And Out of the Dungeon...Sunshine!

Oh, the unexpected excitements of work.

I work in the basement of Salt Lake Community College. No windows, no cell phone reception and very little light (for some reason people in marketing prefer lamps to overhead lighting). But lo, yesterday I escaped into the daylight.

Daylight was a lot colder than I remembered. I had an appointment to meet with the head of the College's grounds crew to talk about the new drought-tolerant flowers and plants at the campus. I told him I would come to his office, thinking I knew where the Facilities Compound was.

After walking to one side of campus in the cold afternoon and wandering around through a bunch of empty portable classrooms trying to find the Grounds office, I was told that I was on the entirely wrong side of campus.

When I finally found the right location I was cheerily greeted by a big dude named Justin Wiker. After talking about the new plants I was able to have a dream fulfilled. I got to ride around in a little maintenance buggy! You know those little cars that are always running you off the sidewalk when you're trying to get to class? "Beep, beep! Get out of the way, mere mortals, I'm in a maintenance buggy!"

Justin cruised us around the campus, showing me all of the different plants. It's pretty cold, driving around in a little car that doesn't have a windshield or windows and the thing went faster than you'd think.

"Have you ever run anybody over in this thing?" I asked.

"No, but I've had some close calls."

"Ever tipped it over?"

He looked and smiled.

I was on top of the world. I was the big man on campus. I was in the maintenance buggy!