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OVER_THE_TOP
June 26, 2013
July 8, 2013
A story of one of my strange maneuvers,
which as usual did not come to much. CLIMBING
As a quarter was coming to an end,
back in the days when I was a grad
student at Stanford, finals were
approaching and there were a number
of lectures I hadn't yet seen for a
Computer Science class I was taking.
Stanford, being the high-tech
cutting-edge kind of place that
it was had begun videotaping Yes, this story
many of it's lectures, making took place some
the VHS tapes of some of them time ago.
available to be viewed at
special video stations set-up
in a few of the libraries.
The Computer Science lectures
were kept in the Math library,
which was located in the The original Stanford quad building
original main quad building is a massive, sandstone square
(unusual for a technical with red tile roofs in a pseudo
department), way up on the Mexican-American style (though
fourth floor, over near the with greek pillars supporting the
south-east corner. arches, for that classic touch).
It looks something like the world
headquarters of Taco Bell.
Like most of the campus libraries,
the Math Library kept something
like normal business hours, but I The physics library, in comparison,
rarely did, and I'd succeeded in was essentially open 24 hours to
sleeping all through the day on the in-crowd. Those are the kind
the last day before the final. of little details I missed when
choosing a major.
But there was an obvious solution:
do an after hours break-in.
Though really this would be a sneak-in
(no breakage involved). I knew the
territory well enough that I expected
I could get in without too much
trouble:
The math library is up on the top
floor, and it has a balcony looking
out over the interior of the quad.
The entire quad is a set of connected
buildings, so once up on the roof
anywhere, it would be relatively easy
to move along the ridge-line, and then
drop down on to the balcony.
And there was an obvious point of access
to the roof, only a few buildings away: at
the top of one of the stair cases, there
was a wide open area where people often
ate outside for lunch, and the tile roof
came down to around waist level there.
But first I had to get into that building,
which was also locked-up at this hour:
Luckilly, the flight of stairs leading
up to this had open windows on the
upper landings (yes, permanenty open
windows: ah, California).
The entire quad is made of rough sandstone
bricks: rock climbers liked to practice on
it (leaving their obnoxious white chalk
marks on every hold).
So: a one-story climb up to the first window,
then up the stairs, out on to the wide
balcony, up on to the clay tile roof, across
the ridge line, descend over the balcony,
and drop down, slide open the glass door,
and I'm in. Simple, eh?
But nothing is ever entirely simple, and one
thing that bugged me was the clay tiles: being
an east coast kid, this stuff was entirely
outside of my experience, I didn't know how
strong or slippery it was. If I slipped in the
wrong place I could slide down off the peak and
take a three or four storey dive over the edge. And there were no
rain gutters there
But most of the route was along the ridge, to save myself
and I'd only be climbing up and down the with, ala "To
slope when there were balconies under me Catch a Thief".
to stop my fall-- presuming I didn't pick
the wrong place to descend.
So I did all this creeping around
very carefully.
When I was actually out there,
climbing around in the night, I found
other things to worry about:
The quad is not an entirely regular
peaked-roof structure: there are different
buildings of slightly different heights, and
places where higher roofs overhang the main
roof. As I was descending the slope toward
the Math Library balcony, I could see I was
going to need to practically step under an
overhanging eave, and I moved toward the
dark shadowed area with trepidation: I was
envisioning birds startled out of their
nests, surfaces encrusted with guano, and
who knows what else... but I found it was
entirely clean.
Then I was at the edge of the roof, looking
down on the balcony. There was a sort
of 70s-style "decorative" rustic wooden
structure over it made of 4x4s. You might
call it a trellis, but instead of ivy
growing on it there were just some odd
zig-zag wire structures running along on
top. To discourage birds?
I waited to make sure all was quiet. My
next fear was that I was about to walk-in
on someone working late...
I noticed there seemed to be some warm air
pouring up into my face. Did someone leave
the sliding glass door open? I held my hand
over the balcony: it felt warm, I moved it
back over the roof, it felt cooler. I held
my hand lower down: yes, it was definitely
warm-- it wasn't just warm, it was tingling!
Those metal anti-pigeon gadgets were microwave
rectennas! Get close to them and they start
inducing current in your flesh.
Only at Stanford... (or so I thought at the time).
Somewhat awkwardly, I climbed around these things
and dropped down to the balcony.
I found the glass door was closed,
but not locked: I was not at all
suprised. I've seen this syndrome
before: Even more easily accessible
high windows were often left But then, being a "second story man"
unlocked, because non-climbers have would be a pretty ridiculous,
no concept of what climbers can do. impractical occupation for many
reasons... it's hardly a pressing
need to defend against them. (Us?)
