Thursday, January 24, 2002 :::
this tale needs to be told...
http://www.bol.ucla.edu/~sgaspard/images/panorama.jpg
so what did you do over the long weekend? (thank you martin luther king jr.) most likely, it pales to what i did. no, really. i'm not being biased (tho i am). i built an infrastructure in my dorm room over the weekend over the course of about 7 hours. huh? infa-what? i-n-f-r-a-s-t-r-u-c-t-u-r-e. ok, so last year i bought a hammock for my dorm toom. since i was in a tripple and we had a set of bunked beds, i was able to tie it to the upper one and let it hang over the lower. my bed was the lower bed. it worked out nice. the only problem was that the hammock was too long to fit, so i had to wrap it around the bed post a few times. no biggy. it was nice.
this year i'm in a double and our beds weren't bunked. where to put the hammock? gosh. hm. dunno. can't drill into the walls. my roommate, eric, kind of off-handedly suggested that we build an infrastructure in the room. here's the basic idea: put for posts in the corner and on top of them put 4 beams all connected to eachother. can you visualize? picture a large cube made of wood 4x4's. as a reply, i was like, "hey, that'd be kinda cool." we could hang a bunch of stuff from it besides the hammock. speakers? refridgerator? pulley so we could pull stuff up the window. giant slingshot? etc...
so throughout the first quarter, we were all talk. "so when are we gonna build this thing? gosh, i dunno. kinda busy this weekend. yea me too." it wasn't really going to happen. neither one of us had the guts to say to the other, "ok, we're going to build it this weekend." it took a whole quarter of each one of us building up the other to get it built. we even went to home depot back in the day to check out materials. our first idea: chain-link fence posts. not stable enough. what else? yea, wood. ok, we walked on over to the wood aisle. yup, wood will work. this was months ago. so last weekend, we did it. during the week i was pushing to get it done over the long weekend. when i mentioned it to eric, he didn't seem too excited. so i let it go. but he brought it up. so we decided to do it.
we made a whole floor trip out of it. we were going to go to eric's to barbecue and watch the raider's playoff game. we'd leave first so we'd have time to stop by home depot. mikey was nice enough to let us use his honda passport (SUV). i had called earlier to check prices. "uh, hi, do you happen to have any pine 4x4's?" her reply? "pine? lemme check. no, i'm sorry we don't. we have redwood and douglass fir." douglass fir isn't pine? i wonder where i put my head? haha. oh well.
we measured our room. you wouldn't believe the odd dimensions of this place. 12' 3" x 10'10". go figure. so we go to the wood aisle. gosh, these 16 foot pieces of lumber are really long. will they fit in the car? oh, of course, we have an SUV. oh, ok. we have the guy there cut them for us. gosh, home depot sure makes things easy. we get some nice brackets. big thick screws and we're off.
tying the wood to the car was an adventure in itself. we folded down the 40% of the 60-40 seats. the 8 footers fig in diagonally. the 12 footers went between the driver and passenger seats to rest on the floor of the passenger seat. they extended to the back of the car. and the 10' 10" pieces? tied to the top. home depot was kind enough to provide some nice twine. we tied it as tite as we could. was it loose? it sure was. we decided to drive slow with our hands out the window to "hold" it on. while we were doing this, amit recited some jerry seinfeld..."i got it, i got it." we made it to eric's house, but we did not know how we were going to get all this wood back to school. so we arrived at home depot with a full car of 5 people. half the seats folded down? hm. eric "sat" in the back with the wood. he had to contort himself as he climbed over the wood. what do we look like? a car with missle launchers on top.
so we barbecued and were merry.
