another epic journey
Jun. 8th, 2004 08:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
godreamSo this afternoon's escapade at work-at-LS was going to be checking out Thoreau's Cabin, but it turns out the key the Daves (the tech guys) had wasn't actually the right one. It's a very pretty key, long and round and relatively thick (and certain parties who may read this -- you know who you are -- should get their mind out of the gutter right now) and rather old-looking, on a clip thing with a tag misleadingly labeled 'Thoreau's Cabin'. I think it might have been the right key, once upon a time, because there was a hole in the cabin door that looked like maybe it used to be a keyhole, back in the day, about the right size for the key in question. Unfortunately it appears you need a different and much more mundane key to get into the padlock on the door, something boring and smaller than my GM. Bah.
But that was okay anyways, because later we ended up checking out the steam tunnels under the school instead. Wicked cool, and far more entertaining (to me, at least) than last year's catwalk 'adventure'. There are three access points to the tunnels inside the school, and we checked out all of them. One is in a science teacher's office. It's a trapdoor in the floor, painted with a phrase I can't remember but I was confused by, and featuring (bizarrely enough) a lock on the inside. It opened easily enough, though, revealing a ladder and, er, not a lot else, as the light appeared to be dead. With the help of the little blue LED flashlight on my keychain (which by the way went through the wash in the pocket of my jeans last week and is surprisingly none the worse for wear) we could get a better look at the huge white tubes and glance further down the tunnel's length.
Instead of going on in the dark, though, we climbed out and moved on to the grate in the hallway near the library, where there were in fact actual lights that worked down in the tunnel. There were just enough random people still around at school that we gathered a few gawkers, but definitely not so many that opening a grate in the floor of a relatively well trafficked (that spelling must be wrong, it looks horrible) hallway was difficult for that reason. For the first time in a good long while I was actually glad for being the shortest one around (which happens way too often when you're the only girl hanging out with a bunch of guys) as it wasn't exactly roomy.
The last access was through the janitorial staff's area, where I'd never been before. The tunnels we wandered through back there were the largest and most interesting. A few highlights: stranded on an offshoot of the main drag there was a random orange school chair, which was declared to be obviously where the kids who get in *really* big trouble are sent. ("as your punishment -- four hours in The Chair!" "no, please, I'll be good!" "mua ha ha ha ha!") We saw the area underneath the vent by the stairs, and the pile of trash that had been pushed through and accumulated there. Ew. We saw the phone network -- a spaghetti-like mess of wires trailing down to a numbered board, and reflected that right there was the potential for an absolutely brilliant senior prank. We were debating at first what would happen if you switched randomly, and then more strategic changes, like flipping the tech support phone to one of the building's many technophobes, but it occurs to me now that doesn't one of those route to the PA system...? Heh. Anyways. Saw more discarded toilets and urinals than I really needed to -- it's like the great porcelain graveyard down there. There's also a crawlspace that I guess leads down to the library access where we'd been that we didn't explore. *g* Slightly more relevant to the work we were allegedly doing, Dave also pointed out to us the various spiderwebs of networking that sprawl down there, which was also neat.
And we went into the mysterious brick utility building in the parking lot, which was to my surprise definitely cleaner than the main building. (Because students don't go in there, of course... :P) It houses three mind-bogglingly huge heaters, mostly, and the far end of all the wide white steam pipes we'd seen in the tunnels. And, er, I'd ramble more about this -- I may come back and edit and ramble more -- but I promised myself I'd get to bed by ten tonight because I've been soooo tired lately. :P So the rest of the gory details will remain shrouded in mystery, or something equally melodramatic. :P Good night!
Oh yeah -- one more entirely unrelated thing. My e-mail account appears to accept overdue notices from the library but strategically bounce notices saying that the book I requested has arrived. This would frustrate me even more if I weren't in the library half the days anyways...
But that was okay anyways, because later we ended up checking out the steam tunnels under the school instead. Wicked cool, and far more entertaining (to me, at least) than last year's catwalk 'adventure'. There are three access points to the tunnels inside the school, and we checked out all of them. One is in a science teacher's office. It's a trapdoor in the floor, painted with a phrase I can't remember but I was confused by, and featuring (bizarrely enough) a lock on the inside. It opened easily enough, though, revealing a ladder and, er, not a lot else, as the light appeared to be dead. With the help of the little blue LED flashlight on my keychain (which by the way went through the wash in the pocket of my jeans last week and is surprisingly none the worse for wear) we could get a better look at the huge white tubes and glance further down the tunnel's length.
Instead of going on in the dark, though, we climbed out and moved on to the grate in the hallway near the library, where there were in fact actual lights that worked down in the tunnel. There were just enough random people still around at school that we gathered a few gawkers, but definitely not so many that opening a grate in the floor of a relatively well trafficked (that spelling must be wrong, it looks horrible) hallway was difficult for that reason. For the first time in a good long while I was actually glad for being the shortest one around (which happens way too often when you're the only girl hanging out with a bunch of guys) as it wasn't exactly roomy.
The last access was through the janitorial staff's area, where I'd never been before. The tunnels we wandered through back there were the largest and most interesting. A few highlights: stranded on an offshoot of the main drag there was a random orange school chair, which was declared to be obviously where the kids who get in *really* big trouble are sent. ("as your punishment -- four hours in The Chair!" "no, please, I'll be good!" "mua ha ha ha ha!") We saw the area underneath the vent by the stairs, and the pile of trash that had been pushed through and accumulated there. Ew. We saw the phone network -- a spaghetti-like mess of wires trailing down to a numbered board, and reflected that right there was the potential for an absolutely brilliant senior prank. We were debating at first what would happen if you switched randomly, and then more strategic changes, like flipping the tech support phone to one of the building's many technophobes, but it occurs to me now that doesn't one of those route to the PA system...? Heh. Anyways. Saw more discarded toilets and urinals than I really needed to -- it's like the great porcelain graveyard down there. There's also a crawlspace that I guess leads down to the library access where we'd been that we didn't explore. *g* Slightly more relevant to the work we were allegedly doing, Dave also pointed out to us the various spiderwebs of networking that sprawl down there, which was also neat.
And we went into the mysterious brick utility building in the parking lot, which was to my surprise definitely cleaner than the main building. (Because students don't go in there, of course... :P) It houses three mind-bogglingly huge heaters, mostly, and the far end of all the wide white steam pipes we'd seen in the tunnels. And, er, I'd ramble more about this -- I may come back and edit and ramble more -- but I promised myself I'd get to bed by ten tonight because I've been soooo tired lately. :P So the rest of the gory details will remain shrouded in mystery, or something equally melodramatic. :P Good night!
Oh yeah -- one more entirely unrelated thing. My e-mail account appears to accept overdue notices from the library but strategically bounce notices saying that the book I requested has arrived. This would frustrate me even more if I weren't in the library half the days anyways...