I moved around in the library
slowly, listening carefully... Can I climb in a high
The modern movie tradition of window? Yes, typically.
loud, blaring "suspenseful" music Can I do it without being
is actually very deceptive. seen? Only under very
What's really nerve-racking is the exceptional circumstances.
*silence*, or rather the tiny
little noises interrupting the Actual housebreakers
silence-- clocks tick, thermostats Older Hollywood just use pry bars,
trip, ventilators hum-- and for films sometimes if not sledgehammers.
every liitle sound, you think: is tried to capture
that a footstep?! Is someone this, without
here?! succeeding very
well.
In any case, I found the tapes I
needed to see, and retreated to a
video station off to the side, in a
little room where I was unlikely to
be seen by any unexpected visitor.
I kept the lights out, and fumbled around
in the dark-- I was very confused for a
minute, because the VCR just would not
accept the cassette I was trying to feed
into it. Eventually I realized that the
machine already had a tape in it that
needed to be ejected-- I'd never seen a
tape left behind in one of these library
machines. It couldn't be that *someone "It Takes A Thief"
else* was here, could it? Maybe someone "It Takes One To Know One"
doing something much like what I was doing?
But no, the place seemed dead empty...
Anyway, I more-or-less watched the lectures, getting
very little out of them in my distracted state of
mind, but at least I knew I hadn't missed any little
announcements ("the final has been moved up a day").
Then I packed up and left, following the same
route in reverse, climbing up the balcony and
going over the roof. (In an emergency I
would've just banged out one of the exits and
run, but I much preferred not doing that.
From past experience-- which I will skip for
now-- I knew that any door which was not
locked from the inside was much more likely to
have an alarm).
The next day I learned that there had been
a blackout on campus, and the Math Library
had been evacuated: it had closed early.
The mystery of the tape
abandoned in the machine
was explained.
And even if I hadn't overslept,
I still wouldn't have been able to
see those videos that afternoon.
This made me feel better,
for no good reason.
Then, some years later...
Fourth of July was at hand, and the sun was going
down. I had no particular plans to travel anywhere
to see a fireworks display, and on impulse I decided
to try climbing up on top of the quad building to
see if I could see anything from there.
As the sun began to set, I was suprised to hear the
bells of Hoover Tower ringing out in an elaborate
performance for a nearly empty campus.
While perched on the peak of the roof, I calmly watched a
police car pull up the drive and into the loop-- where it
suddenly stopped at the 3 o'clock point: It was in a
perfect position to pick me out against the skyline. I
instantly ducked down, and climbed down the back of the
roof to the balcony, ran down the stairs and out the back
of the building, and into the interior of the quad, where
I briskly walked away in an evasive zig-zag route (there's
more structure to "the quad" than you might think from the
name: smaller courtyards off the main one, with connecting
walkways in different directions).
The danger point was crossing the wide asphalt path
around the edges of the quad building, and I observed
the scene very carefully before stepping out from
behind the pillars.
Another thing I'd learned from past experience--
which I will also decline to describe for now-- is
that cops are something like dogs, they love to
chase things that run and will go to any lengths to
do so (as long as it doesn't mean getting out of
the car).
So-- presuming I was seen in the first
place-- I could expect the police car to be
cruising around, looking for someone acting
guilty. The cop might be lying in wait, on
this side of the quad... but they would've
had to luck out and go left instead of
right. And the cop might've gotten clever
and tried zipping all the way around to the
back (perhaps on the theory I might head
toward the student union). And it could be
the cop had stood still to see if I could
be spottted up on the roof again.
But while the campus was fairly empty,
there was no reason for a random student
walking around to be all that suspicious--
it would be a game of nerves, trying to
flush someone out with a largely empty
threat, to see how they react...
If this particular police officer was in pursuit,
I saw no signs of it, and escaped without incident.
But: how was I discovered? The cop pulled
in and stopped like he was *looking* for
someone on the roof: I concluded they had
installed something like motion sensors--
still relatively unusual, but not unheard
of at Stanford-- e.g. there had been a
news story about undergrads caught by
motion sensors while they were sneaking Kids these days,
into the Dean's office. they do some
crazy things.
The techniques that worked once,
may not work again, in an ever
shifting field of technological
change.
It often seems to me that the
modern world is increasingly
tightly screwed down. What are
kids these days supposed to do to
demonstrate any spirit at all, if
they can't even climb around on a
school building any more?
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