time to go back to school. we decided to retie the wood on the top. it wasn't at all stable. eric did a good job. or so we thought. so we begin the drive to school. take the freeway? not such a good idea. or surface streets? more cops to see us and pull us over only to find 2 of us didn't have seatbelts on. hm. as we're driving away, amit noticed that we need gas. so we "happen" to pull into a cheveron. eric gets out and decides to "test" the wood. he gives one side a push and it comes loose. crap. he begins to retie again and offhandedly says, "should i go ask that guy for rope?" my reply was "what guy?" jaclyn's reply was "that guy" as she points to some guy pumping gas next to us. haha. very funny. like he would have rope. so eric continues to tie. does a good job we think. finally, as the guy next to us is about to leave he says, "would you guys like some rope?" wtf?! no way. you're kidding us. what a coincidence! so he gives us this nice nylon rope and drives off. man, we're set! (little did we then know how important that rope would be.) so we cut away all the twine and retie. it's strong this time. very strong! not goin anywhere. good job eric! so now we can go on the freeway. we go 65 the whole way. this wood isn't going anywhere.
so we get to school. unload the wood. call jay and time and others to help us carry up to our room. we give them one of the longest pieces first and tell them to take it up. it'll fit up the stairs. really. we know it will. they go. meanwhile i unwrap all the rope. that took a while. eric really twisted it about. so we get it all off, and amit goes to park the car. then here come jay and tim back carrying the wood. it won't fit up the stairs. what? you're kidding. it's got to. try the side staircase. there's more room. so we stash the other pieces in the bushes to go show them that "it'll fit." it doesn't. we bang up the walls trying to get it to fit. there's no way it's getting up the staircase. crap. dammit. what to do? cut the wood? wasted. but wait. pull it up the window with the rope the stranger gave us? wo! crazy. he's our savior! without him, there would be no infrastructure. whoever you are, mr rope man. thank you. through all of this carrying of wood up and down the halls we get some strange looks and some "what's that?" a 10 foot long piece of wood maybe?
by this time it's like midnight. we had bought some metal hooks to hang the hammock on. we screwed those into the ends of the wood to hoist them up. so eric and i are down outside of the building readying the wood. since that side of the building faces the street, it's kinda sketch. two police cars drive by. they don't see us. who would expect to see people hoisting wood up the side of a building. we decide to wait until it's a bit tamer outside. we go back up and begin work on the wood that is up there. we get pretty far. all we need now are the other pieces. by now, it's about 3am. we deicde to do some "hoisting." eric stays up and i go outside. we have those "talkabouts" so we can stay in contact. i meander my way on out to the street. rather unsuspicious looking. there's a man delivering newspapers. let's wait? ok. man, he's taking a long time. wait. gosh, too long. lets go. so i run up the hill and hook on the first piece of wood. i run down the hill again rather unsuspicously. i turn around. the wood is gone? where is it? "we dropped it. didn't you see it?!" i hadn't. man, this sucks. we're gonna get caught, i know it. so i run up the hill and hook up the next piece. as i watch him pull it up, he does it very very quickly. so it's up and i asked again where the other piece on the ground was. i couldn't see it. when he said that he dropped it, he was being sarcastic. didn't i feel stupid. note: eric is a real hauss.
so we're done. miraculously, we did it and didn't get caught. hallelujah. want to know someting ironic. the window we were standing outside up where the wood was on the ground belonged to our RD...resident director. the lady who's in charge of discipline in our building. uh-oh. big mistake. man, if she had looked out the window, i'd be looking for an apartment right now.
so i go back up to the room and all the wood is now in the room. awesome. so we go to work finishing. we go pretty good considering we have no power tools. only a wrench and a socket wrench that's the wrong size. i knicked my fingers a few times when the wrench slipped. ouch. no worries tho. so about 6am amit comes in and is quite amazed, he had been watching a movie the whole time. he proceeds to recite some jerry seinfeld. i admit, he was humorous. i was laughing. but he's laying on my bed. so i begin to work over his head bolting stuff up. i slipped once and dropped the wrench on his nose. ouch! my bad.
so we have it built. my hammock is hanging from it. eric is getting a hammock. we're planning on attaching my speakers to it somehow. dunno yet. it's nice. it's the local tourist attraction. what will we do at the end of the year when we can't take the big pieces out the door? same way they came in...the window. hmmm, that'll be interesting...
so now you're probably wondering what this whole thing looks like? yea, well, i made up a little panoramic picture of it.
http://www.bol.ucla.edu/~sgaspard/images/panorama.jpg
Soup
12:41 AM:::
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