Danger, Excitement and Heights

A Young Collegiate's Journey to the Roof

Published on March 30, 2004 By mittens In Humor

I'm really getting into this whole story-telling thing (especially since my game reviews are all going to FileFront, so I need some new material), so in this entry, I'm going to recap a journey me and six of my friend's took to the roof of the University of Michigan's Bursley dorm complex. Some background: it's cold out. Very cold. We performed our trek through the eerie hallways of Bursley in the middle of winter (early December), at about 11pm. Also, this dorm complex isn't exactly a tiny building; Bursley is the 2nd largest dorm building in the nation, housing over 1200 students, in 8 different wings, with each wing having 5 to 7 floors (depending on the wing).

[The Journey to the Roof]
"Hey Trent! Come with us, we're going to the roof again!" A voice shouted at me, through the hallway outside my dorm room.

Erm, yeah, I'm not sure if I am missing the joy of this little idea, but it seems to me like taking a little stairway to the top of the building and back wouldn't exactly be the making of a good 'ol time for a bunch of college freshman on a Saturday night. I mean, if I want excitement, I could've gone out to a party that reeked of sweat in an unkempt frat house, got insanely drunk off stale beer, and spent the night with a "beautiful" freshman girl and have the joy of waking up to find her not-so-beautiful-anymore face next to mine, lying in a pile of a drunken mess of puke. Though, I guess the roof was a bit more "appetizing" an experience than the previous, so I figure, what the hell, I'll tag along.

So the gang led the way outside (Ground floor? What the hell?), and stopped right in front of a wall. Just a wall. No stairs, just a wall. A 12' high wall. Aren't there stairs or something?

"So... Where are the stairs?" I asked.
"Right here," one of my friends said, his finger pointing to a thin little lead pipe.
"So, we're going to all climb up twelve feet on a pipe that looks like it couldn't hold an anorexic midget?" I asked.
"That's the plan," another one of my friends responded with.
"Sounds fun! I wanna go first!" I exclaimed.

And with that, I heard the click of a switch on a flashlight, followed immediately by a cone of light aimed at my stairway to the roof. I immediately ran and jumped on the pipe, and made an attempt to shimmy myself up. I failed and was immediately greeted by a heavy "Poof!" of 6' tall 180lb college freshman landing on a cold patch of snowy ground.

"Nice work Trent, we'll let you go last."

Dammit. Real smooth Trent. You just tried to be cool, and ended up failing faster than a bird trying to breathe in a fishtank full of cement. Oh well, at least you can attempt to take your time on the next try. Just watch as one friend shimmies up. Then another. Followed by another. Followed by another. Oh, come on, one of you needs to fail like I did. Another shimmies up the pipe, followed by the last of the friends. Looks like it's my turn to shine.

I jumped a little, grasped the cold pipe with both hands, and decided to just throw all my strength into an attempt to pull myself up as far as I could... At least enough so that I could grab the side of the roof and pull myself up. I managed to pull myself up a little bit, though not as much as I had hoped for. Thankfully, I was able to get both hands on the side of the roof, and started to pull myself up... Though soon after I started pulling myself up with all the miniscule amounts of strength that I could muster [NOTE: this whole debacle was a month before I started extensively working out. At this point, I could probably only bench about 60lbs, I'm up to about 185lbs now, thank you very much.], only to realize that I didn't exactly grab the same roofing support that the others did. One hand was securly grabbing the roof ledge, while the other was wedged in between a loose piece of siding. Unfortunately, I realized this AFTER I gathered all the strength I could to pull myself up.

They say every action has an equal and opposite reaction. In this case, the equal and opposite reaction was the ledge siding completely falling off, and taking my hand (and, as another, slightly unequal, consequence, my balance went as well) with it. I was once again greeted by the "Thump!" of my body hitting the ground, though from about 4' higher up this time. So much for that time to shine.

"Alright, one of you guys get down there, let Trent stand on top of you, and the rest of us will pull him up!" A voice from above exlaimed. In my semi-shell-shock condition, I thought it was the voice of God. Instead it was the voice of Nate Mar. Eh, way off.

Though his plan worked, and a few minutes later we stood on, what I first thought, was the roof of the building. Of course, milliseconds later, I realized that a 12' wall wasn't exactly tall enough to be the top of the building. So I took a quick glance around with my flashlight and, low and behold, I saw another big wall with, surprise!, another pipe. I hate pipes. Especially pipes that happen to be the only mode of transportation up the side of a twenty-five foot tall wall. At that very moment, I realized that the next few minutes of my life were going to be painful.

