It was a weird run today, because of all these numbered buildings. Very enjoyable, but weird.
We started off with a long trek to the Blake Wilbur Clinic, which is way on the other side of the hospital and is one of the only buildings not under construction. It is sort of an island in a sea of construction; we saw it from afar, but we couldn't quite figure out how to get there. Once we touched the door (we've gotten in the habit of touching every single building), we got a bit cute, and tried to weave our way back through the hospital construction maze. We were totally unsuccessful, and took a few terrible wild-goose-chase-like detours: we ended up in a courtyard we'd never seen before, and then we ran down these steps which looked like they might lead to a secret path out. Nope. I bet the hospital employees with windows facing out were wondering why two idiots were running down a path that led to a chain link fence dead end.
Eventually we made our way out (surprisingly, we ended up exiting by the Children's Hospital), and ran over to the main quad. The map says Building 1 – 370 (see Main Quad). I decided that this meant we had to visit every numbered building that does not have a name, because the named buildings will appear later on the map, so we'll visit them later. For example, the Psychology department is building 420, but it is called "Jordan". The "History Corner" is building 200. The numbering system for the quad makes some sense: we ran one loop around the inside, moved to the "middle", and then around the outside of the back. This spiral hit every building, and we touched every door. The highlight was the Anthropology department: I noticed that it seemed to be the only building with two buildings, and Ira passed along the rumor that there are sort of two ways of thinking about anthropology, and it is divisive enough that they have to be in different buildings. I hope that's true.
The numerical order of the quad was contrasted with the ridiculous layout of Buildings 500 – 610, which are behind the quad and up a little rise. They are mostly engineering buildings, but we got totally bamboozled here, and had to constantly check the map on my phone. So many questions:
We started off with a long trek to the Blake Wilbur Clinic, which is way on the other side of the hospital and is one of the only buildings not under construction. It is sort of an island in a sea of construction; we saw it from afar, but we couldn't quite figure out how to get there. Once we touched the door (we've gotten in the habit of touching every single building), we got a bit cute, and tried to weave our way back through the hospital construction maze. We were totally unsuccessful, and took a few terrible wild-goose-chase-like detours: we ended up in a courtyard we'd never seen before, and then we ran down these steps which looked like they might lead to a secret path out. Nope. I bet the hospital employees with windows facing out were wondering why two idiots were running down a path that led to a chain link fence dead end.
Eventually we made our way out (surprisingly, we ended up exiting by the Children's Hospital), and ran over to the main quad. The map says Building 1 – 370 (see Main Quad). I decided that this meant we had to visit every numbered building that does not have a name, because the named buildings will appear later on the map, so we'll visit them later. For example, the Psychology department is building 420, but it is called "Jordan". The "History Corner" is building 200. The numbering system for the quad makes some sense: we ran one loop around the inside, moved to the "middle", and then around the outside of the back. This spiral hit every building, and we touched every door. The highlight was the Anthropology department: I noticed that it seemed to be the only building with two buildings, and Ira passed along the rumor that there are sort of two ways of thinking about anthropology, and it is divisive enough that they have to be in different buildings. I hope that's true.
The numerical order of the quad was contrasted with the ridiculous layout of Buildings 500 – 610, which are behind the quad and up a little rise. They are mostly engineering buildings, but we got totally bamboozled here, and had to constantly check the map on my phone. So many questions:
- We were never actually sure we found building 520, since it was surrounded by chain link construction fence.
- The buildings normally go up by ten in the quad (10, 20, 30, etc), and that pattern is more or less repeated here, except there is no building 510 (it goes 500, 520, 530), and, for some inexplicable reason, there is a building 524, the only number that isn't a multiple of ten. What happened to building 510? And why the heck is it 524? If you felt compelled to add a building between 520 and 530, wouldn't you pick 525 instead? What are these engineers doing?
- We then got totally mixed up by the mystery building 590. First, there is no building 580 or 600, which is weird. We really couldn't find building 590 at all. We stopped and looked at my map, and it seemed like it was part of Old Union, which is weird since all the other buildings are engineering academic spaces, and this looked like it was "The Nitery", which hosts some student groups. We ran around it, and it never says "building 590" anywhere. Not once. We checked. Then, we found a construction sign that had a map of what this region will look like when the construction is done, and it said "Building 590 (The Nittery)". Yes, it is spelled correctly, but I'm not sure how these maps are supposed to help. If you are looking for "The Nitery", it isn't on the map. If you're looking for "Building 590", the building doesn't have a sign identifying it as such. Who do we complain to? I wonder which building has the office of the person responsible for this map?
At this point, we were at five miles, due to getting lost at the hospital, weaving around the quad, and looking for building 590. So, we only hit one more building: Bleeker. It is one of those weird buildings by Searsville Road that look sketchy and abandoned. Not very interesting, but we really tried to pick up the pace, especially on the way back. Our last mile was at a pace of 7:04, according to Ira's pedometer. That's pretty fast for us.
Total: 7.0 miles (30.8 since we started)
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