I’m not really a morning person (thank god for Caribou), but I’ve always preferred getting an early start to the day; arriving at work before the sun peeks its head over the horizon gives you an interesting perspective. For example, near where I work there’s this bar and I always know what day it is by how many cars are still in the parking lot when I’m heading into the object factory. It’s not uncommon to see half a dozen vehicles scattered around the lot on a Friday morning and frankly I take some comfort in the fact that these folks were wise enough to take a cab or hitch a ride.
Now, I expect to see some cars left overnight at the bar but there’s something I’ve noticed of late that doesn’t quite make sense. Dynamic language camp starts promptly at 8 am (OK, not always so promptly) which means I’m usually walking in around 7:30 or so. Every morning as I stride towards the EE/CSci building I’m perplexed by the sheer number of bikes that are securely attached to the racks fronting the facility. I understand the case for Friday mornings, but I don’t recall there being too many 8 am Saturday classes when I was in college.
Needless to say, I find myself constructing the conversation between two students as they walk out from a late night hackfest. One guy stumbles towards his two wheeled transport but his buddy grabs his arm “hey, you’ve had too much Jolt tonight man, give me the keys to the bike lock.” Maybe there really are some extremely dedicated students out there, I don’t know. But I like to think we’ve got some real heroes stepping in to prevent the tragedy of a wired geek trying to navigate his way home after another long night in the lab.
