Hacking MIT

Today I was at MIT a few hours earlier than my classes started, hanging out with some friends. We were debating where to go: one person had suggested the engineering library, another said there was a secret garden he wanted to find. I piped up: "Oh, you mean the garden by the basement of building six?" I said, having stumbled across that particular daisy field a few years ago. We soon came to a general consensus that we should head there, and I, the fearless leader, lead them to it.

The garden consisted entirely dead, brown stalks of flowers that no longer existed. "This is depressing!" Tori commented. There were two small buildings (the garden was kind of a courtyard but in the middle of nowhere) that were some kind of electrical storage place. On top of one of them were two chairs. Noah, a very tall guy, started to climb up one by grabbing onto the roof (which was 7 or 8 ft high) and pushing his foot off a protruding pipe that had several valves on it. Then John, who is slightly taller than me, ran up to the building and jumped, managing to grab the roof and push his foot off a door hinge. Then Tori, taller than John but shorter than Noah climbed onto the roof. There were four of us left on the ground, but the other three had very little interest in getting to the top of the building, while I stood there wishing I could get up there.

I obviously could not go via Noah's method; I am not nearly as tall as him. I tried jumping, but to no avail. Finally, they brought over one of the chairs from the roof, and I used it to get a hold of the roof (even with a chair I could barely touch the top) and push myself up using the pipe. John pulled me the rest of the way up.

Up on the roof, I looked down in triumph. Then I began to explore. I climbed up onto the window ledge of the second story windows and skirted my way around that, hugging the wall in the space between windows where the ledge was only a half foot wide. I looked down the twelve or so feet from me to the ground slightly terrified, but mostly triumphant.

Soon it was time to head to class. Noah just hung from the roof and dropped, again the advantage of being tall. Tori also did a similar dismount from the roof. John turned around, felt around with his foot for the door hinge and carefully lowered himself down. I tried to turn myself backwards and find the door hinge, but couldn't find it. John came over and grabbed my foot, moving it to where the hinge was. I stepped down onto it, but couldn't go any farther. Noah came over and grabbed my foot. "Just lead on this, I'll lower you down."

"NOAH," I excaimed. "Do not grab my foot! That's not going to work!" But he wouldn't let go. So I lowered myself onto his hand and jumped down.

Just as we were leaving, John decided to get onto the roof of the second, taller building. He easily shimmied up a pole to get to the roof and was standing there as we started to leave. "Guys!" He screamed after us. "Don't just abandon me. I need help getting down."

Tori grabbed the trash can and moved it over next to the building. We cajoled John into turning backwards and putting his feet on a small hitch in the pipe. Noah started to grab John's foot, but John yelled at him for doing so and so Noah stopped and John got down onto the trash can. On our way back inside we realized there was a ladder right beside the door.

"Well, it was good practice," someone said.

"Practice for what?" someone else asked.

"This, without a ladder," the person responded.


Sachi

Note: Hacking is a word that has two meanings at MIT: the more common is a prank, particularly a clever one, such as putting a car on top of the dome, or turning part of the campus into a board game. The second meaning is exploring dangerous, secret, out of the way, or off limits places.