I was the fourth one to attempt the Pipe Climb of Death (TM), as was strategically planned out so that, if I fell, there would be people to brace my fall, and if I was too high up to fall, there would be people to help pull me up. With all that in mind, I took a running jump at the pipe, and grasped it firmly with both hands (that were now quite cold, raw, and cut-up after my last fall onto some decently sharp pieces of ice), then took a smooth jolt to my body when it came in contact with the wall.

"Yeah, my whole "running jump" thing didn't exactly take the big wall into account," I said.

However, I noticed that this pipe was a bit more stable than the last pathetic excuse for a piece of piping. I also learned, after the last experiment, that falling was painful, and shouldn't be done. With that in mind, I began my trek up the pipe. It went quite smoothly for the first 8 feet. Then I ran into foam.

"Uh, guys, there's foam around the pipe. And it's slipping. Why in the fuck did no one feel fit to mention this before?" I asked, rather calmly, I thought, given the fact that I was about 14' in the air.
"Just keep going Trent, you're almost there."

Easy for you to say asshole, you haven't even climbed the pipe yet. Though I kept going. I also noticed that, moments after he said "just keep going," I had a flashback to Dori from Finding Nemo. Which really didn't help me concentrate on the task at hand, but it did help me think of little blue fish, voiced by none-other than Ellen DeGeneres.

So, I kept climbing. And by "kept," I mean I got another 2', then the foam slipped even more, and I quickly switched my hands to the less-stable of the two pipes that led to the objective, and prayed to the God of Kittens that it was well-constructed by someone other than Bob Veila. It held me, though I had just realized that I was attempting to climb like a rock-climber, with my hands on the rope, and my feet positioned flat on the wall in an almost perfect 90 degree angle to my hands. Unfortunately, unlike a rock-climber's trusty rope, I was grabbing a pipe, which meant that I was forming some sort of odd triangle in mid-air. I then noticed a hand getting offered to me from a body seven feet above me.

"Just get high enough to grab my hand Trent!"

Fuck, yeah, sure thing. I definately would be hanging right here if I could climb higher without a problem. At that moment, the pipe I was holding on to had a support break directly above the place where I was grasping on to it. I felt my body fall a bit backwards, but thankfully, the rest of the pipe's supports held firmly. Though I didn't want to find out how long they'd stay that way, so I transferred my body over to the other, more stable, of the two pipes. You know, the one with the foam insulator around it.

At this very point, I realized that I was beginning to hyperventilate (something I've done about four or five times in my entire life), and remembered that I have exercise-induced asthma or, more applicable to this case, when-my-heart-nearly-jumps-out-of-my-chest-due-to-suddenly-getting-freaked-out-while-already-breathing-heavily-induced asthma. Then, in a near act of God, a hand shot out right within my grasp, I grabbed it, then spent the next two minutes trying to prolong my feet from going numb just long enough to give me a boost to help out the guys who were trying to pull me up.

I ended up making it to the top of the roof, even if I did nearly fall ~20 feet to the ground a couple times during the little action-packed 3-4 minutes. Once everyone else had made it up to the pipe, we experienced moments of joy knowing that we all made it up to the roof (alive). However, it was now time to begin the journey back down... Through the janitor's little terrorist-tunnel-esque pathway. Doesn't sound so bad... Until we actually made it into the janitor's alcove.

There were no lights in the janitor's alcove. We simply had one flashlight to share between 10 people (notice the increase in people... apparently some other people heard of our exploits, and wanted to join us in the fun) in a cramped cubby-hole of a janitor's room. We pointed the flashlight all around the area, and were in pure horror over the discoveries we made. The walls had notes written to the janitor from various womenfolk, alongside a few creepy-looking pictures of various people. On the wall directly opposite, there were crayon markings indicating some sort of schedule, some very odd drawings, and, what appeared to be, a few notes that the janitor made to himself in a very serial-killer-esque handwriting style. Then we noticed another sub-cubby.

The sub-cubby had a pillow. And blankets. And it smelled of something not-so-pleasant. It felt like we were a group of Goonies that had stumbled into a killer's lair, and were only moments away from the killer bursting through the door atop the stairway (which we had to take down to reach the cubby), and all of us running for our lives to make it to the nearest safe spot. Needless to say, we were all terrified and excited beyond belief at the possibility. The stink of the stuffy cubby was take-away-my-breath-with-the-stink-of-a-janitor-cubby-licious though, so we weren't exactly in a "let's stop and stare at the disturbing crayon images on the wall" kind of mood. We eventually made it down the thin stairway in the cubby, which led to a big black door. We had no idea what was beyond that door, so we all huddled around it, opened it quietly and carefully... And ended up on the fifth floor of a very-familiar dorm wing. We were safe, and the journey was over.

Comments

Janders

on May 11, 2004

You are a very talented writer.... keep up the stories!

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