak into the place and come out with some sort of Burger King memorabelia. I don’t remember the details really well, but I know it involved going along the railroad tracks that ran behind the huge building, climbing over the fence and sneaking past the security guards at the gate! I think we planned a date for the whole operation and everything, but we never carried out our plan.<\/p>\n
Our days of planning “ninja missions” began after we read Ninja Secrets of Invisibility by Ashida Kim. This supposed authentic work explained the methods of distracting sentries, avoiding detection and what to do if you were discovered. Basically, that book was a piece of crap that has probably gotten a lot of people arrested for trying the things this supposed authority writes about – luckily, we were able to eventually determine that Ashida Kim had nothing to do with true ninjutsu!. Anyway, we read this book and others and started practicing how to move quietly.<\/p>\n
There was one mission where we donned out tabi and black military fatigues (“SWAT pants”, as we called them!) and walked down to a house that was rather isolated in the woods near our house. The cool thing about this house is that it has a nice pond right next to it. Draining into the pond is a little brook. And what made getting to this house so intriguing? The owners had 3 dobermans who were always outside! We had no plans to break in or anything (we never did have any interest in doing that), we just wanted to see how close we could get before we caught the attention of the dogs. We thought that by walking into the area via the brook, the water would cover our scent. After we arrived at the area, the full moon was just rising in to the early summer sky to help light our path along the stream. We made it to within a hundred feet of the house which wasn’t bad considering the distance to the house from the street. The dogs began barking after they heard a splash or the cracking of a twig. The two of us crouched down into the shadows, waiting for the dogs to quiet down before we continued on towards the house. Within a couple of minutes, we were on our way again. Those damn dogs began barking right away, so we huddled down in the cool, muddy water to wait it out. This time they continued to bark and a light came on outside the house! Now, we began to worry! We sat in that spot for about 2 hours, afraid to move, before we finally had the balls to turn around and head out the way we came. <\/p>\n
When we got back to my house, we were muddy, wet and cold. Cloth tabi do not provide any insulation from the cold water – I think mine were numb! <\/p>\n
There were a lot more missions carried out by Christian and I or my cousin Scott and I or the three of us. But the Holy Grail of them all – the Burger King Warehouse operation – never took place. I guess the threat of getting caught in a place like that was too much for us – after all, we were basically good kids!<\/p>\n
Check back soon for a continuation of this story – “On Belay!”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I was about 13 or 14 years old, my friend Christian and I planned a “secret mission” to infiltrate the Burger King warehouse that was located at the end of my street. Since we were into the whole ninja … Continue reading