Late night ramblings

(Of the literal, more physical sort: walking.)

So last Saturday night/early Sunday morning, two of my friends and I were walking back from the bus loop past the outdoor swimming pool. We were on our way back to our beds from a birthday party down in Richmond.

As a background aside, the outdoor swimming pool had always struck me as a terrible waste of resources whenever I pass it in winter. If you asked me, it just didn’t seem to be the best evidence of UBC’s sustainability. You can literally see steam coming from the pool; it’s so cold these days. Nor had I seen anyone swim in the pool, even when the sun is at its peak, since November. Maybe I just needed to hang around 24/7 in order to see people swim, but I was still skeptical about just how many people will want to swim outdoors in the winter…

Of course, I was very mistaken about that, as I am about many things. So we’re walking back to Vanier when we hear screaming, and I wonder that the pool is open at night as well, but okay. Obviously people like to go swimming at 2:30 am. There’s a guy and a girl climbing up the diving board — and it’s a really high diving board — so we watch them out of idle curiosity as we continue walking by. The guy stands there — and you know how you tuck some piece of information away in your brain without thinking about it? I don’t notice if he’s wearing swimming trunks because there isn’t an obvious solid colour, but it’s dark and I’m not thinking, so brain clicks off — and he cannonballs into the pool from way up. Cool, brain on idle mode registers.

Whiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiirr.

Woah. We hover, our feet ready to take the next step as we glance around for the siren, and this car that belongs to Campus Security comes rolling down the road. (Oh, so they’re not supposed to be swimming at night after all. And maybe that’s why the fence is bent down and there’s a gaping hole. But wait, that car isn’t stopping. Okay, really do have to stop walking now.) We stand shock still while the car careens, without any hesitation or sign of slowing down, onto the grass and the pavement next to the swimming pool. A guard comes out and greets the stray swimmers with something along the lines of, “Having fun?”, and tells them to get dressed and get out. There are two guys in suits — proper, Men in Black kind of suits — standing beyond the fence watching the proceedings. No idea if they’re with Campus Security and were the ones who called them, or if they’re with the swimmers. Who wears suits at 2:30 am? Meanwhile, I resemble a marshmallow roll in my long winter coat.

But that was a most entertaining way of waking us up on our groggy walk back. Better than if no one ever went diving/skinny-dipping and all that heat for the water is wasted, eh?